powder measures? ?

[cjmac]

So thought id ask , how important is plus or minus .2 of a grain ? Im loading for 308 and 223/5.56. I use TAC and norma 200 powder with is VERY short grain. Im trying to keep my groups around 3/4 size group or less at 200. Im tired of worrying about weighing and getting pissed off about .2 grains

 

[mikecr]

Sustaining that performance with those cartridges takes effort or luck.
People do it everyday -with effort or luck.
How lucky are you?

 

[cjmac]

Well , not sure lol ..... was thinking of trying the hornady lock and load measure. I know BR shooters use measures and get great groups . Iv been told volume works just as well weighing ....i dont know

 

[fdshuster]

Well, why don't you load some ammo using the method that gives the variation, and compare it with ammo that is loaded identically except for the powder being weighed on a accurate beam or electronic scale? You have the ability to answer your own question.

 

[cjmac]

Well the question really , is it worth spending 75 or 100 $ on a decent measure

 

[gene pool]

Personally, for rifle reloading I use a RCBS powder measure and intentionally drop .1-.2 grains less, then trickle to get it perfect. It is pretty fast that way.

For pistol reloading, I just go with the RCBS powder measure and keeping it topped off full of powder for consistant charges.

Gene Pool

 

[gene pool]

Well the question really , is it worth spending 75 or 100 $ on a decent measure

I would say yes if you are a serious shooter.

Gene Pool

 

[CatShooter]

So thought id ask , how important is plus or minus .2 of a grain ? Im loading for 308 and 223/5.56. I use TAC and norma 200 powder with is VERY short grain. Im trying to keep my groups around 3/4 size group or less at 200. Im tired of worrying about weighing and getting pissed off about .2 grains

You didn't say what measure you are using, but +/- 0.2 grains is pretty piss-poor performance.

I use a Redding BR-30, and a Redding 10X (for little cases), and both can easily stay inside +/- 0.05 of a grain with fine extruded powders like H-322 and BenchMark.

 

[gene pool]

I should have mentioned consistent accuracy with my RCBS powder measure. I load 1.9 grains of Bullseye for lead bullets in 32 ACP. I throw 40 charges within .05 of accuracy consistently. That's close enough for me.

Gene Pool

 

[artbosco]

So thought id ask , how important is plus or minus .2 of a grain ? Im loading for 308 and 223/5.56. I use TAC and norma 200 powder with is VERY short grain. I'm trying to keep my groups around 3/4 size group or less at 200. Im tired of worrying about weighing and getting pissed off about .2 grains

With those kinds of requirements, no need to lose any sleep.

 

[fdshuster]

Drum type powder measures work fine with ball and flake powders like H335, Bullseye, etc. I use my RCBS Uniflow for rifle and the Little Dandy measure for the pistol cartridges.

I've never found a drum type measure that would throw consistant charges with any stick, extruded powder, including the very expensive drum measure that I tried 2 years ago. It was no better than the RCBS Uniflow.

Rifle charges with Varget and N133 are weighed on a RCBS 10-10 beam scale, that is checked before each use with a set of scale weights. Takes approx. 15 minutes to weigh 20 charges, to me that's acceptable.

 

[cjmac]

Was thinking of a hornady lock and load measure. Or RCBS. not sure yet....

 

[BoydAllen]

Two things that are not related to what kind of powder measure you will buy, but which may be more central to your accuracy standards, are measure technique, and wind flags. If you are not shooting over the latter, it is very likely that you are trying to fix problems that come from changes in the wind that you have no way to see by diddling with your load. Also, although most any reasonably consistent measure technique will give you ball powder charges that are +-.1, your small extruded powder is not the same in that respect. I have spent more time working on measure technique than anyone that I am aware of, trying all sorts of out of the box variations, and VV 133 is about the upper limit of grain size and shape for throwing to this standard, and even so, it is very demanding. Just because you are not getting the results that you want using any of the techniques that you may have read about does not mean that you have exhausted all of your possibilities. I have found that different measures require variations in technique, as well as different powders. Now you can get back to measure selection. If you are going to use a scale to set your measure, and are loading at home, nothing throws better than a Lyman 55, but they are a bit of a pain to set, and you need to read the directions, because there are different ways to set the slides to get the same charge that yield different results as far as consistency of charge weight goes.