Static electricity safety with powder and primers

FrancF

What are your safety tips?

I now wear a ground strap if it is super dry in the house. Quite Few years back I was flipping primers with some tweezers for my Lee auto prime.

I was in my socks walking into another room on the carpet. Came back to my reload room sat down went to go pick up a primer and a small arc jumped to it setting it off. Yes my finger was a bloody mess, and it hurt like hell. I know it my not happen often but it can happen.





NRA Life Endowment Member

bpost

Wow that is scary...I do not handle primers by hand. I use a flip tray and load the primer tubes from there.

From my X-ray repair days we used spray static guard on our shoes and the equipment to stop the lighting bolts from appearing on the film when developed. It was very effective and lasted a long time.

rimfire72

Also,if you spill powder on the floor do not use an electric vacuum to get it up. I've been told the static electricity from it can ignite the powder.

ContacFront

FrancF brought up a very good topic. I have a buddy that does commercial reloads for a living for the past 20 some odd years and static from his hand set up a whole primer tube in on his Dillon 650. This man loads over a millon rounds yearly without incident till then. He lost his eye and most of his thumb was destroyed, luckily they saved his thumb.

ALWAYS WEAR EYE PROTECTION. And I always wipe my stuff down with the Bounce static wipes you throw in your dryer.

I installed 2 more smoke detectors around my reloading area which is my garage. I wanna know if there is a fire in the middle of the night so I can get the hell out before that 30lbs + of smokeless sets off.

Another thing. DO NOT lock up powder in a air tight locker or storage area. If you do, you just made a big bomb. Worse thing is the stuff just burns, you put it in something pretty solid and tight it will build pressure and blow up.

And to all the newbies to reloading, don't get distracted while dropping powder. NO PHONE, NO TV, NO yapping to your friends. This is something you do not want to be multitasking with. It is VERY easy to double charge a pistol round. 5gn or powder or 10gn of powder in a 45ACP case looks the same to me.

Kdub

Amen to the distractions while reloading.

Have found the anti-static wipes to be a good deal, also. Use them to wipe down the powder scales, measurers, funnels - anything that the powder comes into contact with.

Always use the primer flippers and handloaders for the primers.

Do keep a small fire extinguisher handy on the reloading bench and make sure nothing gets set in front of it.

Keep off the Ridgeline

shoff14

Since i am going to start to reload, this is a very interesting topic. Static electricty is something that I would have never thought of.

I see that most primer tubes are made of plastic. Most plastic holds onto static electricty very well even though it can't travel through the plastic. Do you guys do anything to the inside of the tubes to eliminate it?

ContacFront

Roger that on the fire extinguisher.

Oh and only have one powder open on the bench at any given time. MIXING POWDERS IS BAD!!!

If you going to work with Varget and RE15, just have one there at a time. Powders don't come in different colors.

ruger270man

I guess touching an empty press would probably decharge yourself..

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"I will no longer debate a liberal because I feel they are beneath contempt. Just communicating with one contaminates a person." - whiteclouder

Kdub

shoff14 -

The same anti-static clothes drying wipe can be pushed down the plastic tubes and help eliminate static.

Keep off the Ridgeline