scale accuracy?

[unclebill]

i love getting everything as exact as the next guy but i just had a thought.
if a tenth of a grain was really that important...why does lee sell those scoops that look they they came with an easybake oven?
and why werent there all kinds of horrible accidents in the past 7 or 8 decades before accurate scales were available to anyone with a little cash?

[JSnover]

Because a tenth is not that important. The scoops work fine and if they're used properly they throw an accurate charge.
I dip and trickle: use a scoop that is just under my charge weight, one sideways shake to level and pour it into the pan on my scale. Use my trickler to finish. It never takes more than 2-3 tenths to zero the scale. I'm sure with the right powder and a more refined technique I could get with one and a half tenths.
When I was just starting out the old-timers told me not to worry about a tenth, "you won't see a difference until you bump it two tenths." With max loads or compressed charges it may be a different story.

[NSB]

Because a tenth is not that important. The scoops work fine and if they're used properly they throw an accurate charge.
I dip and trickle: use a scoop that is just under my charge weight, one sideways shake to level and pour it into the pan on my scale. Use my trickler to finish. It never takes more than 2-3 tenths to zero the scale. I'm sure with the right powder and a more refined technique I could get with one and a half tenths.
When I was just starting out the old-timers told me not to worry about a tenth, "you won't see a difference until you bump it two tenths." With max loads or compressed charges it may be a different story.
I agree with this almost one-hundred percent. I load my big bores the same way. I only slightly disagree about the two tenths making a difference. It would make a difference in small charges or powders like Bullseye, etc. You'd never see it in a full charge big bore load. It's a percentage. I'm not sure there were "all kinds of horrible accidents" before simply due to not having accurate scales. Accurate scales have been around a very, very long time. Idiots have been around a lot longer.

[JSnover]

Yeah, I don't work with extremely light or heavy charges so they're a non-issue for me.

[firebrick43]

Mr Lee's load data using the scoops is very conservative. But as Jsnover stated they are accurate if you use them correctly. Even though I have an rcbs uniflow I to use the scoops and a trickler if I am working up loads in lots of 5 or 10. Much faster than setting, checking, then tweaking the uniflow. If I do a batch of 100 or 1000 better believe I use the uniflow however.

[btroj]

If your load is such that an extra .1 gr of powder causes damage to the firearm you were already too hot.
Do we know that accidents didn't occur without the scales? Might it be because those accidents weren't reported online?
Guns blowing up due to over charges isn't a recent development.

[Bent Ramrod]

It's pretty much Rule #1 that maximum charges should be weighed, unless you have one of those benchrest guns with the chamber blueprinted and every case prepped so that it is exactly like every other case. Measures and scoops are for the normal power loads in factory guns, where most people do most of their shooting.

That said, being an extremely good shot (or a good athlete of any sort) often comes with some mental and emotional requirements above and beyond the skills and precision needed for the given sport. I used to watch a baseball pitcher on TV go through a series of gestures with his arms and hands, touching various areas of his body before throwing the pitch. It wasn't a windup; none of the motions were required for throwing the ball, and they wouldn't have helped anyone else pitch better, but they evidently worked with him. Some great shots are also afflicted with a need for what other great shots would regard as voodoo. If weighing exact charges to the limit of their powder scale's precision makes them more confident in their ammunition, it will shoot better for them. Or they will shoot better with it; same difference. I remember reading about a trap shooter who made up a plate with an exact number of holes in it so he could load the same number of shot pellets in each shell. He said this was much better than weighing or volume measuring an ounce of shot.

So yes; a tenth of a grain is totally unimportant. Unless, of course, it is vitally important.:mrgreen:

[country gent]

While a tenth may or not make a diffrence in the loads performance characteristics, it may make a diffrence in consistency and also in the confidence level of the shooter. There are places where it matters more so. Large charges of slow burning powders in rifles not so much. In a cartridge burning 70-80 grns of slowburning smokless not near as much, in a small pistol round with little capacity and fast powders a .1 grn may make a big diffrence. Nothing is cut and dried in reloading as the diffrent factors affect the end results.

