Being new to reloading and knowing that there are people in this forum who have been reloading for a long time, I was hoping to see if the vast experience in this forum had any creative ways to clean up powder after any minor or major spills. Just thinking that someone out there may have a tip that wanders outside of the obvious ways.

Just brush it on to a pan and spread it on the lawn if it's contaminated. Do not use a vacuum cleaner.

quote:

Originally posted by Leo L.:
Just brush it on to a pan and spread it on the lawn if it's contaminated. Do not use a vacuum cleaner.

+1 done it many of times that way.

Put if it s a large pile I put the top of the pile back in the can.

Are there any documented/confirmed incidents of a vacuum cleaner igniting powder?

If a vacuum cleaner was so dangerous then there would be enough heat to ignite the very fine dust that is usually found in vacuums. That's my take unless someone has evidence of something different.

Good question, Craigster. I am not personally aware of any such reports.

I have had some pretty signficant powder spills in my shop over the years, and always handled them the same way...

First I used a broom and a dust pan and gathered up what I could get easily that way. I took it out back through the handy double doors into/out of the shop, spread it on the pea gravel in a thin layer, and threw a match to it. It takes a moment to catch fire (unlike black powder) flares up about a foot to maybe 16" high, and is very quickly gone.

Then I went back inside, left the double doors open, put the vacuum outside, and took the end of the vacuum hose back inside and vacuumed up the dribs and drabs which were remaining....very little is actually still there if you sweep carefully, which I did.

Has never been a problem, but since I use a 16-gallon shop vac, there was never enough gathered into the vacuum cleaner to make pressure a danger even if it caught fire, which it never has in my instances.

Then I turned off and unplugged the vac, took the vacuum bag over to the burn barrel, tossed it inside and burned IT.

Even if it did catch fire in the vacuum, with so little being in there, I could have just given the vacuum a kick, sent it careening across the asphalt, and had it land in the pea gravel where it would be no danger to anything which might be flammable, even if the whole vacuum cleaner had burned up.

Different strokes for different folks. One has to do what they feel safe with, and I'd rather vacuum up any little bits of powder on my shop floor than leave it lying around in there until some guy with taps or hob-nails on his footwear wandered onto my concrete shop floor.

Luckily the bench at which most of my powder measuring and bullet seating was done was only less than 3 feet from the double doors to my shop so it was no hassle to leave the vac outside and bring the hose inside to where the remains of a powder spill were.

Any way you want to clean it...brush, broom, air hose. A vacuum will not do a thing to your powder.

I've used vacuum cleaners for years without a ka-boom yet. I've always condidered the exploding vac stories to be pretty much old reloader's tales. I might, however, think twice about sucking up a bunch of black powder.

I think ithas to do more with the vacuums than the powder. I remember grandma's old vac that you could see the sparks off of the motor in the exhaust vent. The new vacs don't run air over/through the motoer the same way.

That being said I use a shop vac after picking up the big stuff. Even a rifle case of powder in a pile isn't that big of a flame. No case, no pressure, no boom.

Over the years, I've occassionally had my reloading bench sitting on carpet. Whatever comes off of the bench gets sucked up in a vaccum. Casual powder (smokeless), live and dead primers. By the time the powder gets into the hopper, it's so spread out among the other dust anc stuff that I doubt that it could burn. A primer really sounds exciting when it rattles through the suction head. It would take a sharp blow against a pointy object to ignite a primer but if one did, so what?
If I dumped a whole can of powder on the floor, I might do the broom and dustpan thing to salvage some of it and then vaccum.

I have't blown up the cleaner while vacuuming yet!

I've used the vac for about 40 years. Now I did happen to suck up a unfired primer that went off in the beater bar.

quote:

It would take a sharp blow against a pointy object to ignite a primer but if one did, so what?

I'll tell ya what. Ya end up vacuuming the loading room yourself! Been there, done that.

Beater bar set off a primer while wife was routinely running vac in my loading room and she hasn't run the vac in there since.....been at least 50 years, now. She has a very good memory.

Regards,
hm

So tell me, other than your wife getting out of vacuuming, what was the net effect of the primer popping? Vaccum dystroyed?? House set on fire?? Neighbor two doors down killed by flying primer shards??
As I said, so what. I'm gonna imagine that it kinda like popping a primer when you're using a Lee Loader. Exciting but no real danger.

If in doubt get a small wet VAC.and pour the dirtied water in your garden roger

quote:

As I said, so what. I'm gonna imagine that it kinda like popping a primer when you're using a Lee Loader. Exciting but no real danger

Pretty darn close. I think I did have a powder mark on the carpet. Then again it was several years ago and I've slept since then.

I've vacumed up powder and primers. Gotta love that 70s shag, baby.

quote:

Originally posted by wasbeeman:
So tell me, other than your wife getting out of vacuuming, what was the net effect of the primer popping?

That's about the size of it; the wife didn't think it was nearly as funny as I did. No sense of humor, I guess.

Regards,
hm

No problems with vacuum and powder but wife has had one or two primers pop while vacuuming. Her only comment was that it made a loud pop, no damage evident. Probably not good though, since she doesn't routinely wear eye protection while cleaning. I now try real hard to keep them off the floor.
C.G.B.

quote:

Originally posted by ramrod340:
I've used the vac for about 40 years. Now I did happen to suck up a unfired primer that went off in the beater bar.

And you think a primer is bad: My good friend and life-long shooting partner once accidentally dropped and lost one of those tiny little .22 crimped blanks in the deep pile carpet of his room when we were teens. As the "worst case scenario" would have it, his mother vacuumed it up, and although there was no physical damage, we were thoroughly chastened over the issue. We're now in our 60's and she just turned 90 and still fusses at us about the incident.