Checking repeatability of a powder measure - ever tried?

Limpet

Well-Known Member
I thought it would be worth while to see if I could rely on a powder measure so ran 14 cycles and weighed each and every one on a RCBS 505 beam balance .

I assumed as it was a Lee that it not be great, seems that in trying to dispense 46 grains it was up to 46.3 and down to 45.5 with an average of 45.9

Have you checked yours and what variation did you get ? I am interested to see what higher quality machines can do.......
 
My old Redding one was great with fine ball powder and careful, consistent throwing on my part. Not so good with extruded powders but this is to be expected, I was still happy to use it for normal stalking loads.
 
I know people use beam scales with great success, but having tried using one myself, I have no idea how. I found it incredibly inconsistent, however hard I tried. But how people rely on the Lee dippers is beyond me, getting +/- 2-3 gn's difference :eek:

I recently bought an RCBS Chargemaster Lite, to see if it would speed my loading up, and it's very good, but still throws the odd weight. I double check each on a very accurate electronic scales, to make sure it's within my acceptable limit, which varies a little, depending on application, and my mood :lol:
 
I thought it would be worth while to see if I could rely on a powder measure so ran 14 cycles and weighed each and every one on a RCBS 505 beam balance .

I assumed as it was a Lee that it not be great, seems that in trying to dispense 46 grains it was up to 46.3 and down to 45.5 with an average of 45.9

Have you checked yours and what variation did you get ? I am interested to see what higher quality machines can do.......
My Neil Jones will throw H4350 to .2 when it doesn't hit the mark exactly. Asi like to say, for $600 US you'd expect performance. I certainly don't trickle charges using this machine. I have a the Lee iron measure and I'm coming to terms with it. With coarse powder it is about like yours. The nice thing it that these inaccuracies usually don't matter.

I have reloading acquaintances that fall just short of cutting a single kernel of powder with a scalpel and they think that they are being "precise". I ask them a couple of simple questions:

Is your brass cleaned, sorted and weighed? Are the primer pockets uniform? Are the necks giving a uniform pull weight??
Have you sorted your bullets by weight? By form?

If I get a 'No" to any of these I suggest that the sum total of the variance is probably more than that of the powder. I'm not saying that people can;'t trickle the powder charge to control what then can, but they also need to keep it in context. If your bullets vary a grain either way then fretting about .2 grain of powder seems like a waste of energy. JMHO~Muir
 
My RCBS is not sufficiently consistent with N160 to be reliable. Because I reload relatively small amounts, I use the powder dropper but check weigh every charge.
Much more accurate and consistent with ball powders though.
 
Never trusted my rcbs one that came in the kit when I first started reloading, so just deliberately threw light an trickled up on the beam scale.
Then got my charge master and that totally transformed the job as it's now throw light hit the charge master button then seat the last bullet as the next it trickling up to weight.
 
My Neil Jones will throw H4350 to .2 when it doesn't hit the mark exactly. Asi like to say, for $600 US you'd expect performance. I certainly don't trickle charges using this machine. I have a the Lee iron measure and I'm coming to terms with it. With coarse powder it is about like yours. The nice thing it that these inaccuracies usually don't matter.

I have reloading acquaintances that fall just short of cutting a single kernel of powder with a scalpel and they think that they are being "precise". I ask them a couple of simple questions:

Is your brass cleaned, sorted and weighed? Are the primer pockets uniform? Are the necks giving a uniform pull weight??
Have you sorted your bullets by weight? By form?

If I get a 'No" to any of these I suggest that the sum total of the variance is probably more than that of the powder. I'm not saying that people can;'t trickle the powder charge to control what then can, but they also need to keep it in context. If your bullets vary a grain either way then fretting about .2 grain of powder seems like a waste of energy. JMHO~Muir

You have a point.

Load 10 rounds with all the controls you mention and 10 rounds without and compare each 5-shot group. The results will probably see you posting in the reloading section of the Classifieds and able to offer more dinner party guests a spare bedroom for the night!
 
My Neil Jones will throw H4350 to .2 when it doesn't hit the mark exactly. Asi like to say, for $600 US you'd expect performance. I certainly don't trickle charges using this machine. I have a the Lee iron measure and I'm coming to terms with it. With coarse powder it is about like yours. The nice thing it that these inaccuracies usually don't matter.

I have reloading acquaintances that fall just short of cutting a single kernel of powder with a scalpel and they think that they are being "precise". I ask them a couple of simple questions:

Is your brass cleaned, sorted and weighed? Are the primer pockets uniform? Are the necks giving a uniform pull weight??
Have you sorted your bullets by weight? By form?

If I get a 'No" to any of these I suggest that the sum total of the variance is probably more than that of the powder. I'm not saying that people can;'t trickle the powder charge to control what then can, but they also need to keep it in context. If your bullets vary a grain either way then fretting about .2 grain of powder seems like a waste of energy. JMHO~Muir


I've checked and rechecked the beam scales and they are very repeatable so I can rely on mine, the same unit can be taken on and off the scales over a number of days and give a reliable result each time even if I deliberately change the zero and then reset it.

I did stage one of the classic ladder test (The finding the maximum charge weight before pressure signs and just over)- so fired some single weight shots of 20% increments going up. I was a pleasantly surprised to see that the top 4 charge weights were not a "ladder" but a 1/2 inch group spanning 2.5 grains so a charge weight in the middle of that group will not be sensitive to a 0.3grain variation that the powder thrower will vary by. I will run those through the chrono next as I fine tune the seating.
 