[w5pv]

I have never had a mishap when reloading and I have been doing it for 60 years minus the times I was away from home in the Army but would reload when home on leave,

My system has always been to use a powder throw set a couple of tenths below the charge I want then use my dribbler to bring it to 0.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Idiots have been around a lot longer.

This pretty much sums it all up.

The main thing in producing good ammo is consistency,,, not dead nuts
accuracy.

This applies to all facets of the process not just load weights.

With respect to the scales actual accuracy, it must be checked over the entire range. That means that it should be checked for Zero, Maximum, and a couple of places in the middle.

My new 1010 is off at max about 1/2 of .1 or .05 gr. This doesn't mean anything, as the percentage of error is so low it is negligible.

Randy

[fguffey]

It is nice to read responses from bullet casters and reloaders that have read R. Lee's book on modern reloading, and that is just about never. He describes the dippers as 'scientific', he describes the perfect business card for leveling and the difference between minimum and maximum was a racked off scoop full and a heaping scoop full meaning there was no way to exceed the maximum because it is impossible to stack powder, his dippers had the perfect cone above the dipper.

F. Guffey

[dudel]

What's a powder measure but a variable dipper? Either way, you're loading powder by volume. Fixed cavity or variable cavity. Technique still affects consistency.

[opos]

I load with dippers and a trickler onto my 505 pan..been doing it for years...don't even own a powder measure and find no need for one (I'm not a high quantity loader)...it's amazing as I begin to load and dip and trickle that as I go along...within a few loads...I can dip and shake the dipper and almost hit the load density dead on every time...first few loads are usually off (low) just a tad and then it narrows right down...I've heard others that use the dippers say the same thing....I load moderate loads only...no hot loads at all....I do find that the suggested method of getting the powder is far more accurate that "scooping it" which tends to compact it a bit...Just my 2 cents worth...if a powder measure works by volume and a scoop works by volume and they both rely on consistency of operation...what's the difference? I am guessing that I can dip and load using a trickler and scale about as fast as I can throw a charge to the scale pan, trickle to the load and charge the case. I use a lot of Trail Boss, Unique and "stick" rifle powders and hear they don't particularly work well in a measure..got no problems with the dippers.

[dtknowles]

I use thrown charges often. The don't even go on to the scale. I do measure near max charges but not really worried about over charges just those loads I am more concerned with consistency. It seems with my thrown charges I get about one in every 5 to 10 I get a light charge. I used to throw low and trickle up to weight but now I find it is just as fast to throw at weight and just dump the off weight charges back.

Tim

[gloob]

I, personally, feel safer using dippers or powder measures that throw by volume. They might have an error of a few tenths. But that +3 tenths charge is never going to go higher than that. Every time you load, that is the maximum error you are going to get. That's a sight better than what could happen if you accidentally miscalibrate a scale. I have read stories of guys throwing 10 grains instead of 5 due to that error. Once you calibrate a dipper, it's never going to change on you.

I occasionally weigh a charge from my powder measure, to make sure I didn't set it wrong. But after that I weigh no more. My eye on the loading block tells me all I need to know.


before accurate scales were available to anyone with a little cash? Because anyone without an accurate scale was reloading with dippers and a bit of work up. And plenty of people who have accurate scales are reloading with dippers. I reckon 99.9999% of factory ammo is loaded with a volumetric throw.

[mdi]

Well, a lot of theories about how/why dippers work/don't work and I can't add nor subtract to that. But I do know that I have had great success with them. I started loading pre-web and didn't know I needed a $100.00 powder measure to make safe reloads :roll:. I used Lee scoops and made several of my own custom charge dippers. When I was on a roll I could hold .1 gr. tolerance easily with most handgun powders and mebbe .2 gr. with some "log" powders. On occasion I'll use a scoop if my powder measure is set up for a particular load or there's not one handy. Slightly slower, but very workable...

[ascast]

BTW - you might use your scale to segregate brass, bullets, etc.. electronics work well for this job,
"Easy bake" scoops do not

lol many times over

[BAGTIC]

Nowadays they have drugs that can control that kind of OCD.

[Rhou45]

if a tenth of a grain was really that important...why does lee sell those scoops that look they they came with an easybake oven? and why werent there all kinds of horrible accidents in the past 7 or 8 decades before accurate scales were available to anyone with a little cash?

