I am starting to reload after a 30 year pause. I got some Alcan E-3 & 12 wads along with Feltan Blue Streak 1/2 waxed fillers. My Dad left me several ibs of Win 540ms and 500hs. Can I still use this stuff?

Are you trying to reload shotgun? It might be easier to just get new wads, powder, and primers as finding recipes for this older stuff may be difficult. A lot of the cowboy shooters are using black powder and would appreciate the blue streak wads for their use.

Win 540 is currently the same as HS-6 and is a very popular handgun powder. I load it in 32 mags, 44 mags and 45 Colt (for Ruger.)

Ward

I suppose you can, but its probably not worth the bother. Maybe you could sell it on one of the auction sites and buy new components? Some collector might want some of the older things - including the empty powder cans.

The old powder I would probably just burn up. 540MS must be really old. I have been shooting a long time and don't remember that one, though I do recall and used to use 540 in 28 ga. skeet loads. Not familiar with the 540MS, or the other one.

I wouldn't use the stuff. It's not worth your trouble. Shot is not cheap and if you assemble a bunch of loads and don't get good performance, tearing them down to recover the lead is a nuisance.

540ms & 500hs are 1960's powders for heavy shot load rounds. The 540ms was also used in 10ga loads also.
I think they pulled the 540ms due to some concerns about the powder being unstable. 500hs continued in the linup for a while.
Most loads are using card and felt wads but there are some using plastic wads with the 500hs in older AA cases I think.
I don't know if modern (AA) wads will work with the older loadings.

You'd have to dig up some 1960's loading books and find some loading data. Most loads will be for 12ga starting with 1 1/4oz shot.

All that said, it probably isn't worth it like M29 says. For one thing, those heavy shot loads are awfully expensive to throw down range and quickly eat up any savings you might gain from the free powder.

If my recollection about the 540ms being unstable is correct, and the reason for it's being dropped from the line,,I wouldn't think of using it after all these years.

Unstable powder is one thing, old powder is an entirely different thing. There probably isn't anything wrong with the Alcan powder, I still use whatever I can find of it and just recently finished off some AL-5.

The loading data is available in Speer #7 and #8, but not in #9 and later.

Powder usually goes bad by decomposition into nitric acid (the brown rusty look) and smells strongly of acid, not solvents. Double based powders are usually very stable with examples like 100 year old Unique still being around in good condition.

The 540ms as I recall had a problem with what people called being 'unstable' (best word I can think of to describe it). Something about the chemicle make-up breaking down into something dangerous when loaded.
Reality? I don't know, but that was the word at the time.
Some reloaders even said to shake the can of powder up before using it to re-combine the ingredients and that would take care of any problem!

At the time there were a few shot gun blow-ups that were blamed on the powder. Wether Winchester actually found 540ms to be the real problem I don't know.
They did pull the 540ms from their line and replaced it with '540' powder.

Maybe it was much ado about nothing,,but the stuff came and went in a very short time.

Any others I wouldn't hesitate to use if I knew for sure what they were and they still were 'good'. I've got some old Alcan too in small cardboard containers.