Fun fact soldiers in WWI were recorded to have eaten peices of cordite in order to get out of frontline duty. It provides a short severe sickness that is thoroughly unpleasant but still better than the front line of the trenches
Nice observation, in England and Canada they used to film women making bombs at factories. Because in these factories people couldn’t wear or bring anything that could cause a spark and blow the place up. The cameras that they would use to make news reels could cause a spark so they instead used dummy bombs and guess what they used instead on cordite? Yep uncooked spaghetti.
That old .303 ammo usually still goes bang just fine. The corrosive Berdan primer is very stable and long lasting and the cordite is pretty immune. And the Mk7 ball ammo usually had a bituminous sealant around the neck. The British operated in some nasty climates. Also why it was loaded to around a conservative 45,000 PSI, so it goes bang and reliably extracts every time in hot climates, not because of any weakness in the receiver. The Lee-Enfield is a surprisingly strong but ductile action and tends to bend and set-back so is a handloaders nightmare on brass, but that wasn’t an issue for a service rifle. They were still loading it with cordite up until 1958 for sure and quite possibly later. As a kid in 1974 I shot 1918 headstamp .303 ammo without a problem. US 1944 30’06 ammo was still going fine too, but the 1943 German 8x57 stuff was on the way out and much of it used to hang-fire. Probably more about storage than anything else. We burned through lots of everything. Wish I’d kept some.
You are not kidding about Lee-Enfields making reloaders crazy! I suffered both amaxing groups and random fliers when neck-sizing brass out of my No4. I had to switch to full-length and deal with slightly larger groups and reduced brass life. I've since stopped shooting highpower, so I don't care as much anymore. Thanks for the post!
Cordite was used as a propellant from 1891 and the first adopted cordite cartridge, the Cartridge S.A. Ball, Magazine Rifle Cordite Mark 1, had a 215 grain round nosed cupro-nickel jacketed bullet giving a muzzle velocity of about 1970 feet per second at a chamber pressure of about 17.5 tons per square inch. Cordite consisted of 58% Nitro-glycerine, 37% Nitro-cellulose and 5% Mineral Jelly and was normally pressed into cord form but tubular, tape, flaked and sliced cordite were also used. Nitro-cellulose was first used as a propellant in the .303 cartridge during 1894 although it was not officially approved for service until 1916. This propellant, however, was not considered to be as stable as cordite in the tropics and cordite was, therefore, still retained as a propellant in military cartridges for the remainder of the cartridges service life. Nitro-cellulose propellant however was extensively used during the first and second world wars. The last .303 ball cartridges manufactured at Radway Green in 1973 were loaded with nitro-cellulose powder and not cordite, cordite having last been used for the .303 cartridge in the 1960s.
The pad between the bullet and cordite was to protect the rear of the bullet from the high heat. Cordote burns extremely hot, much hotter than modern smokeless powders.
Yeah a good few of the rounds ive fired that use cordite as propellant burned through in the shoulder of the nevk of the bullet its honestly impressive how hot it burns. And the feet ps you get from cordite over black powder cases is impressive it really must have been a revolution idea if you compare burn rates and the amount of unburned propellant. Might be rambling here but its incredibly difficult if not impossible to achieve 100% burn out of black powder because of the violence of the ignition.
That's the main selling point of cordite over other propellants it basically never ages. You don't have to dispose of ammo after it's gone bad like you used to have to with TNT around cuz they would start to go pear-shaped because of the sweating.
@@encoded3906 eh no.. Cordite and other double base propellants have a life of around 25 -30 years dependent on storage conditions. TNT is however remarkably stable and is widely recycled. I think you have mixed up your definitions somewhere.. In a similar vein, the OP has got it wrong, cordite was never a filling for grenades. The WW2 US M2 pineapple grenade was filled with nitrocellulose powder, however most grenades are filled with a high explosive such as TNT.
Thanks - that brought back some memories. My grandfather and I used to find this stuff on the beach all the time when I was a kid due to the amount of British and German fighter planes over this corner of England. As he was an old WW2 soldier, he'd collect it up safely off the beach, strip it and burn it. I thought the cordite was tame because it was maybe wet or just old. However, the tracer rounds and phosphorus / smoke we found were a bit more entertaining. We also found a few dud 2in Mortar rounds intact too. The local Police asked us to stop finding them - which, as a young kid, I always thought was a bit odd.
I generally think of my childhood as a violent and dangerous world where I played with black-powder in its variant forms via firearms and whatever horrible and dangerous ideas my brothers and I had. Posts like yours make me realize how removed from war we were. You are welcome.
@@lallinnBESTI RDX is the explosive used in grenades, using any of the two you mentioned would make them insanely impact sensitive. Cordite causes chamber throat erosion.
I opened a 9mm P.A.K cartridge once and it looked very simular to those micro beads you poured out of the moderd round, but the pak powder burned very fast in some what like flash powder
When I first took apart an old .303 round a few years back to check the powder, I thought I had been scammed and that someone had replaced the powder with spaghetti!
Found a .303 round while on holiday in Norfolk UK. Took it home and pulled it apart and set fire to the cordite while my dad watched. I was about 5 or 6 yrs old. Oh the fun we had in the 60's!
My dad used to help us make hydrogen-filled balloons using lye and aluminum shavings. We would tie twine to them, light the twine on fire, and watch them burst into flames as they rose in the air. Dads should be dangerous.
After the war, a hell of a lot of munitions was dumped in the sea just to get rid of it. I've heard of phosphorous washing ashore and spontaneously bursting into flame when oxygen hits it
@@KClO3 Yes it was. White phosphorous was used in incendiary bombs, smoke bombs and in tracer bullets. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions
@@MURDOCK1500 hmm you’re right, although It was never used in tracers, first off white phosphorus burns very dimly so it would barely show up in a tracer, also they would need to be handled very carefully because if a single cartridge would get damaged it would light on fire which is obviously a very bad idea, also why would you need self igniting stuff when you can simply stick a bit of flare composition in the end which burns a lot brighter, way more stable and you can choose the color instead of the dim orange white phosphorus makes
I had some 1942 surplus South African manufactured .303 British ammo and it used cordite. The ammo went bang every time, but some of those hang fires were scary.
Where I grew up in a far out area of Australia, my friends dad got a heap of cordite british 303 ammo in the mid to late 80s. Pulled it open to see a heap of little rods and was surprised by it. SO many old SMLEs and this ammo around in the 80s and 90s and the guns where still easy to get in the early 2000s.
