Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Best powder measurer for H4350/varget?

Agreed. In addition to a full QuickMeasure setup I have a variety including a Little Dandy with an aftermarket weight although a roll of quarters is said to work and a Harrels to say nothing of RCBS and Hornady with micrometer screws and assorted sizes of drums and baffles. Lee has a good reputation for pistol size loads of flake powders. Searching this board on QuickMeasure will find many posts in praise for large drops of log powders. For large lots of varmint rounds I go with the Harrels and powders that work to include for ease in the field.

Lee Perfect Powder Measure. I've tested these against RCBS, Hornady, Lyman, and Dillon 550 powder drops, and they are much more consistent with extruded/stick powders....and considerably cheaper. I *really* like them with Varget, so much so that I have two of them set up for 5.56 and .308 loads.

I am using my Lee Perfect Powder Measure now. Good idea for having two.

Also a good idea to have another measure for spherical or flake powders.

I have at least half a dozen powder measures, and used a bunch of others over the years. Many work better with some kinds of powders, or larger or smaller charges, than others....

One of my measures, which I built around 10 years ago. Modeled after the old Pacific pistol powder measure, it dispenses small charges of flake powders very accurately.

It’s documented now…….😎

You do as I do, set your load station up on an adjacent bench. I have gotten some nasty attitudes from it. When it gets that busy I don’t want to be there anyway.

Seriously jealous of that stock!

I all but forgot about my Lee Perfect measure. Introducing my future son in law to reload and will break it out again. The dippers were driving him nuts.

I did discover that 20-somethings may not have the patience to focus on singular tasks for the purpose of recreation.

chargemaster 1500

I've thrown about 9,000,000,000 charges of 4350 and Varget with a Redding.

If that ain't working for you, nothing will.

If it's busy, I do my loading off the tailgate and clean on the bench. We just had a new 80' long over head cover done and later this month the concrete guys will be back. There will be an 8' apron at the rear and a 6' apron to the front. With the rear concrete apron, there will be room for loading/cleaning tables. The front apron will clean things up for mowing and help the gas gunners find their brass.

Thanks for the stock comments...the purple/white gel coat is my favorite combo.

Good shootin' -Al

Thanks to Creekside's mention I pulled out the Lee Perfect Powder measure and loaded up some H4350 for my 260 Rem using new PRVI brass. I partial resized and that stuff was tough.

Once I calibrated I would say somewhere around half of the dumps were close to spot on. The remainders were shy and I used a trickler to get them up to weight. Overall it did cut down my weighing times over using scoops by a fair amount.

I'd dub it the "Flying Purple People Eater"

Your hand and a spoon is quite bullet proof.

Otherwise, RCBS Chargemaster with tube baffle works great with those two powders.

The trick to these measures (pretty much all of them) is doing the same thing consistently with each powder throw. I tap mine a couple times, and found it would stay within 0.1-0.2gr with Varget in 5.56 (24gr) or .308 (somewhere around 44gr). I've even read where some guys would strap *ahem* small vibrating cylindrical devices to the side of the hopper, which supposedly makes them even more consistent.

I've liked my Redding BR30 for over 40 years.

boatammo,

That's probably the powder measure I use the most--and as hinted at earlier have used (and still own) a bunch.

As mentioned earlier (and Al Nyhus agreed with) playing with the baffle depth makes a "measureable" difference.

Also have a Redding 10x handgun measure, and an LR-1000 for large rifle charges. They work just as well.

But have several other powder measures which also work ver well, as mentioned in a previous post--including a Lyman 55 with the Culver conversion that Ken Oehler gave me some years ago. It's extremely accurate, especially with lighter rifle load typical of short-range benchrest rounds, and smaller varmint cartridges such as the .204 and .223.

I think there is something to what you say. Being as I hardly have ever used it I think I could improve consistency a bit. I still weigh each load for rifle but this is taking a little of the most frustrating parts away,

I think many folks would be very surprised if they tested thrown vs trickled charges.

I tested both at 600yd with 20 round groups (hunting rifle - not F-class) and stopped weighing charges after that. With RL16, need to test H1000.

Hear, hear!