How ocd are you?

[dranrab]

Thats a really good response and one I highly recommend. I keep a small Harbor Freight freebee flashlight on my bench and look into each and every case before seating a bullet.

For handguns I use a RCBS Little Dandy powder dumper and have around 8 rotors. They will get me close enough to the desired charge in the manual. I have even been known to double dip when I needed a bigger charge than I had a rotor on hand for. Like needing a 9gr charge of powder and not having that rotor but a smaller rotor will drop a 4.5gr charge. So I drop two charges in each case.

I also used a Little Dandy rotor I drilled out and threaded and use a set screw ground down thin and have an adjustable powder thrower. I do use a scale to set it. But as for weighing powder charges I almost never do that for handgun rounds except for max 44 mag loads I can't use the Dandy for. I am more concerned that the case length is close so that the crimps are all the same.

Nearly all rifle loads are weighed on the scale. When I first started I was too poor to afford a scale so I used a set of Lee dippers for rifle loads. And you know what? I loaded some really accurate loads with those dippers. When I got a scale and weighed charges they were no more accurate than the dipper method. But that one gun I had was a custom built gun and shot every thing accurately.

I did load several boxes of 243 loads this year and used the dippers. The gun shot just over an inch with those loads. Good enough for the kind of deer I kill.

I load on a single stage. I charge however many I am going to load. With them all in the block I use a little flashlight like you do to compare all of them. That is one step I never leave out.

 

[labnoti]

To clarify something about precision, I wrote earlier that with ball powders my Lee Auto Drum throws charges +/-0.06 grains. That is as measured by a GEM20 scale (a low-cost digital scale). Although the GEM20 indicates to one-hundredths of a grain precision, that doesn't mean that it does so accurately. The scale has its own tolerances and I have no expectation that they are as fine as that. I do think even cheap digital scales can have precision less than 0.1 grain, but I understand a manufacturer of a powder dispenser may not want to advertise a claim more precise than that, because they will have warranty claims for anything less. I would be surprised if the Chargemaster type devices weren't actually quite a bit more accurate. I don't have one but I bet they're more than twice as precise as my volume-based drum dispenser.

I calibrate my GEM20 with precision known weights and compare my GEM20's readings with another imported digital scale (it was a costlier one but about 10 years old now). Reading two scales reminds me of Segal's law which states, "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." Nevertheless, the comparison does give me some confidence that my estimation of the Auto Drum Powder Measure's variance is reasonable. I also want to qualify that this +/-0.06 grains variance is the best result I can obtain from my Lee Auto Drum. It is not the level of accuracy one could expect "out of the box." I obtain it only when using the best-metering ball powder I've found, and with the Auto Drum adjusted as perfectly as possible. I've found it will maintain this level of accuracy for a little more than 100 throws and then may need readjustment. I might check and adjust my throws as much as a dozen times before I get up and running, and then I've learned to recheck them every 60 throws (when the case feeder is empty and refilled).

In practice, I think being +/-0.1 grain is a reasonable goal for precision without extravagant equipment. Notice that being this precise with a higher mass powder charge like a 10 grain handgun charge, 20 grain magnum handgun charge, or 30 grain intermediate rifle charge, are all progressively better than only being this precise with a 3 grain charge of "Tite Wad." For a 60-grain rifle charge, this type of precision is certainly not a limiting factor in performance. Again, the reason that 3 grain charge of fast pistol powder still works despite that relatively large variance in proportion to the total charge is that the distances to the target the cartridge is expected to be used at are very short and the resulting variances in velocity are inconsequential to the point of impact.

 

[Waterboy3313]

I load on a single stage. I charge however many I am going to load. With them all in the block I use a little flashlight like you do to compare all of them. That is one step I never leave out

I do it very similar but I have enough lighting setup I can see down my pistol cases with out a flashlight. Recently I added another 4 foot fixture over my bench that lights it up really good plus another 4 foot fixture in another position that helps to eliminate any Shadows. If I was loading rifle cases which I'm not at this point I would definitely have a good flashlight within reach.

 

[joneb]

I've been reloading 38 spl for 20+ years which means absolutely nothing. Just because I've been doing something wrong for 20+ years does not make me a expert.
But if you want my two cents worth I'd be glad to share it.

 

[Eddy19]

After you've been doing it a while, everything will balance out, you'll do what fits your style and what you can live with.

 

[Demi-human]

you'll do what fits your style and what you can live with.

Yes, there is more than one way to skin a shark.