UK Used Cordite for almost everything from pistols to Battleship guns up to the 1960s. The early versions with a high NG content did cause throat erosion, however this was improved by reducing the NG percentage, and latterly by adding foam plastic liners to the cartridges in the larger calibres.. .303 cordite loading procedure is almost unique. The cordite was supplied to the filling factories in reels and fed into the filling machine as a continuous web of cords. The machine cut the cords into set length bundles just prior to filling the empty case which was supplied without a neck. The bundle of propellant was then loaded into the straight sided case and a strawboard wad added. The case was necked down just before the bullet was loaded and crimped. The length of the bundle of cordite that was cut by the filling machine was adjusted to account for batch to batch variation in performance. The strawboard wad was primarily used to keep the cordite in place in the case as the neck was formed, however it did also assist in preventing the base of the bullet being damaged at the point of ignition. Cordite incorporates a stabiliser (carbamite) which gives it a shelf life of around 25 years under stable storage conditions. If cordite is stored in poor conditions such as varying temperatures or excessive moisture, the structure can break down and become acidic. This can, under certain circumstances lead to spontaneous ignition, which is generally considered "a bad thing". Cordite in service was subject to regular Abel heat tests to work out how much stabiliser was left. Cordite in small arms ammunition seems to have a considerably longer shelf life, with 80 year old samples still able to pass the Abel test. At this age however, the primers are seldom viable! Burning propellant is perfectly safe provided it is done carefully. I have burned many tons of propellant without mishap, however it is a cardinal rule that you should never conduct more than one burn in the same place in any 24hr period, and that you should wash down the burning ground after a burn! Directly igniting dry black powder is also something you should avoid. Large quantities of black powder should be wetted before burning and always ignited with a trail of smokeless propellant. Can I suggest you revise your burning procedures accordingly? With reference to your remark about using cordite to initiate high explosive, I think you are confusing Cordite with Cordtex? The latter is a detonating cord with a Penta Erithritol Tetra Nitrate (PETN) filling which will indeed initiate plastic explosive as it has a velocity of detonation of around 6km/s. Cordite is a low explosive, which will not normally initiate a high order detonation...!
Great data Felix! I don't intend to repeat the process, but I have pinned your comment so hopefully more likely folks will see your safety comments. I burned a lot of black powder as a child/teenager and we had many interesting malfunctions.
That's pretty nice mate! It is nice thinking that sometime ago the proppelent used on these 303 rounds weren't powder! Cool to watch the development of new technologies!!!
I opened a bullet I found on a British wreck that went down in 1944 after a German bomber strike. It was filled with cordite, it was still dry inside after 70 years in very salty water, and it burned fiercer than yours ...
i remember back in school days pulling bullets out of shells ( i had no fancy bullet puller just used pliers) and i was so amazed to find this cordite stuff, had no idea what it was back then. if i remember right it came out of steel jacket 303s
Nitrocellulose powder is a propellant whereas black powder is an explosive. In the beginning of cordite use the loading was done by hand, mostly the work of women who counted the strands and inserted them inside the case which was then placed in a rotary table to complete the loading process automatically.
@@incrediblemichael It's listed as an explosive, but to me it's indistinct as I'm no chemist. I'm simply paraphrasing what I've read numerous times in gun magazine articles and such.
Not really the term "explosive" covers a wide range of energetic compounds that can mean "deflagrating" low explosives and "detonating" high explosives. Just to confuse things some explosives can work in both modes. Black powder however can only work in the low explosive, deflagrating mode. I'm afraid you are also wrong about loading. Machine loading techniques for military small arms ammunition was well established by the 1880s, before cordite came into use. Military cordite ball .303 ammunition in UK service was always machine filled, although larger calibres and specialty rounds like tracer were sometimes made using manual assembly processes. The quantities of small arms ammunition needed once magazine rifles came into use meant that making small arms ammunition by hand was never going to work...
The purpose of the wadding is to make sure that the cordite doesn't chemically react with the metal of the bullet. This can form metallic crystals that make the round very unstable.
Thanks I will sleep less dumb tonight or on a positive way I will sleep more intelligent tonight. :) This I had no idea and came across some in the past, didn't know what it was, your explanations are very well taught, that's why I sub. Thanks again. :)
I used to find heaps of 303 in the chicken coop as a kid. Often half rotten shells, the bullet, wad and often neck missing, cordite sticking out. Once watched the chickens pick out the cordite from a shell. There used to be a farmhouse turned German quarters on our land. In a couple of spots there are loads of Germans shells, in other spots 303 from the advancing Canucks.
Because blackpowder is an explosive while smokeless is a propellant. Bp is pressure sensitive so the pressure generated in the chamber helps keep the rate of burn down since it's going to want to try and explode all at once. While with smokeless chamber pressure makes it burn faster than in air because it compresses the exploding powder together with the not for a chain reaction burn
@@chasebh89 actually black powder is not an explosive. It burns rather than explode, with the nitrate oxidizing the volatile carbon derivates. One of the reasons that BP is so flashy is because it produces way more gases than energy. Other than that, yes the cordite is a propelent that works better under pressure.
Disappearing spaghetti LOL but seriously, this is fascinating. Being familiar with smokeless powder, you'd never think the older stuff once looked like spaghetti. Absolutely fascinating.
Some explosives can to burn pretty calmly but under the right conditions they detonate violently. Myth busters did a bunch of tests using c4 and other explosives to boil water. It’s crazy how something can have completely different reactions depending on how it’s ignited.
@@stimpsonjcat67 It used to be common practice, heating food on nC4, C4 needs a kick from a booster or det cord to explode. Military explosives are made primarily to be safe, secondly to explode!
Even Cordite was used as propellant for the heavy radioactive metal "projectile" in Little Bomb nuke, the one that explode in Hiroshima. The kinetic energy caused by the expanding gas is sufficiently strong enough to have enough momentum to propel the nuclear material being shaped as kind of bullet then impacted to another nuclear material, triggering fission reaction.
... cordite is a double based propellant made from nitro cellulose and nitroglycerin ... the NC is dissolved in Acetone before being mixed with NG ... the acetone is evaporated off until it has the consistency of dough and then extruded or cast as needed ...
Interestingly Sherman and British crusader tanks of what I read thus far, had catastrophic burnings within the tank due to stored cordite in their ammunition. Explains a lot now, most though it was due to the fuel tanks being hit, but no the flammable cordite made the tanks burn up far more than fuel tanks or pumps hit
I was 10yrs in 1976 and found a clip of 5 303 rounds whilst digging the potato patch in the garden. I took my find to show my Dad an Ex Royal Engineer. He set about making it safe whilst I hit him with questions, why are they dangerous what could happen what is that spaghetti? He said leave it alone it will burn your fingers, I carried on desperate to see how it worked and was told again leave it alone it will burn your fingers! I said I want to see. So the old feller put about a rounds worth in a tobbaco tin and snapped a swan vesta match in half. They were shorter than a standard match to start off with! He said there you go strike the match and light the spaghetti. I did there was a bright light puff of smoke and searing heat. I drew back shocked and threw my hand under my armpit. My thumbnail was yellow and a huge water blister covered my thumb. The old feller said did you burn your finger, hell yes you did! You are going to learn everything the hard way ain't you son. Never a truer word spoken. I sure have. Every time I took that hand in or out of a pocket for months after I remembered the lesson. Guess you can't help your nature ay.lol.
