My recent Redding had a press on sticker, under the casting that proclaimed "CHINA", and that's all.
There are so many GREAT used scales out there.... remember this:
* The accuracy is in the beam
* The repeatability is in the knife and bearings
* The "zero" is adjustable
All of that can be corrected to a large degree.
Check weights are next to useless unless they are about 2/3 or greater weight than the total beam and poise indication.
On check weights.... Its a simple matter of leverage to maintain "balance" of the scale at any given weight in the pan. There are more than a few videos online from noted physics professors, that show in simple terms, the principles of levers, and I'll be darned, they're lookin' like crude beam scales! The weight you slide along the beam is what "balances" against weight in the pan. If the beam indicates 500g as its "maximum", and has 50 detents for the poise along its length, you'd want to check close to full beam capacity in order to see how well the poise was calibrated to the beam. We will assume that the individual detents are "correct" (although they may not be). Why assume they're correct? Because they're either machine cut (in the old days) or stamped (in these days), and there's not much we can do about it anyway, except replace the beam and hope. So, checking your scale at 20g on a 500g beam is... not telling you much. Check the beam at 400g or 450g on a 500g beam. That will show you if the poise is "off". Poises (which are balance weights) can be lightened, or have material added, and are seldom "off" by very much. If you have a precise check weight of 450g, and you "adjust" the poise to read dead nuts zeroed at 450g, then you take your chances for the other detents to be correct too, but you've done what you can with that beam. Beams' detents are seldom "off" by the equivalent of more than about .2g or +/-.1g depending how you want to look at it. I suggest getting "even weight" check weights for each beam on your scale - something like 450g, 8g and .8g would be fine for a 500-510 total weight scale. In my experience - small poises are seldom off by anything easily measured with home equipment, and their "error" is not worth a hoot in reloading anyway. I should add that some scales have adjustable main poises with slide the weight further or closer to the pivot, as compared to the part of the poise that rests in the detent. A good design! And I REALLY have to stress, that everything you've read, everything you've tried, everything I've "preached" goes flying out the window like a crazed cuckoo bird if there is ANY air movement at all. When you think you've got no air movement, you probably still have just a little.... protect the scale from drafts on four sides (ya gotta leave the front open to use it). My old friend JRB used to load in his garage and had a decently nice setup too. But he'd say, jeeze its hot in here and open the windows and turn on a fan to blow across his bench, either that or the heater with a fan in the cooler Florida months. And he always complained about his loads and his scale and never "got it" about the breeze. I've got a ceiling fan 15 feet from my enclosed cabinet, and to get a good reading, I've got to turn off the fan, close the door to the room so breeze from other fans doesn't interfere! You can see it in the beam's zero, off by 1 or 2 graduations, in my case reading upward on the zero. Must be some aerodynamics involved with that....
