Shotgun Ammo photo
SHARE

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›

A woman who used to have a hobby farm told me about the sheep she used to have.
They got dirty, and she called the county extension agent and asked how to wash them.

“Use Woolite,” he said, and hung up. She never knew whether he was kidding or not, so the sheep stayed dirty. I was able to tell her that yes, some 4-Hers do wash their show animals with Woolite, but it was many years too late for the dirty sheep.

Like my hobby farming friend, I am comparatively wet behind the ears when it comes to reloading. While I have loaded a lot of shells in the past few years, there’s lots I’m still learning. Sometimes I don’t know if people are telling me the truth, pulling my leg, or just giving me bad advice.

I know about putting a dryer sheet in my powder bottle to control static cling, although I don’t feel the need to do it. The other night, though, one of the trapshooters at the club told me my reloads would never be consistent enough for me to break 100 straight until I started running wads through the dryer.

The heat supposedly spreads the wad petals outward, so that when they slide into the hull, none of them are folded in, and the resulting patterns are more uniform.

“Should I put them in a bag?”

“I don’t. Just throw ’em in there loose,” he said.

So I ran some wads through the dryer on “high” for ten minutes, and the petals might have been spread outward a little. The bases were more flexible, at least, until the wads cooled. Does it make any difference? Beats me. I am not going to break 100 straight trap targets any time soon, but that has more to do with my attention span than my ammunition.

I had never heard this one before. Is someone putting me on, is this a good idea, or bad advice?