Dude that's crazy when I was younger me and my buddy would always make firecrackers in my garage I found some rounds we open them up and it was cordite we ended up using it to make some awesome firecrackers
i still remember lighting the flash powder from fireworks as a kid..... figuring it would burn like 22lr flake . it went POOF! and i lost a bit of hair.....
I first heard the word Cordite in the Tom Cruise movie Collateral. One of the cops found one of Vincent's spent casings and said "You can still smell the cordite!"
I hate when the ignoramus MSM refers to the "smell of cordite" when talking about smokeless powder...cordite has been out if common usage for far longer than the so called reporters parents gave been living...
@@uncleartax ...its a reference that goes back over 100 years...when the Brits' standard propellant WAS cordite...the trade name for the spagehetti like strands of propellant in small arms...it hasn't been used in almost 100 years...Google cordite
Maybe you can answer this for me. I picked up what turned out to be an 1853 belgian service rifle at a flea market however the barrel and stock both have been heavily modified with carving, gold inlay and other embelishments by the ottomans at some point. When I got it there was a charge of cut lead (small 1/4” long cubes cut from a square bar of lead packed in like a rifled shotgun charge) and the propellant behind it looked like irregularly chopped bits of small spaghetti noodles cut down to a granular texture. Once i got it out of the barrel it touched off and burned exactly like the video and had a smell different to that of normal gunpowder. Im wondering if its possible if whoever loaded that rifle last used scrounged propellant from unfired cordite rounds and used cut lead since its typically used when theres no time to cast a proper bullet. Hoping to maybe hear some theories on that
Small arms powder can be ball, stick, flake. We still use something akin to cordite in impulse cartridges used for setting off flares, and dropping bombs on military aircraft. Sometimes not all the stick powder would burn in the impulse carts!
Back in the 80's I gave my father a 54 cal black powder rifle for Christmas! Now to set this story I must inform you that he was ex military and an ex NM sheriffs deputy and in NM you had to take a safety course before you could hunt! Now knowing all this we can continue with my story. ! After building the gun kit and taking the rather lengthy safety course and getting a hunt permit we went to the mountain's above Alamogordo to hunt some deer! There we're myself my dad and five of his buddies, me being just 19 at the time and the rest 20 to 30 yrs my elders and all avid hunters! After a long hike of about two and half hour's we came to a rocky clearing on the side of a hill and decided to take a break! My dad mind you is fitted out with the latest reload gear and a powder pouch. While sitting there my dad takes out his powder and pours about 400 grains of red dot black powder onto a rock then takes his cigarette and sticks it in the pile! Nothing happens! So my brilliant dad takes his cigg and puffs on it a couple if times and proceeds to stick it back into the pile and WOOSH- INSTANT FLASH ! Followed by screaming and hollering. Third degree burns on all four fingers and thumb! This from a grown man who was trained to know better! Now the fun part- his buddies and me were so pissed off we made him suffer all they way back into town, moral of this story- don't trust a person just because he's older than you. It doesn't always mean they are smarter!😀
I've been disassembling old rounds of .303 british from the 40s, and while some did contain gun powder, most contain this cordite stuff. Any idea on it's lifespan in comparison to gunpowder? I wasn't gonna risk it with the gunpowder but now I'm curious, because I don't know what to do with it LOL
I own an all original matching serial no 1 mk 3 Enfield (papered) from ww2 I trust cordite enough to still run it through mine some of the rounds I use vary from 60 to 120 years old. Shoot, clean, store repeat. Like he said click bang ammo its fun.
Are you sure it’s not gun cotton? During WW1 women in England who worked in some munition plants making shells were nic named “ canary girls” because the gun cotton in the shells turned their skin yellow. There is a video about them on here.
Wrong Myth.. Skin staining comes from certain high explosives such as picrates and TNT. If you have ever seen someone with stained skin from explosive handling, then you have clearly walked through a time warp.. this has not happened since the 1920s...
I love my cordite ammo! Yeah you get some hang fires but it's so much better than a lot of power all. Plus the bullet if literally the perfect fit for my brits
As a 10 year old kid I used to take this to school and show kids how spaghetti was flammable, lol. Came from grandpa's old .303 British. They'd go home and try burning mom's spaghetti on the stove and tell me it didn't work. I told them they just had the wrong brand, lol.
When I was in my teens I shot trap and reloaded my shotshells. I once put a double charge of powder in a Dixie cup and dropped in a lit match. A flame shot up for a few seconds, and it was blue & green, which was neat. And the cup survived. Singed, but didn’t ignite. Weird stuff. I’ve heard cordite caused throat erosion, but it occurs to me that a better reason to switch to powder is ease of manufacturing. Powder can be easily portioned with a volumetric powder measure. But how do you quickly & accurately count and insert the requisite number of cordite straws?
Yep. I was 7 or 8 when the old man showed me his 303 shells and explained how dangerous it was to strike one on the end. I tried throwing one on the road a few times but gave up and dismantled it instead and ended up fusing my fingers together whilst holding some cordite and applying a match. Of course stupidity rarely fades away as an adult and my dad went on to show me many other idiotic tricks in his quest to teach me about safety. Better to keep this knowledge to ourselves until our young are old enough to comprehend the dangers I think and keep ammo away from stupid kids such as I was. This was only the late sixties.
Lol i was doing just this when i was a kid and using one of my moms glass ashtrays that unbenounced to me was special for some odd reason. Was burning the more modern to older as in this video, and everything was fine , until i opened a war time shell that must have been military. When i lit it, it almost flashed , double in height of flame , and powder that was kinda like this cordite was chopped shorter , melted itself into the glass ashtray. Needless to say it didnt end well for my rear end, lol.