1. A tenth of a grain is not that important , if you have worked your loads up and do not exceed the max (by more than that tenth)
2. Several of my older loading manuals seem to have a safety factor of +/- a couple tenths built into the max loads. As compared to newer manuals the max loads of the same caliber/bullet/powder combination is increased, sometimes by a grain or more. Just my observations, not verifiable for built in safety margins.
3. Gold weighing scales have been affordable and around a long time.
4. My Lee classic kit came with a balance beam scale as well as the dipper set. That beam scale served me well until I modernized into the electronic age.
5. Accidents have always happened, we just hear about them quicker now.
6.The dippers have served me well over the years, I have always preferred to dip and weigh all my loads.

[country gent]

Dippers and most mechanical powder measures work on the volumne of a given charge some are fixed some are adjustable but work on the given space the correct charge takes up or fills. The new electronic measures work off a trickler set up and scales in conjunction with each other. I had an old AMT auto scales and have an earlier rcbs unit the one the scales and measure read thru led. Dippers and measures need to be checked on a scales to be sure they are set correctly. But powder measures have no effect on scales accuracy, this needs to be checked with fine calibration wieghts. Perferably at the charge wieght being wieghed. I use my 2 sets of rcbs check wieghts as I did the gage blocks at work. A "stack up that equals the charge being thrown onto the scales to insure that 30 grns is 30 grns. New scales get check thru thier range to insure they dont add or lose along the way. I have seen only one that was off out of the box but it was. Alot also depends on powder and charge along with case capacity. A .1 grn variation in a 25 acp 1.? charge of fast pistol powder is alot more than .1 grn in a 85 grn charge in a big belted magnum with slow powders. Just sopmething for thought

[W.R.Buchanan]

My current setup for throwing charges is an old RCBS PM with a new RCBS drop tube with the integrated trickler. I drop into the scale pan and then trickle any gross low throws up to snuff directly on the little Franklin Digital Scale. I am essentially weighing every charge but it is no more work than using my Lyman DPSIII automatic machine and it is actually faster. The reason for this is IMR 4895 Stick Powder, which never throws the same way twice. +/- .4 gr is not acceptable for my target guns so I trickle. I also am loading these rounds 50 at a time so it takes me an hour to get set up and run all one batch.

It takes 30 minutes for the DPSIII to "warm up?"

I am doing this for my .30 cal + rifle cartridges and heavy pistol loads for shooting Silhouette games.

Everything else gets done with Dillon measures on the 550B or SDB's. Even so those measures are +/- .1gr with fine grained powder like W231/HP38 or W748/BL/C2.

If you watch the way that Dillon Measures work, part of the cycle is a big "thump" as the measure returns to the home position. This settles the powder in the cavity more consistently than most other systems.

Another point is that with certain powders weighing every charge is prudent due to the propensity of the powder grains to bridge the drop tube. I have had many short charges of 5744 followed by heavy charges on the next or so drop. it wouldn't be so bad if it was a few tenths but 10 gr more in a .223 case is a problem. That is the reason why I use fine grained powder in mechanical PM's.

All the coarse stuff gets weighed.

Here's a pic of my setup and I can be up and running from a bare bench in 5 minutes. I have to tell you that this way is the fastest really accurate way I have found in all my years.

People have laughed at my little green tube but it is one of the best $50's I have spent on reloading equipment in the last twenty five years.

Randy

[fredj338]

i love getting everything as exact as the next guy but i just had a thought.
if a tenth of a grain was really that important...why does lee sell those scoops that look they they came with an easybake oven?
and why werent there all kinds of horrible accidents in the past 7 or 8 decades before accurate scales were available to anyone with a little cash?
When some powders go from starting to max in 1/2gr, yeah, 1/10gr can matter. Dippers are designed for loading slower powders & well off max. Where 2/10-3/10gr isn't going to matter.

[BAGTIC]

Does anyone believe that the major manufacturers including government arsenals weigh each charge and use dribblers to get things 'exactly' right? They charge by volume.

[sundog]

Try this, it's been linked before, and it's still a good read. Read all of it so that the end is understood.

http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/max357/houston.html