Prometheus powder measure

[abunaitoo]

Saw an add in an old Precision Shooting magazine.
Looked it up on the web and these things are expensive.
Watched a clip on utube about it, and it seems complicated.
Anyone know about it????

https://www.prometheustoolcorp.com/

[M-Tecs]

Couple of friends had/have them. They worked well.

[nhyrum]

They're the bees knees of mechanical precision powder measures.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[JimB..]

Saw an add in an old Precision Shooting magazine.
Looked it up on the web and these things are expensive.
Watched a clip on utube about it, and it seems complicated.
Anyone know about it????

https://www.prometheustoolcorp.com/

All I know is that if you found one at a garage sale for $20 I’ll be super jealous.

[Three44s]

$3,800 ?

I won’t say what it ought to do for you on a family friendly forum for that kind of money!

........ and here I thought I had gone up around the bend when I finally sprung for a used RCBS 304 Dial A Grain?

Good Grief!

Three44s

[country gent]

I believe G David Tubs said he used one in an interview years ago. The are a piece of fine precision work

[DHDeal]

I too remember reading about them on the rifle forums. I seem to remember that one had to lease the thing. Maybe lease wasn't the correct term but it was some type of agreement. Imagine paying all that $$$$ and find that the thing would drop an extra granule of powder. The horror the horror.

Area 419 has their version, or at least their add on's for an automated powder dump/measure/scale. The actual balance is an A&D FX120i. I've had the balance for years and it's ACCURATE. Never felt the need to add the automated stuff.

[GregLaROCHE]

It’s probably top of the line precision, but unless all the rest of your equipment is at the same level, I don’t think it’s needed and especially for that price.

[porthos]

i would seem to me that its the answer for a product that nobody asked for

[rototerrier]

https://precisionrifleblog.com/2013/10/18/secrets-of-the-houston-warehouse-lessons-in-extreme-rifle-accuracy/
You can change the powder charge slightly, and it won’t really make any difference, but if you change the bullet seating depth or the grip on the bullet, you’re going to see bad things happen fast.

Anyone who loads for long range should have read this already, but throwing it out there as a refresher.

Pricy measures are good for just about 1 thing, separating you from your money.

[M-Tecs]

325 yards is not even considered MID-RANGE. Measures like the Prometheus have thre place for serious longe range competition.

[rototerrier]

Then you miss the point of the article.

But, for simplicity, if you can make a ragged hole at 300 that translates to sub moa at 1000 and beyond.

I personally have a private 1k range and use this technique to zero my 6.5 and other long range rifles. I do not shoot past 1k, but my results at 1k give me no reason to doubt my accuracy beyond. I've used an rcbs charge master and a lee perfect powder measure and got the same sub moa results.

I strongly believe the powder charge is the least important factor in the reloading process. I know some will disagree, and for those folks there's a 3500 dollar powder measure just waiting to take your money.

[1066]

The Prometheus has been around for a long time, the Gen 2 seems to be a good step up from the original Prometheus. They are a well engineered product but basically just a good quality beam scale that activates a powder dump system. I've never owned or used one although I've had a good look as they come into my own field of interest.

I'm not a lover of digital scales for weighing powder but I think you would really have to hate them to spend several $K on a Prometheus when it has no advantages in speed or accuracy over other systems that are available at a fraction of the cost.

[jmorris]

The best thing about the Prometheus is how the powder is trickeled in after the “under” dump. It’s essentially a machined brass collator driven by a stepper motor than can drop a single kernel at a time.

The only way to get a more accurate charge would be to have a device that would cut the last kernel to size and make the weight perfect.

Everything else out there uses a normal tricklers but are popular because they cost a lot less. Like these.
https://www.autotrickler.com/autotrickler.html

If $1000 is still too rich for your blood, one can get the same consistency (.02 gn) for much, much less. This is an old 5-0-5 scale, RCBS uniflow and less than $50 of other parts will do the same thing.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GYWgAdKzHs

[jmorris]

But, for simplicity, if you can make a ragged hole at 300 that translates to sub moa at 1000 and beyond.


Not really, there are lots of 6mm PPC’s out there that shoot tiny 100 & 200 yard groups, like .1 & .2 every weekend, none of them would be competitive at 1000 yard matches though.

