Turbulent Turtle
F-TR competitor
Last week, I had a reloading session with my V4 and ran into a situation and I wanted to share with you. If it's been discussed before, please accept my apologies.
It was a confluence of events that led up to this. Suffice it to say that I was using the very last of my Varget hoping to get 100 cases loaded. I estimated visually that I had enough powder, but it would be close. I just didn't know HOW close.
The hopper was going down and at 50 cartridges, it still looked like I should get to 100. At 90 cases, I was below the plastic window. At 96 cases, the hopper was empty. I loaded 97, 98, and 99 with no issues. I thought I was home free.
Not quite.
At 100, the main tube was near empty. It was spinning slowly but dribbling few kernels every few seconds. I kept waiting for the small bottom tube to kick in and finish the load because it had powder in it. It wasn't happening, the big top tube was doing its thing very slowly. I was about 10 grains short. So in desperation, I lowered the target weight one grain at a time, until the big tube stopped, and the small tube started up. Then I kept adding back a grain until I got to my target weight and finished the load exactly.
I cleaned out the remaining powder from the V4. There was some powder at the bottom of the window and some remaining in the small tube. Everything else was empty. I have about 10-15 grains of Varget left. Talk about proper planning.
It was a confluence of events that led up to this. Suffice it to say that I was using the very last of my Varget hoping to get 100 cases loaded. I estimated visually that I had enough powder, but it would be close. I just didn't know HOW close.
The hopper was going down and at 50 cartridges, it still looked like I should get to 100. At 90 cases, I was below the plastic window. At 96 cases, the hopper was empty. I loaded 97, 98, and 99 with no issues. I thought I was home free.
Not quite.
At 100, the main tube was near empty. It was spinning slowly but dribbling few kernels every few seconds. I kept waiting for the small bottom tube to kick in and finish the load because it had powder in it. It wasn't happening, the big top tube was doing its thing very slowly. I was about 10 grains short. So in desperation, I lowered the target weight one grain at a time, until the big tube stopped, and the small tube started up. Then I kept adding back a grain until I got to my target weight and finished the load exactly.
I cleaned out the remaining powder from the V4. There was some powder at the bottom of the window and some remaining in the small tube. Everything else was empty. I have about 10-15 grains of Varget left. Talk about proper planning.