Donot mistake cordite and dynamite,it is two different animals..Cordite is a form of artillery propellant mixture between nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin,dynomite is a chalk soaked with nitroglycerin making it in powder form...Cordite's used earlier in ammunition but been outdated by nitrocellulose propellants which is more safer to handle..After 3 years of storage cordite's and ballistites must be disposed of because nitroglycerin turn propellant into explosive instead and friction sensitive...When you take artillery shells apart you notice that there is larger size spaghetti sticks there,as for artillery it is the best source of propellant to use after it creates high velocity for shell..As Naval types there is multiple spaghetti sticks packed and strapped together and outside special water resistant material coated or placed..In Naval cannons those charges get ignited by electrical charge unlike caps/boosters or any form of primers...Each explosive is unique and have different purpose ranges from primers to detonators or just plain charges...There normally 2 types of explosives initiating acting as primary detonators and brissant explosives such as TNT,Nytroglycerin/Dynomite mixtures,C4 and other plastique or jelly types which actually in form of charges....The charge explosive cannot explode on it's own,it would rather burn like a candle rather anything else unless detonator inserted..Those are simple army 101 studies,there is much more stuff about detonators and main charges but that topic rather chemical than army to discuss...Explosives is unstable chemicals of which property have unstable molecular bounding between Nitrogen/Chlorine/Phenol/Phosphates and Sulfur as catalyst for such instability,without sulfuric acid and synthesis chemical won't be explosive and there won't be catalyst reaction of just plain chemicals without sulfur atom presence..Nitrocellulose also not exception,without sulfuric acid there won't be no nitrocellulose and there won't be any fast burnings at all...Very simple and easy to understand how chemical reaction take place and how unstable chemical substances is in presence of each other,some explosives consider amateur stuff while other is completely unforgiving and should be respected with all safety cautions,explosives are like isotope's similar to Uranium and Plutonium which critical mass cannot be exceeded over certain amount or detonation would occurred...Explosives is acid salts that produces symbolic name Picrates,Nitrates,Chlorates,Phosphates,Sulfates,etc which most consider as explosives or reogents as strong oxidizers especially things like perchlorates..There is at least 50 to 60 different explosives in the world,at least 15 of them consider very dangerous to use while rest is too toxic because they cost heavy metal poisoning like lead styphnate or lead azide..All salts of picric acid or phenol related substances are toxic,experiments with them must be done in well ventilated areas and use of raspirator..The most dangerous explosive that listed number one is Astrolite,besides been friction sensitive it also consider as light sensitive as well,if any traces exposed to light it would cost self ignition or detonation....Astrolite also won't just dissipate at soil,soil would be soaked and become sensitive for detonation and fire for several days which make that explosive very dangerous...It's detonation ratio far more greater than TNT,but like I was mention above each explosive used in different devices,for good use it requires to destroy large rock formations or create mining entries for things like gold or diamonds or perhaps garnet..When experiment with explosives it takes full responsibility of use/misuse of such chemicals..Donot heat cordite in closed containers because it would explode just like plain nitrocellulose but with nitroglycerin content included it makes it even much worster case scenario..
Take a block of aluminum drill and ream a hole and you have a kinetic energy device for removing slugs and powder. Learned that from a crazy South African tool&die maker.
@@stimpsonjcat67 Thinking about it, could you? It wouldn't chemically stabilize it, but it would certainly slow down the burn rate of the nitrocellulose, while still burning relatively cleanly.
How come it combustss so fast in the gun? I know the barrel forces all the pressure down the tube, but I figured the powder would pop not just burn fast.
You need to buy a grip-n-pull bullet puller and get rid of that kinetic bullet puller you got. It is to slow and will deform your bullets, especially if you use soft tip or polymer tip bullets. Also you don't dump or spill the powder or bullets like you do with the kinetic ones and you can do 3 or 4 to one once you use it some. Also the do several calibers in one puller. It's worth the money especially if you do a lot of reloading and use expensive bullets or pulling to work up a load or different loads. So try a grip-n-pull.
Oh I have one on my 550! I thought the kinetic would be more fun for the video. I'm not sure why this video has blown up this week. How did you get here?
I love the smell of cordite in the morning
Rdr2?
@@Jak-it solid snake
😂😂😂😂
Anytime, really...
@@crosman177 i think you and he meant to say revolver ocelot
If anybody is wondering how they got the cordite so neatly into a bottle necked case, the case neck was formed after inserting the cordite.
Thats exactly what I was curious about
Oh wow. Very cool.
Thanks!
Thanks, because I was actually wondering
So how did they resize the neck for the bullet?
Danger spaghetti!
devils hair pasta
@@extracrazyguy The forbidden noodle
Funny
Fun fact soldiers in WWI were recorded to have eaten peices of cordite in order to get out of frontline duty. It provides a short severe sickness that is thoroughly unpleasant but still better than the front line of the trenches
@@Lonewolf-gp5zf Did not know that tidbit , thanks for the history lesson !
Man pulled some angry war spaghetti from that convinient box
And here I thought it was the italians using spaghetti in their bullets 🤦♂️ silly me
sorry...what is your profile pic !?
What does it represent ?
Where can I find it ?
I'm just curious...Thank u
@@primateproductionisverysma2253 It was from a polish nationalist march I believe it represents their disgust with both Nazism and Communism.
@@MegaMackproductions thank so much !
Have a nice day !
@@primateproductionisverysma2253 Same to you!
Nice observation, in England and Canada they used to film women making bombs at factories. Because in these factories people couldn’t wear or bring anything that could cause a spark and blow the place up. The cameras that they would use to make news reels could cause a spark so they instead used dummy bombs and guess what they used instead on cordite? Yep uncooked spaghetti.
That old .303 ammo usually still goes bang just fine. The corrosive Berdan primer is very stable and long lasting and the cordite is pretty immune. And the Mk7 ball ammo usually had a bituminous sealant around the neck. The British operated in some nasty climates. Also why it was loaded to around a conservative 45,000 PSI, so it goes bang and reliably extracts every time in hot climates, not because of any weakness in the receiver. The Lee-Enfield is a surprisingly strong but ductile action and tends to bend and set-back so is a handloaders nightmare on brass, but that wasn’t an issue for a service rifle. They were still loading it with cordite up until 1958 for sure and quite possibly later. As a kid in 1974 I shot 1918 headstamp .303 ammo without a problem. US 1944 30’06 ammo was still going fine too, but the 1943 German 8x57 stuff was on the way out and much of it used to hang-fire. Probably more about storage than anything else. We burned through lots of everything. Wish I’d kept some.
You are not kidding about Lee-Enfields making reloaders crazy! I suffered both amaxing groups and random fliers when neck-sizing brass out of my No4. I had to switch to full-length and deal with slightly larger groups and reduced brass life. I've since stopped shooting highpower, so I don't care as much anymore.
Thanks for the post!
This is not true. I bought almost a 1000 rounds of 70's britt 303 and 90% of it hand fires.. had to pull everything and toss the brass and cordite
Cordite was used as a propellant from 1891 and the first adopted cordite cartridge, the Cartridge S.A. Ball, Magazine Rifle Cordite Mark 1, had a 215 grain round nosed cupro-nickel jacketed bullet giving a muzzle velocity of about 1970 feet per second at a chamber pressure of about 17.5 tons per square inch. Cordite consisted of 58% Nitro-glycerine, 37% Nitro-cellulose and 5% Mineral Jelly and was normally pressed into cord form but tubular, tape, flaked and sliced cordite were also used. Nitro-cellulose was first used as a propellant in the .303 cartridge during 1894 although it was not officially approved for service until 1916. This propellant, however, was not considered to be as stable as cordite in the tropics and cordite was, therefore, still retained as a propellant in military cartridges for the remainder of the cartridges service life. Nitro-cellulose propellant however was extensively used during the first and second world wars. The last .303 ball cartridges manufactured at Radway Green in 1973 were loaded with nitro-cellulose powder and not cordite, cordite having last been used for the .303 cartridge in the 1960s.
Nerd
@@jackrockson3307 nah its called Google
Average codec moment
Cordite is corrosive correct? Where do the corrosive properties come from?
@@pkre707 Nitroxides, and the great heat. Because no Nitroguanidin inside and to much Nitroglycerin.