I suppose it’s also worth noting you don’t see top finishing 1000 yard rifles cleaning up at 100-200 yard benchrest matches either.

[1hole]

I strongly believe the powder charge is the least important factor in the reloading process. I know some will disagree, and for those folks there's a 3500 dollar powder measure just waiting to take your money.

Ditto.

Powders burn best in the modestly flat top portion of the statistical Time/Pressure bell curve. I believe finding the upper and lower limits of the curve where accuracy really isn't affected is THE most critical part of getting the best accuracy from any reload. Load in the middle of that "flat spot" and we'll see little or no accuracy difference in a couple tenths so never mind agonizing about powder weights within +/- a single kernel - or even an easily seen half a tenth gr. - of powder! It MIGHT be a little different down range IF our case's internal volume (pressure) and brass hardness (bullet grip) AND our primers were as precisely repeatable as a Swiss watch but, alas, they are not.

Thus, IMHO, spending wads of money in search of exotic scales designed to obtain more repeatable charges than +/- a couple of tenths is foolish. YMMV. ??

[M-Tecs]

Then you miss the point of the article.

But, for simplicity, if you can make a ragged hole at 300 that translates to sub moa at 1000 and beyond.



Been reading the article since it first came out in 1993 and I have read subsequent hundreds of pages of discussion it's merits and demerits have generated since.

The one point I did not miss is your claim that 300 yard groups translates to equal groups at a 1,000 yards. Yes sometimes it works that way but lots of times not so much. The point is it's clear you have very limited experience at long range load development. Do yourself a favor and run the numbers on how a 30 fps SD effects elevation at 300 yards verse 1,000 yards on a load like used in Palma rifles in 308's with 155's.

Also I do find it interesting that every winning long range competitor I know uses a scale capable of reading at a minimum to a 100th of a grain an not the standard 10th of a grain scales and yes I do know a bunch of national title and world record holders in NRA Highpower, F-class, Palma and 600 & 1,000 benchrest.

On a side note people are setting records out to three miles. Direct measure drops that are common in 100 and 200 and even 300 yard benchrest don't cut it a post 600 yard ranges.

[Retumbo]

The best thing about the Prometheus is how the powder is trickeled in after the “under” dump. It’s essentially a machined brass collator driven by a stepper motor than can drop a single kernel at a time.

The only way to get a more accurate charge would be to have a device that would cut the last kernel to size and make the weight perfect.

Everything else out there uses a normal tricklers but are popular because they cost a lot less. Like these.
https://www.autotrickler.com/autotrickler.html

If $1000 is still too rich for your blood, one can get the same consistency (.02 gn) for much, much less. This is an old 5-0-5 scale, RCBS uniflow and less than $50 of other parts will do the same thing.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GYWgAdKzHs

Yup...like your way of thinking. Mine is accurate to one decimal place. Good enough for me


https://youtu.be/dRXg9Q4cTp8

[1066]

My auto-trickler-

https://youtu.be/1NNIC2Qn50U

[1hole]

... people are setting records out to three miles. Direct measure drops that are common in 100 and 200 and even 300 yard benchrest don't cut it a post 600 yard ranges.

I wonder .... what percentage of us ever fire a shot passed 600 yards? Or even 300? Or even have a range where such groups could be fired?

I knew a guy who had "custom" loaded .300 mag ammo for Army snipers. He said they (i.e., his shop team) visually weighted each charge to less than a full mark (.1 gr) on their conventional scales but they didn't even try to drop powder more accurately than that. He did say they spent quite a bit of time and effort selecting and uniforming their (virgin) cases tho.

As a young man I read an American Rifleman report that the .30-06 Palma target load's drop at 1,000 yards was something like 45 feet; I have to wonder what the drop at 3 miles (5,280 yards) would be?

When I read posts about people weighing powder charges with multi-hundred dollar scales to half kernel of powder or better for shooting into the next county I have to wonder who can teach what to who about the value of such marvelous devices and how critical that level of charge detail actually is.

Personally, I can't/don't believe that level of weighing powder means a thing anywhere but on a computer keyboard.