Brief review -- It is actually quite wordy, but I only used the scale for one measuring activity.
I watched a review of this scale on the YouTube channel Bolt Action Reloading and his findings, as far as accuracy, were quite favorable.
When the G3-1500 came in stock and on sale at Midway a week or two ago, I placed my order. The scale arrived this weekend, which nicely coincided with my cleanup/organization of my loading supplies, because I re-discovered some .224 pills I ordered in from Lucky Gunner a while back. They were billed as 'mixed,' but I think I got the heads up on some forum that they appeared to be all of one variety, not mixed.
Of course, I still needed to visually inspect and weigh the bullets to confirm. I'll also check dimensions on a sample before I load them. Now to the scale.
Unboxing was straight forward. The box contained the scale, a 10 gram check weight, a very nice, heavy gauge high wall powder pan, and single page of instructions, along with a brochure advertising some of Hornady's other reloading gear. I read through the instructions. They were brief, somewhat telegraphic, but good enough for the average user. They recommended letting the scale warm up for 5-15 minutes before using. I set out to do that, but hit my first snag -- the scale is set from the factory to turn off after 120 seconds of inactivity. Fortunately, I knew from the Bolt Action Reloading review that you could go into settings and change this, including disabling the function entirely by setting it to zero, which is what I did. Hold down the Units/Cal button then press the Power button to enter the Settings menu, then hit the Units/Cal button to cycle through the various options, and hit the Zero button to change settings. Hit the Power button to exit.
After probably 20 minutes of warm up time, I calibrated the scale. You enter Calibrate mode by long pressing the Units/Cal button. The unit starts flashing 10.000, you add the 10 gram weight, it settles on 10 grams, you remove the weight, then it says PASS. Easy, peasy.
I proceeded to weigh bullets. These are boat tail FMJs with cannelure. Average weight was 61.9, with extreme spread of +/-.2 grains. Initially I was placing the bullets directly on the scale platen, but decided to start using the powder pan, so I didn't have to stand the bullets up. I zeroed the scale with the powder pan and I noticed that my average had shifted from 61.9 to 62.0 with the same extreme spread. I chalked this up to rounding issues.
I quickly tired of placing one bullet at a time on the scale (this is a bag of 250 bullets and I have several bags), so I started weighing 10 at a time to keep the math easy. I noticed my average had shifted again. Now I was getting average readings of 617, or 61.7 per bullet. Was it not scaling linearly? I checked zero and it had shifted. With just the powder pan on the scale it was reading -.4 grains, IIRC. I re-zeroed the scale and proceeded in the same fashion, but zero continued to drift up and down.
I will do some more testing with the scale, but it may be headed back for refund, or, at least, exchange. It is advertised as weighing up to 1500 grains, with .1 grain accuracy up to 500 grains. Weighing 10 bullets at a time, ~620 grains, I was beyond that range, but this is a simple weighing task. I was not trickling powder. I'll go back and weigh 5 bullets at a time and see if there is still zero drift.
BTW, the powder pan is a really nice pan. If I can get the zero drift sorted out, this powder pan is likely to be my new go to. With my RCBS Chargemaster Lite I end up with kernels bouncing out and there is powder all over the place at the end of a loading session using the pan that shipped with the unit. This pan is taller and may just solve that problem.
Positives: 1) I really like being able to disable the timeout function. 2) The platen is not position sensitive. Laying down or standing up, at the center or well out at the periphery, bullet weights were the same. 3) The display is easy to read and it is angled to make it easier to see when sitting down. 4) The unit responds quickly and I think it would do well trickling powder. Of course, with the zero drift, it is largely pointless to use it to measure powder charges, because I would consider it necessary to double check the charges with another scale.
I'll update when I have more information about the scale.
I watched a review of this scale on the YouTube channel Bolt Action Reloading and his findings, as far as accuracy, were quite favorable.
When the G3-1500 came in stock and on sale at Midway a week or two ago, I placed my order. The scale arrived this weekend, which nicely coincided with my cleanup/organization of my loading supplies, because I re-discovered some .224 pills I ordered in from Lucky Gunner a while back. They were billed as 'mixed,' but I think I got the heads up on some forum that they appeared to be all of one variety, not mixed.
Of course, I still needed to visually inspect and weigh the bullets to confirm. I'll also check dimensions on a sample before I load them. Now to the scale.
Unboxing was straight forward. The box contained the scale, a 10 gram check weight, a very nice, heavy gauge high wall powder pan, and single page of instructions, along with a brochure advertising some of Hornady's other reloading gear. I read through the instructions. They were brief, somewhat telegraphic, but good enough for the average user. They recommended letting the scale warm up for 5-15 minutes before using. I set out to do that, but hit my first snag -- the scale is set from the factory to turn off after 120 seconds of inactivity. Fortunately, I knew from the Bolt Action Reloading review that you could go into settings and change this, including disabling the function entirely by setting it to zero, which is what I did. Hold down the Units/Cal button then press the Power button to enter the Settings menu, then hit the Units/Cal button to cycle through the various options, and hit the Zero button to change settings. Hit the Power button to exit.
After probably 20 minutes of warm up time, I calibrated the scale. You enter Calibrate mode by long pressing the Units/Cal button. The unit starts flashing 10.000, you add the 10 gram weight, it settles on 10 grams, you remove the weight, then it says PASS. Easy, peasy.
I proceeded to weigh bullets. These are boat tail FMJs with cannelure. Average weight was 61.9, with extreme spread of +/-.2 grains. Initially I was placing the bullets directly on the scale platen, but decided to start using the powder pan, so I didn't have to stand the bullets up. I zeroed the scale with the powder pan and I noticed that my average had shifted from 61.9 to 62.0 with the same extreme spread. I chalked this up to rounding issues.
I quickly tired of placing one bullet at a time on the scale (this is a bag of 250 bullets and I have several bags), so I started weighing 10 at a time to keep the math easy. I noticed my average had shifted again. Now I was getting average readings of 617, or 61.7 per bullet. Was it not scaling linearly? I checked zero and it had shifted. With just the powder pan on the scale it was reading -.4 grains, IIRC. I re-zeroed the scale and proceeded in the same fashion, but zero continued to drift up and down.
I will do some more testing with the scale, but it may be headed back for refund, or, at least, exchange. It is advertised as weighing up to 1500 grains, with .1 grain accuracy up to 500 grains. Weighing 10 bullets at a time, ~620 grains, I was beyond that range, but this is a simple weighing task. I was not trickling powder. I'll go back and weigh 5 bullets at a time and see if there is still zero drift.
BTW, the powder pan is a really nice pan. If I can get the zero drift sorted out, this powder pan is likely to be my new go to. With my RCBS Chargemaster Lite I end up with kernels bouncing out and there is powder all over the place at the end of a loading session using the pan that shipped with the unit. This pan is taller and may just solve that problem.
Positives: 1) I really like being able to disable the timeout function. 2) The platen is not position sensitive. Laying down or standing up, at the center or well out at the periphery, bullet weights were the same. 3) The display is easy to read and it is angled to make it easier to see when sitting down. 4) The unit responds quickly and I think it would do well trickling powder. Of course, with the zero drift, it is largely pointless to use it to measure powder charges, because I would consider it necessary to double check the charges with another scale.
I'll update when I have more information about the scale.