The pad between the bullet and cordite was to protect the rear of the bullet from the high heat. Cordote burns extremely hot, much hotter than modern smokeless powders.
Yeah a good few of the rounds ive fired that use cordite as propellant burned through in the shoulder of the nevk of the bullet its honestly impressive how hot it burns. And the feet ps you get from cordite over black powder cases is impressive it really must have been a revolution idea if you compare burn rates and the amount of unburned propellant. Might be rambling here but its incredibly difficult if not impossible to achieve 100% burn out of black powder because of the violence of the ignition.
Got cordite from a 120 year old wreck and it stil works. The one I got came out of grenades.
That's the main selling point of cordite over other propellants it basically never ages. You don't have to dispose of ammo after it's gone bad like you used to have to with TNT around cuz they would start to go pear-shaped because of the sweating.
@@encoded3906 eh no.. Cordite and other double base propellants have a life of around 25 -30 years dependent on storage conditions. TNT is however remarkably stable and is widely recycled. I think you have mixed up your definitions somewhere..
In a similar vein, the OP has got it wrong, cordite was never a filling for grenades. The WW2 US M2 pineapple grenade was filled with nitrocellulose powder, however most grenades are filled with a high explosive such as TNT.
@@encoded3906 Once Cordite ammo gets old, it starts to hang fire.
Thanks - that brought back some memories. My grandfather and I used to find this stuff on the beach all the time when I was a kid due to the amount of British and German fighter planes over this corner of England. As he was an old WW2 soldier, he'd collect it up safely off the beach, strip it and burn it. I thought the cordite was tame because it was maybe wet or just old. However, the tracer rounds and phosphorus / smoke we found were a bit more entertaining. We also found a few dud 2in Mortar rounds intact too. The local Police asked us to stop finding them - which, as a young kid, I always thought was a bit odd.
I generally think of my childhood as a violent and dangerous world where I played with black-powder in its variant forms via firearms and whatever horrible and dangerous ideas my brothers and I had.
Posts like yours make me realize how removed from war we were.
You are welcome.
Cordite is nitrocellulose based, just like modern smokeless powder
Exactly 99% the same stuff ;)
Put more corrosive?
Because of the different primer compound.
@@blackirish781 older primer compounds contained mercuty-fulminate or Lead styphnate (used in grenades and first air-bags)
@@lallinnBESTI RDX is the explosive used in grenades, using any of the two you mentioned would make them insanely impact sensitive. Cordite causes chamber throat erosion.
I opened a 9mm P.A.K cartridge once and it looked very simular to those micro beads you poured out of the moderd round, but the pak powder burned very fast in some what like flash powder
Pistol powders do vary quite a bit in burn speed. Generally, you just load less of the faster powders than the sower ones.
pak is a blank round for cinematic use so it makes sense to have low preassure fast burning bright powder
When I first took apart an old .303 round a few years back to check the powder, I thought I had been scammed and that someone had replaced the powder with spaghetti!
Who puttah my spaghett in dah bullets-ah!
Found a .303 round while on holiday in Norfolk UK. Took it home and pulled it apart and set fire to the cordite while my dad watched. I was about 5 or 6 yrs old. Oh the fun we had in the 60's!
My dad used to help us make hydrogen-filled balloons using lye and aluminum shavings. We would tie twine to them, light the twine on fire, and watch them burst into flames as they rose in the air.
Dads should be dangerous.
You find long rods of this on British beaches maybe 12" ,Use to love lighting it up as a kid,Maybe it's from AA shells ?
Most likely from sunk ships. The charges for the guns were separate from the projectiles.
Old film burns in the same way.
After the war, a hell of a lot of munitions was dumped in the sea just to get rid of it. I've heard of phosphorous washing ashore and spontaneously bursting into flame when oxygen hits it
@@MURDOCK1500 phosphorus was never used in munitions
@@KClO3 Yes it was. White phosphorous was used in incendiary bombs, smoke bombs and in tracer bullets. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions
@@MURDOCK1500 hmm you’re right, although It was never used in tracers, first off white phosphorus burns very dimly so it would barely show up in a tracer, also they would need to be handled very carefully because if a single cartridge would get damaged it would light on fire which is obviously a very bad idea, also why would you need self igniting stuff when you can simply stick a bit of flare composition in the end which burns a lot brighter, way more stable and you can choose the color instead of the dim orange white phosphorus makes
FYI, the ammo has to pretty old to be cordite!
Gritty kitty replaced it. Sorry, I saw your name and I had to make an inside joke
I had some 1942 surplus South African manufactured .303 British ammo and it used cordite. The ammo went bang every time, but some of those hang fires were scary.
Where I grew up in a far out area of Australia, my friends dad got a heap of cordite british 303 ammo in the mid to late 80s. Pulled it open to see a heap of little rods and was surprised by it. SO many old SMLEs and this ammo around in the 80s and 90s and the guns where still easy to get in the early 2000s.
It was last used in .303 in the UK in 1960.
Cordite ammo is also very corrosive or so I'm told so it's probably better that it's left to be old ammo.
UK Used Cordite for almost everything from pistols to Battleship guns up to the 1960s. The early versions with a high NG content did cause throat erosion, however this was improved by reducing the NG percentage, and latterly by adding foam plastic liners to the cartridges in the larger calibres..
.303 cordite loading procedure is almost unique. The cordite was supplied to the filling factories in reels and fed into the filling machine as a continuous web of cords. The machine cut the cords into set length bundles just prior to filling the empty case which was supplied without a neck. The bundle of propellant was then loaded into the straight sided case and a strawboard wad added. The case was necked down just before the bullet was loaded and crimped. The length of the bundle of cordite that was cut by the filling machine was adjusted to account for batch to batch variation in performance. The strawboard wad was primarily used to keep the cordite in place in the case as the neck was formed, however it did also assist in preventing the base of the bullet being damaged at the point of ignition.
Cordite incorporates a stabiliser (carbamite) which gives it a shelf life of around 25 years under stable storage conditions. If cordite is stored in poor conditions such as varying temperatures or excessive moisture, the structure can break down and become acidic. This can, under certain circumstances lead to spontaneous ignition, which is generally considered "a bad thing". Cordite in service was subject to regular Abel heat tests to work out how much stabiliser was left. Cordite in small arms ammunition seems to have a considerably longer shelf life, with 80 year old samples still able to pass the Abel test. At this age however, the primers are seldom viable!
Burning propellant is perfectly safe provided it is done carefully. I have burned many tons of propellant without mishap, however it is a cardinal rule that you should never conduct more than one burn in the same place in any 24hr period, and that you should wash down the burning ground after a burn! Directly igniting dry black powder is also something you should avoid. Large quantities of black powder should be wetted before burning and always ignited with a trail of smokeless propellant. Can I suggest you revise your burning procedures accordingly?
