Get rid of static on powder measure?

[Reeferman]

Not an electrician, but years ago I worked for a high school district as a Network/PC guy. We set up a new school, new servers, switches, PCs etc.
One week before the school was set to open the transformer in the parking lot took a hit from lightning. Killed all kinds of connected equipment, (some insides blown to Sh!p) the small UPSes that protect from
minor surges were not up to the task and got fried as well. Everything was grounded, but a lightning strike is a lot of juice, high voltage, high amperage where it doesn't belong=bad news
Major pain to say the least.

If you hook the press up to the ground I would suggest not reloading during thunderstorms!

Used dryer sheets work well for me. I save the ones that come out of the dryer to wipe stuff down with.
If you dry tumble cut up pieces of them work well to help clean your media, toss in when cleaning cases.

I’ve never been in the grounding the press camp as well. I do the same as you by using the used drier sheets. I also put several inside the powder measures when empty. Growing up on the prairies we had major thunder and lighting storms and every building had rods on them. Getting caught in one out in the field when the tallest thing out there for many miles was whatever tractor or combine you were on is not something I would want to go through again.

 

[tightgroup tiger]

If you want to try an experiment to see how much static is on the outside of a powder measure, which is also inside, fill the measure 2/3s full of flake pistol powder, take your hand and wrap you middle finger around the hopper and try to touch your thumb with it at the bottom of the hopper, then slide your hand up the measure quickly. You will see the powder inside the hopper jump up in the air.

So every time you touch the measure when your running the press, you are charging it up somewhat with static.

Because I'm an industrial electrician, I wear shoes that are electrical rated, Redwings have the best electrically rated soles I found yet because when I'm wearing them I never get shocked with static in the winter. Most of the safety toed sneakers sold today have the electrically rated soles, like Sketchers and Redwings do.

I also wear them when I reload. Helps keep the static off my equipment from me touching it.

One thing I have noticed on my bench is my 30 year old Lee Pro Auto Disc measure doesn't suffer from static near as bad as my Hornady and RCBS Uniflow do. Never figured out why the cheapest measure I have handles static the best and why the other manufactures of powder measures don't use the same anti-static plastic as Lee does or did back then anyways.

 

[LeftyTSGC]

I run copper wire from the bottom where bolts hold press onto bench and ground that wire, no static, no problems.

Leftytsgc

 

[Cooter Boolit]

I use these powder hoppers by Dramworx, i`ve not had any issues since.
Just before installing them, i washed them with dawn dish soap, let them air dry overnight.

https://dramworx.com/products/dillon/

 

[doubleh]

Wipe it down, inside & out, with a new dryer sheet.

In addition ... what is the RH in the reloading area? If that is low, it will exacerbate the problem.

What he said. I had to do quite a bit of wiping last year. Our relative humidity is low the majority of the time bur last year was exceptional with us receiving less than 6 inches of moisture for the entire year.

 

[GBExpat]

... I had to do quite a bit of wiping last year. Our relative humidity is low the majority of the time bur last year was exceptional with us receiving less than 6 inches of moisture for the entire year.

OUCH ...

Sounds like chlorate-primer-induced bore corrosion was not much of an Issue last year for milsurp shooters in your area.

I do my reloading in an "uncivilized" portion of my basement (concrete floors, unfinished walls/ceilings & sealed-off from the HVAC system). In the winter the area becomes chilly and DRY.

When I add a space heater, the RH drops even more (nature of the beast) ... so, when I am planning on reloading in the winter I not only turn on that space heater, I add a pan of water atop an electric hot-top to add a bit of moisture back to the immediate environment.

When I manage to get the balance right, reloading proceeds smoothly.

As others have since added, spritzing the plastic powder reservoir with a some of Static Guard (or a bit of liquid fabric softener mixed with water) and letting it dry also works, as does coating the inside with graphite powder (rather than waiting for that to happen over time with multiple loads of powder). I have done both of those but years ago settled on dryer sheets, graphite powder and monitoring & attending to the RH.

 

[doubleh]

Not much of anything that water induces happened last year. Extreme drouth has that effect. It's not all bad though as I keep about an acre of pasture mowed around my house and only had to mow once. I watered the yard to keep my darling wife off my back and had to mow that only a few times as I wasn't excessive with my watering, doing so just enough to keep the grass green but not lush.