That's remarkable. I remember hearing that powder could absorb moisture. Some guy posted that a scale pan of powder left out would gain weight. I tried it, and the pan weight didn't change in my environment.I repeated the ladder with the dried powder and saw about a 200 fps increase from the previous days data. (2785 to 2980fps) for 30.0 gr H4895 with a 105 Berger. (26" barrel CCI450 Lapua brass 1x fired)
A couple old jugs of powder that's been sitting around did have lower moisture than where it should have been,
I have new bottles of the same powder that I measured and the difference was substantial and in line with what I'd previously heard the moisture content should be. I measure the moisture content with a Kestrel Drop and get the readings on my phone app.How could you tell/measure the moisture content?
Yeah, here in the desert it can be a day with humidity at 10 - 15%, then a monsoon storm passes through and the humidity suddenly jumps to 80 - 90%. Such extremes can have a significant effect on the powder for the time one is doing their loading out in the open at the range.When loading at the range, you can see results of drying powder pretty darn fast.
Exposed to the dry air in the desert SW, a 30gr charge of 133 will lose .2gr in 15 min.
CW
I have not tested that, however at the risk of looking like an idiot, I will venture a guess that I am not a good enough shooter to even see the difference on target.So based on what mulligan and straightshooter said, I have a incredibly novice and I’m guessing silly question. Once the powder is loaded in the round sealed with a bullet, it’s an airtight space that the powder is no longer affected by humidity? So of if you load at home in a dry room and go outside to a super humid match day, as opposed to loading at the match, you are only dealing with the effects of humidity on your bullet in air? Or is your powder somehow still susceptible to the humidity. Try not to laugh at this question.
An excellent question.So based on what mulligan and straightshooter said, I have a incredibly novice and I’m guessing silly question. Once the powder is loaded in the round sealed with a bullet, it’s an airtight space that the powder is no longer affected by humidity? So of if you load at home in a dry room and go outside to a super humid match day, as opposed to loading at the match, you are only dealing with the effects of humidity on your bullet in air? Or is your powder somehow still susceptible to the humidity. Try not to laugh at this question.
other resources:
Don’t know if this guy is a member here, but does mention accurate shooter so I am assuming he is. But I thought this was a very interesting video he made. Much bigger swings than I imagined.
How could you tell/measure the moisture content?
That's certainly NOT a "silly question".So based on what mulligan and straightshooter said, I have a incredibly novice and I’m guessing silly question. Once the powder is loaded in the round sealed with a bullet, it’s an airtight space that the powder is no longer affected by humidity? So of if you load at home in a dry room and go outside to a super humid match day, as opposed to loading at the match, you are only dealing with the effects of humidity on your bullet in air? Or is your powder somehow still susceptible to the humidity. Try not to laugh at this question.
There are at least a couple ways I can think of by which varying the moisture content of powder could affect velocity. The first would be that you're actually measuring out more "combustible material" when throwing a given charge weight if the moisture content is low because the weight component due to water is lessened. In theory, the water content of the powder could also affect the burn rate. Of these, I think the first is likely what is happening when reloaders observe velocity changes due to altered moisture content. The powder becomes "lighter" on a volume basis because the water content is lower. Thus, a given charge weight from a Lot# of powder with low moisture content actually contains more combustible material than the same charge weight as measured out from a Lot# of powder with higher water content.So based on what mulligan and straightshooter said, I have a incredibly novice and I’m guessing silly question. Once the powder is loaded in the round sealed with a bullet, it’s an airtight space that the powder is no longer affected by humidity? So of if you load at home in a dry room and go outside to a super humid match day, as opposed to loading at the match, you are only dealing with the effects of humidity on your bullet in air? Or is your powder somehow still susceptible to the humidity. Try not to laugh at this question.
Water content changes both parameters, the density as well as the combustion energy per grain.Of these, I think the first is likely what is happening when reloaders observe velocity changes due to altered moisture content.