With reference to your remark about using cordite to initiate high explosive, I think you are confusing Cordite with Cordtex? The latter is a detonating cord with a Penta Erithritol Tetra Nitrate (PETN) filling which will indeed initiate plastic explosive as it has a velocity of detonation of around 6km/s. Cordite is a low explosive, which will not normally initiate a high order detonation...!
Great data Felix!
I don't intend to repeat the process, but I have pinned your comment so hopefully more likely folks will see your safety comments.
I burned a lot of black powder as a child/teenager and we had many interesting malfunctions.
Gerçekten mükemmel bir anlatım olmuş. Değerli bilgiler için teşekkürler.
That's pretty nice mate! It is nice thinking that sometime ago the proppelent used on these 303 rounds weren't powder! Cool to watch the development of new technologies!!!
3:29 Donald, is that you?
OMG...I tought same tng !!!
I opened a bullet I found on a British wreck that went down in 1944 after a German bomber strike.
It was filled with cordite, it was still dry inside after 70 years in very salty water, and it burned fiercer than yours ...
It makes sense there would be more and less volatile versions of cordite.
I was born in 1992 and remember taking apart on of my fathers old shells and finding this stuff. Pretty neat!
i remember back in school days pulling bullets out of shells ( i had no fancy bullet puller just used pliers) and i was so amazed to find this cordite stuff, had no idea what it was back then. if i remember right it came out of steel jacket 303s
That makes sense as the cartridge I take apart in the video is a 303.
i watched because there is a dubstep song that has a high pitched voice that says
BAM
cordite
(then random noise maybe)
Welcome to the channel, I like dubstep...sometimes.
the spaghets of the war
Wow I didn't know cordite looked like that interesting video subbed and liked
Welcome to the channel!
Nitrocellulose powder is a propellant whereas black powder is an explosive. In the beginning of cordite use the loading was done by hand, mostly the work of women who counted the strands and inserted them inside the case which was then placed in a rotary table to complete the loading process automatically.
WRONG !!! black powder isnt an explosive its also a propellant
@@incrediblemichael It's listed as an explosive, but to me it's indistinct as I'm no chemist. I'm simply paraphrasing what I've read numerous times in gun magazine articles and such.
Not really the term "explosive" covers a wide range of energetic compounds that can mean "deflagrating" low explosives and "detonating" high explosives. Just to confuse things some explosives can work in both modes. Black powder however can only work in the low explosive, deflagrating mode.
I'm afraid you are also wrong about loading. Machine loading techniques for military small arms ammunition was well established by the 1880s, before cordite came into use. Military cordite ball .303 ammunition in UK service was always machine filled, although larger calibres and specialty rounds like tracer were sometimes made using manual assembly processes. The quantities of small arms ammunition needed once magazine rifles came into use meant that making small arms ammunition by hand was never going to work...
Seeing this 3yrs later. Very informative 👍
When I screw up handloads I pretty much beat the heck out of my concrete floor. I suppose I'll have to try some surplus now. This is interesting.
"Let's get a piece of paper here"
*Brings out a metal plate*
Well it was handier than a sheet of paper!
It's some spicy gun spaghetti!
Your profile picture is extremely cultured
@@dexaphobia8085 It is, but not I.
The purpose of the wadding is to make sure that the cordite doesn't chemically react with the metal of the bullet. This can form metallic crystals that make the round very unstable.
Thanks I will sleep less dumb tonight or on a positive way I will sleep more intelligent tonight. :) This I had no idea and came across some in the past, didn't know what it was, your explanations are very well taught, that's why I sub. Thanks again. :)
Welcome to the channel, Danny, please tell me what you want to see next!
I used to find heaps of 303 in the chicken coop as a kid. Often half rotten shells, the bullet, wad and often neck missing, cordite sticking out.
Once watched the chickens pick out the cordite from a shell.
There used to be a farmhouse turned German quarters on our land. In a couple of spots there are loads of Germans shells, in other spots 303 from the advancing Canucks.
So, for another video idea. Why is BP more impressive outside of chambers than smokeless, but smokeless generates more pressure.
Because blackpowder is an explosive while smokeless is a propellant. Bp is pressure sensitive so the pressure generated in the chamber helps keep the rate of burn down since it's going to want to try and explode all at once. While with smokeless chamber pressure makes it burn faster than in air because it compresses the exploding powder together with the not for a chain reaction burn
@@chasebh89 actually black powder is not an explosive. It burns rather than explode, with the nitrate oxidizing the volatile carbon derivates.
One of the reasons that BP is so flashy is because it produces way more gases than energy. Other than that, yes the cordite is a propelent that works better under pressure.
Disappearing spaghetti LOL
but seriously, this is fascinating. Being familiar with smokeless powder, you'd never think the older stuff once looked like spaghetti. Absolutely fascinating.
Some explosives can to burn pretty calmly but under the right conditions they detonate violently. Myth busters did a bunch of tests using c4 and other explosives to boil water. It’s crazy how something can have completely different reactions depending on how it’s ignited.
I don't think I'd light C4 on fire even if I did have any!
@@stimpsonjcat67 It used to be common practice, heating food on nC4, C4 needs a kick from a booster or det cord to explode. Military explosives are made primarily to be safe, secondly to explode!
Recently found a video of a British ammunition factory making .303 from cases to cartridge, even showed the cordite moving in coils like hair strands.
link?
@@stimpsonjcat67 "Cartridge Making (1940)" By British Pathe. Timestamp 1:53, looks like hair.
Even Cordite was used as propellant for the heavy radioactive metal "projectile" in Little Bomb nuke, the one that explode in Hiroshima. The kinetic energy caused by the expanding gas is sufficiently strong enough to have enough momentum to propel the nuclear material being shaped as kind of bullet then impacted to another nuclear material, triggering fission reaction.
... cordite is a double based propellant made from nitro cellulose and nitroglycerin ... the NC is dissolved in Acetone before being mixed with NG ... the acetone is evaporated off until it has the consistency of dough and then extruded or cast as needed ...
Interestingly Sherman and British crusader tanks of what I read thus far, had catastrophic burnings within the tank due to stored cordite in their ammunition. Explains a lot now, most though it was due to the fuel tanks being hit, but no the flammable cordite made the tanks burn up far more than fuel tanks or pumps hit
I was 10yrs in 1976 and found a clip of 5 303 rounds whilst digging the potato patch in the garden. I took my find to show my Dad an Ex Royal Engineer. He set about making it safe whilst I hit him with questions, why are they dangerous what could happen what is that spaghetti? He said leave it alone it will burn your fingers, I carried on desperate to see how it worked and was told again leave it alone it will burn your fingers! I said I want to see. So the old feller put about a rounds worth in a tobbaco tin and snapped a swan vesta match in half. They were shorter than a standard match to start off with! He said there you go strike the match and light the spaghetti. I did there was a bright light puff of smoke and searing heat. I drew back shocked and threw my hand under my armpit. My thumbnail was yellow and a huge water blister covered my thumb. The old feller said did you burn your finger, hell yes you did! You are going to learn everything the hard way ain't you son. Never a truer word spoken. I sure have. Every time I took that hand in or out of a pocket for months after I remembered the lesson. Guess you can't help your nature ay.lol.
