About 30 years ago, I was heavily involved in three-gun American Pistol competition, and reloaded all of my .45ACP ammo. One day,I had reloaded about 200 rounds, and went to the club to practice.
When I started shooting, in the first 10 rounds, I had a squib load, bullet got out oft he barrel and hit the floor before the target. Reloaded and tried again, bullet stuck in the barrel. Packed up and left the range. Got home, checked my press and found a dead bug in the powder measure. Press was(and is still) a CH MkIV Autochamp. Fixed that, but what to do with my 197 rounds of suspect ammo?Too cheap to waste it, too lazy to break it all down.
To make a long story short, I was bemoaning my problem at the next club meeting, when a buddy told me he had just what I needed. It was a sensitive microphone with a speaker. You shook the case in front of the microphone and if there were powder in the case, it would rattle and the speaker would sound it. You could even tell if there was only a small amount (say 5 or 6 granules) or if it was full. I used the device and checked all of the suspect lot, found several questionable rounds, opened them wirth an inertia puller, found that they were not fully charged, agreeing with the device. I later fired all of the lot, but not in competition, it all functioned the gun fine.
My point is this: The buddy with the microphone device is dead, and I haven't been able to find something like it on the internet. And sure enough, I did itagain, loaded a lot of ammo that I had a stuck bullet in the barrel. No bug in the powder measure, probably just my fault. I would like to get or make a similar microphone device so I can check out the rest of the rounds I loaded. Anyone here with sufficient electronics experience to design one for me, I can build one I am sure, I just don't have the knowledge to put together all the right parts (preamp, amp, speaker,microphone etc) in the correct order. Itwould be nice if it could be plugged into the microphone port on my laptop so I wouldn't have to get as much stuff, and use my laptop for something besides perusing the internet.
Anyone here that could help me with doing this?
Thanks for reading this,
Steve