Trail Boss flakes everywhere?

[rperyam]

My grandkids asked me to make up a couple of hundred .38 Special using my old 2.3 grains of Trail Boss load. They love shooting our small J frames.

I haven’t used Trail Boss for a couple of years but have a couple of pounds in the closet. I use a Dillon Square Deal for these loads. After getting things set up and had loaded a few test rounds, I noticed some flakes of powder in the bin for completed rounds. I thought maybe I’d missed seating a primer, but it was only six flakes and no missing primers. After adding another hundred primers I noticed more flakes on my bench. They were scattered in the area where I was putting loaded rounds in my Costco nut jars that I store them in. I doubt they are just floating around, but I can’t find a leak in the loaded rounds.

Could they be coming out of the powder drop? Have any of you experienced powder ‘leaking’? Any thoughts?

 

[CoalCrackerAl]

What powder drop are you using? I had issues with the lee ones leaking. I lapped the inside then with polish. It helped a lot.

 

[Obturation]

Trailboss is the worst metering powder I use, I end up dipping the charges because there's massive differences between drops. It stacks and bridges and just like a being dipped and trickled. I'm not surprised it got around the room, those donuts get around, other powders aren't as noticeable but they get around too.

 

[Blue68f100]

Maybe static ?

 

[Gone Hiking]

I get that with fine flake and ball powders, and to some extent with all powders, even coarse extruded powder. Here are my reasons. First, when you run your case into the powder funnel, that creates a bit of air compression in the case, followed by a vacuum when you pull it down. The fine flakes and balls are light enough that a few individual flakes can be sucked back out. They're also light enough as to be affected by weak electrical charges (you've probably noticed your powder clings to your powder hopper). Any that hang up in the drop mechanism due to static or mechanical reasons, and that are knocked loose by pulling the shellplate down can easily drift as they're falling. The last reason is that as the shellplate flicks around between the powder die and seating die, it jostles the powder and some individual flakes or kernels can jump out. Coarse extruded powder is large enough that I can sometime see a kernel or two jump out. It's never much, but there's always a sprinkling of powder in my work area when I run a batch. I just ran 1K of 9mm with Bullseye and there was a sprinkling of it everywhere, like always, even in with the loaded rounds. If I carefully swept it all up and weighed it, I doubt it would be enough for even half a charge. It's nothing to worry about, IMO. Just keep a clean work area so you don't build up an accumulation of powder on your floor or workbench. When I hand weight precision rifle rounds and then run them through the seating die on my 550, I'm just careful to rotate the shellplate slowly to avoid the possibility of loosing a kernel or two.

 

[PO2Hammer]

I gave up on metering Trail Boss.
Scoop and trickle.
Still get flakes everywhere.

 

[JohnB-40]

I always use my dipper and balance with TB