I have burned myself with black powder many times.
Dude that's crazy when I was younger me and my buddy would always make firecrackers in my garage I found some rounds we open them up and it was cordite we ended up using it to make some awesome firecrackers
So many things we did with black powder when we were kids...you'd get arrested these days.
i still remember lighting the flash powder from fireworks as a kid..... figuring it would burn like 22lr flake
.
it went POOF! and i lost a bit of hair.....
I first heard the word Cordite in the Tom Cruise movie Collateral.
One of the cops found one of Vincent's spent casings and said "You can still smell the cordite!"
Thank you sir. Appreciate your time.
The Forbidden spaghetti
I hate when the ignoramus MSM refers to the "smell of cordite" when talking about smokeless powder...cordite has been out if common usage for far longer than the so called reporters parents gave been living...
I cant think of anytime i have ever heard “the smell of cordite” in my entire life. What in the actual fuck are you referencing?
@@uncleartax ...its a reference that goes back over 100 years...when the Brits' standard propellant WAS cordite...the trade name for the spagehetti like strands of propellant in small arms...it hasn't been used in almost 100 years...Google cordite
@@cbroz7492 i get that but what msm reporters are you talking about from recent times are referencing cordite
In countless stephen king books, he says that shit lol
It looked like you were going to open the 303 Elephant stopper bullet, with the hammer.
You’ve got the odd bullet hole in your workbench.
Maybe you can answer this for me. I picked up what turned out to be an 1853 belgian service rifle at a flea market however the barrel and stock both have been heavily modified with carving, gold inlay and other embelishments by the ottomans at some point. When I got it there was a charge of cut lead (small 1/4” long cubes cut from a square bar of lead packed in like a rifled shotgun charge) and the propellant behind it looked like irregularly chopped bits of small spaghetti noodles cut down to a granular texture. Once i got it out of the barrel it touched off and burned exactly like the video and had a smell different to that of normal gunpowder. Im wondering if its possible if whoever loaded that rifle last used scrounged propellant from unfired cordite rounds and used cut lead since its typically used when theres no time to cast a proper bullet. Hoping to maybe hear some theories on that
Angry spaghetti.
I bought one of those unloading hammers. Damn handle snapped on the first hit against my table. I'll stick with my pliers lol
Small arms powder can be ball, stick, flake. We still use something akin to cordite in impulse cartridges used for setting off flares, and dropping bombs on military aircraft. Sometimes not all the stick powder would burn in the impulse carts!
Back in the 80's I gave my father a 54 cal black powder rifle for Christmas! Now to set this story I must inform you that he was ex military and an ex NM sheriffs deputy and in NM you had to take a safety course before you could hunt! Now knowing all this we can continue with my story. ! After building the gun kit and taking the rather lengthy safety course and getting a hunt permit we went to the mountain's above Alamogordo to hunt some deer! There we're myself my dad and five of his buddies, me being just 19 at the time and the rest 20 to 30 yrs my elders and all avid hunters! After a long hike of about two and half hour's we came to a rocky clearing on the side of a hill and decided to take a break! My dad mind you is fitted out with the latest reload gear and a powder pouch. While sitting there my dad takes out his powder and pours about 400 grains of red dot black powder onto a rock then takes his cigarette and sticks it in the pile! Nothing happens! So my brilliant dad takes his cigg and puffs on it a couple if times and proceeds to stick it back into the pile and WOOSH- INSTANT FLASH ! Followed by screaming and hollering. Third degree burns on all four fingers and thumb! This from a grown man who was trained to know better! Now the fun part- his buddies and me were so pissed off we made him suffer all they way back into town, moral of this story- don't trust a person just because he's older than you. It doesn't always mean they are smarter!😀
When I played factorio modded with bobs mods I was thinking wtf is cordite
The smokeless turned into a Jonny bravo frowny face
I found a corroded, broken open .50BMG a few months ago, no idea how old, but the propellant was made up of tiny black cylinders.
The main 3 forms of modern powders are flake, ball, and extruded. What you are describing sounds like extruded.
@@stimpsonjcat67 Thanks! It still burns too, naturally the first thing I did was to empty some out and test it. Amazing how long the chemical lasts.
@@MajorT0m Yes, naturally...fire! Fire!
"Oi!! Who put all this spaghetti in my cartridge, mate?"
First time I’ve watched an ammo video and walked away hungry half way through the video
Why did you walk away?
@@shelbyseelbach9568 had to make some spaghetti to sit down and enjoy through the rest of the video....
Nice, did you use ragu or the fancy stuff?
@@uncleartax everyone knows it’s Prego for the win 😎
I've been disassembling old rounds of .303 british from the 40s, and while some did contain gun powder, most contain this cordite stuff. Any idea on it's lifespan in comparison to gunpowder? I wasn't gonna risk it with the gunpowder but now I'm curious, because I don't know what to do with it LOL
I own an all original matching serial no 1 mk 3 Enfield (papered) from ww2 I trust cordite enough to still run it through mine some of the rounds I use vary from 60 to 120 years old. Shoot, clean, store repeat. Like he said click bang ammo its fun.
This is amazing I've never heard of this please show me more
I didn't know about cordite being used to set off dynamite. Very interesting 👍
Black powder is an explosive whereas cordite and smokeless powders are propellants which accounts for the variance in burn rates
As an engineer I am very aware of the ability to be so right that you're not any fun. ;P
But seriously, thanks for the comment!
many many thanks, Sir.
Not far from where I live is a factory that packs shells . You could always tell who had been using cordite , their skin turned yellow .
Why did that happen?
Are you sure it’s not gun cotton? During WW1 women in England who worked in some munition plants making shells were nic named “ canary girls” because the gun cotton in the shells turned their skin yellow. There is a video about them on here.
Wrong Myth.. Skin staining comes from certain high explosives such as picrates and TNT. If you have ever seen someone with stained skin from explosive handling, then you have clearly walked through a time warp.. this has not happened since the 1920s...
I love my cordite ammo! Yeah you get some hang fires but it's so much better than a lot of power all. Plus the bullet if literally the perfect fit for my brits
I deadass thought that was uncooked spaghetti in the thumbnail.
As a 10 year old kid I used to take this to school and show kids how spaghetti was flammable, lol. Came from grandpa's old .303 British. They'd go home and try burning mom's spaghetti on the stove and tell me it didn't work. I told them they just had the wrong brand, lol.
Very cool video, who knew WW1 ammo contained a different propellant.
Cordite. It all makes sense now.
Dude, did you put the collet on that 303 cartridge upside down? Neat video.
Good eye!
Nice and informative
Be sure to read the comments! The experts really came out to fix my errors.
