Batching by seating force... what are your limits?

[BradY]

Have recently aquired an arbor press with the force measurement gauge and setup. My question is, how big is the range you use to batch the seated ammo in- ie do you work on rounds within a 5 thou spread, 3 thou, 10 thou etc? Have loaded some rounds up for load testing and found a big variance so will be annealing all my cases next to sort out that problem. But knowing how big a spread is suitable is difficult. Obviously go too fine a number and you will end up with heaps of rounds that are in different batches and not have a full batch to shoot at the range. Hopefully this makes sense!

 

[RegionRat]

What is the calibration on your gage in terms of how many thousandths equals how many pounds?

What cartridge are we discussing for example?

I didn't measure much after I found out how to keep necks under control, but when I was checking neck tension in terms of breakaway force on .308, differences of more than 15 lbs were too much.

What I started doing was to keep the average force and standard deviation of those forces to a minimum and then I didn't have any problems. Work hardnening, neck wall thickness, and neck sizing process, all fed into downrange performance.

 

[johara1]

If you have a K&M i held the Dasher to 3 pounds and put them in sets. A.001 is suppose to be a lb. I color coded them on the end of the bullet so they wouldn't get mixed up…….. jim

 

[BradY]

Its a haydon with the same setup as the K&M. I loaded some 284 shehane for F class shooting in 5lb batches and they were fantastic. For 1000yd BR with this 6 dasher I was expecting 2-3lbs. Just wasnt sure if I was in the ball park or not. Cases were annealed last night, will be sorting some 107 sierras today and loading tonight, hopefully shooting wednesday. Thanks will give it a go.