But how people rely on the Lee dippers is beyond me, getting +/- 2-3 gn's difference

The method I use is take either the large plastic lid from a large paint spray can or the cut down bottom of a large yoghourt pot and fill it about and inch and a half full of the powder. Next take a four inches length of coat hanger. Bend a small handle on one end so you've a two and a half to three inch length of straight bar remaining. Now scoop the Lee measure once through the powder and then use the coat hanger to do one pass across the top of the measure to level it. I have always got consistent and accurate loads. I do not use the credit card method that Lee advise. The coat hanger works better. Hope it helps.
 
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My RCBS is not sufficiently consistent with N160 to be reliable.

I never liked the H4831SC powder in the RCBS Uniflow as I found that it would "bridge" in the RCBS Uniflow.

So I stopped using the RCBS. But I loaded maybe two thousand rounds for my .303 rifles using N140 and thousands of .38 Special using N320 and thousands of .45 ACP using a powder I can't now remember and found it consistent and accurate. I used one for near twenty plus years. But I found the Lyman 55 a better measure for rifle powders because of its door knocker feature. I have two and they remain set for a particular powder weight and stay that way.

I also tried the big CH powder measure, the Ohaus Duo-O-matic that was quite interesting and even a Belding & Mull that I still have. Muir and Southern will be more familiar than many here in UK with that last two. Of them all I prefer the Lyman 55 but they are screwed to stands using a Lyman thread adapter and not using their built in clamps.
 
I use the RCBS Competition thrower and with ball powders it's so accurate that I don't need to trickle and powder into the pan when checking.

With extruded powders it is less than 0.2 of a grain out but I reload using the OCW method where pretty much 0.5 grains each way doesn't affect velocity or accuracy enough to make a difference.

This hugely speeds up the reloading process.
 
My Neil Jones will throw H4350 to .2 when it doesn't hit the mark exactly. Asi like to say, for $600 US you'd expect performance. I certainly don't trickle charges using this machine. I have a the Lee iron measure and I'm coming to terms with it. With coarse powder it is about like yours. The nice thing it that these inaccuracies usually don't matter.

I have reloading acquaintances that fall just short of cutting a single kernel of powder with a scalpel and they think that they are being "precise". I ask them a couple of simple questions:

Is your brass cleaned, sorted and weighed? Are the primer pockets uniform? Are the necks giving a uniform pull weight??
Have you sorted your bullets by weight? By form?

If I get a 'No" to any of these I suggest that the sum total of the variance is probably more than that of the powder. I'm not saying that people can;'t trickle the powder charge to control what then can, but they also need to keep it in context. If your bullets vary a grain either way then fretting about .2 grain of powder seems like a waste of energy. JMHO~Muir


this^^^

just as an aside, has anyone ever dismantled a box of manufacturers ammo and compared the case weight, capacities, flash hole uniformity, powder weight differences, ect. irrespective of how well or badly they shot from a similar box.
 
I also agree with Muir. Unless weighing and sorting your brass (and sorting by volume) the odd 0.1gr either way won't make much difference compared with the sum of all other variables.

I ditched my Lee scales as they were terribly inconsistent. +/_ 0.2gr on a good day. RCBS 10-10 were much better, but so they ought to have been.

I couldn't now be bothered sitting there for hours weighing out each charge to a tenth or better, so I now use Lyman Gen 6 and have a control scale to check it against every so often. It has reduced loading charge time to a third of what it used to take me and it loads generally to +/_ 0.1 (usually "+"). That's good enough for almost all hunting scenarios. For 1000yd target, I do batch my brass and then load to a max of 0.1 total variance. Does it make me a better shot? Heck no! When distance stretches out, achieving low ES matters...a lot, so you have to be uber-consistent with brass prep, and then shooting technique and obtaining accurate firing solutions (owes as much to experience as gadgetry...both are important though) will all make far more difference to precision.
 
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I could not believe the variations I got from powder throwers, which is why I now use Lee 'dippers', RCBS scales and a trickler, maybe not especially fast, but perfect every time.
 
I could not believe the variations I got from powder throwers, which is why I now use Lee 'dippers', RCBS scales and a trickler, maybe not especially fast, but perfect every time.

Out of interest, what is your dipper variation?
 
I could not believe the variations I got from powder throwers, which is why I now use Lee 'dippers', RCBS scales and a trickler, maybe not especially fast, but perfect every time.

Out of interest, what is your dipper variation?

Interesting thread and dipper variation doesn’t really enter into it if you trickle (by whatever means) to achieve a final charge weight.

I haven’t used my old Pacific powder thrower much at all lately as I find, like Ozalid I can get a very accurately repeatable load by using the dippers and the Target Master trickler in conjunction with the beam scale. After double checking the initial load setting with an electronic scale, it’s very easy to get a steady rhythm going that’s not much slower than when using the thrower.

http://www.targetmasteruk.com/
 
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I use a Chargemaster which works great. However, I did once meet an old boy who used to load .308 by scooping up the powder in the cartridge case, tapping it to make sure it was roughly level with the top of the shoulder, then putting it in the press to seat the bullet. Scared the living daylights out of me!
 
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