@@stimpsonjcat67 I seent it
So that’s where Italians keep all the angel hair pasta
When I was in my teens I shot trap and reloaded my shotshells. I once put a double charge of powder in a Dixie cup and dropped in a lit match. A flame shot up for a few seconds, and it was blue & green, which was neat. And the cup survived. Singed, but didn’t ignite. Weird stuff.
I’ve heard cordite caused throat erosion, but it occurs to me that a better reason to switch to powder is ease of manufacturing. Powder can be easily portioned with a volumetric powder measure. But how do you quickly & accurately count and insert the requisite number of cordite straws?
Thomas Carlson - early cordite burned too hot and fast and wore out barrels, later versions didn’t have that issue
That hammer looks like a hella cool Fallout weapon.
That's how Italian filled their bullets in WWII
Both smokeless and cordite are made of nitrocellulose. They also have other additives.
Yep. I was 7 or 8 when the old man showed me his 303 shells and explained how dangerous it was to strike one on the end. I tried throwing one on the road a few times but gave up and dismantled it instead and ended up fusing my fingers together whilst holding some cordite and applying a match. Of course stupidity rarely fades away as an adult and my dad went on to show me many other idiotic tricks in his quest to teach me about safety. Better to keep this knowledge to ourselves until our young are old enough to comprehend the dangers I think and keep ammo away from stupid kids such as I was. This was only the late sixties.
Wow your video is so awesome. Aslo we've got the same Leatherman WAVE pat pend. My father's since 1989
Somebody toucha my italian cordite bullet spaghet!!
Fire sketti! Works great to start a damp stubborn fire.
I got some 303 head stamped 1916 still goes bang Everytime....
Ball powder meters so well, but messy as hell
Read about this in Winston Churchill biography. More interesting than I could imagine.
Lol i was doing just this when i was a kid and using one of my moms glass ashtrays that unbenounced to me was special for some odd reason. Was burning the more modern to older as in this video, and everything was fine , until i opened a war time shell that must have been military. When i lit it, it almost flashed , double in height of flame , and powder that was kinda like this cordite was chopped shorter , melted itself into the glass ashtray. Needless to say it didnt end well for my rear end, lol.
I had a bunch of those .303 cordite rounds they are fun to light on fire
Donot mistake cordite and dynamite,it is two different animals..Cordite is a form of artillery propellant mixture between nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin,dynomite is a chalk soaked with nitroglycerin making it in powder form...Cordite's used earlier in ammunition but been outdated by nitrocellulose propellants which is more safer to handle..After 3 years of storage cordite's and ballistites must be disposed of because nitroglycerin turn propellant into explosive instead and friction sensitive...When you take artillery shells apart you notice that there is larger size spaghetti sticks there,as for artillery it is the best source of propellant to use after it creates high velocity for shell..As Naval types there is multiple spaghetti sticks packed and strapped together and outside special water resistant material coated or placed..In Naval cannons those charges get ignited by electrical charge unlike caps/boosters or any form of primers...Each explosive is unique and have different purpose ranges from primers to detonators or just plain charges...There normally 2 types of explosives initiating acting as primary detonators and brissant explosives such as TNT,Nytroglycerin/Dynomite mixtures,C4 and other plastique or jelly types which actually in form of charges....The charge explosive cannot explode on it's own,it would rather burn like a candle rather anything else unless detonator inserted..Those are simple army 101 studies,there is much more stuff about detonators and main charges but that topic rather chemical than army to discuss...Explosives is unstable chemicals of which property have unstable molecular bounding between Nitrogen/Chlorine/Phenol/Phosphates and Sulfur as catalyst for such instability,without sulfuric acid and synthesis chemical won't be explosive and there won't be catalyst reaction of just plain chemicals without sulfur atom presence..Nitrocellulose also not exception,without sulfuric acid there won't be no nitrocellulose and there won't be any fast burnings at all...Very simple and easy to understand how chemical reaction take place and how unstable chemical substances is in presence of each other,some explosives consider amateur stuff while other is completely unforgiving and should be respected with all safety cautions,explosives are like isotope's similar to Uranium and Plutonium which critical mass cannot be exceeded over certain amount or detonation would occurred...Explosives is acid salts that produces symbolic name Picrates,Nitrates,Chlorates,Phosphates,Sulfates,etc which most consider as explosives or reogents as strong oxidizers especially things like perchlorates..There is at least 50 to 60 different explosives in the world,at least 15 of them consider very dangerous to use while rest is too toxic because they cost heavy metal poisoning like lead styphnate or lead azide..All salts of picric acid or phenol related substances are toxic,experiments with them must be done in well ventilated areas and use of raspirator..The most dangerous explosive that listed number one is Astrolite,besides been friction sensitive it also consider as light sensitive as well,if any traces exposed to light it would cost self ignition or detonation....Astrolite also won't just dissipate at soil,soil would be soaked and become sensitive for detonation and fire for several days which make that explosive very dangerous...It's detonation ratio far more greater than TNT,but like I was mention above each explosive used in different devices,for good use it requires to destroy large rock formations or create mining entries for things like gold or diamonds or perhaps garnet..When experiment with explosives it takes full responsibility of use/misuse of such chemicals..Donot heat cordite in closed containers because it would explode just like plain nitrocellulose but with nitroglycerin content included it makes it even much worster case scenario..
That is very hard to read, but thank you.
Those 2-holes you see are when it went **BANG !** instead of =tap=
Take a block of aluminum drill and ream a hole and you have a kinetic energy device for removing slugs and powder. Learned that from a crazy South African tool&die maker.
This was greatly informative. Thank you. :-)
Check Back, Servelan, better data has been added!
Cordite: the forbidden spaghet
Can cordite be made out of pine sap, instead of petroleum, like you said?
No...I have been corrected about that.
@@stimpsonjcat67 Thinking about it, could you? It wouldn't chemically stabilize it, but it would certainly slow down the burn rate of the nitrocellulose, while still burning relatively cleanly.
it's not that old they still used it when I was in the army. makes a great fuse for setting off fireworks 😁
How come it combustss so fast in the gun? I know the barrel forces all the pressure down the tube, but I figured the powder would pop not just burn fast.
0:30 - thought that this gonna be the end of the video)
They wont steal my spaghetti anymore...
Hello RUclips recommended frens 👋
Ahh yes, the forbidden ramen.
You need to buy a grip-n-pull bullet puller and get rid of that kinetic bullet puller you got. It is to slow and will deform your bullets, especially if you use soft tip or polymer tip bullets. Also you don't dump or spill the powder or bullets like you do with the kinetic ones and you can do 3 or 4 to one once you use it some. Also the do several calibers in one puller. It's worth the money especially if you do a lot of reloading and use expensive bullets or pulling to work up a load or different loads. So try a grip-n-pull.
Oh I have one on my 550! I thought the kinetic would be more fun for the video. I'm not sure why this video has blown up this week. How did you get here?
Never thought that ancient Romans had weaponized spaghetti....
OH NOOO!!!
💣💣💣💣💣💣💣💣
1:37
Don’t do that, it’s explosive 🧨