Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Speed reloading- which powder measure?

Hey guys,

When I started reloading many years ago, I used Grandpa's dusty, old Bair powder measure and scale for the first several years. The scale was a bit of a pain to use, so as soon as I could, I upgraded my setup and went to the Lyman DPS, and I've been using an electronic scale/dispenser ever since.

Well now I've decided that I'd like to produce ammo a bit quicker, since I find that I go through a lot of it and reloading it is becoming a huge chore. Powder dispensing is definitely the weakest link, meaning that it is the step that slows me down the most. I need to move to a volumetric powder measure for the times when I want to just throw together a large lot of ammo.

I've been looking around at the various powder measures- RCBS Uniflow, Lee, Redding, Hornady, etc, and it seems that they all have many reviews that are glowing, as well as a few reviews that are critical of the unit's consistency. My one requirement is that it needs to be able to dispense consistently to within +/- 0.1gr of stick powder like IMR7828ssc, IMR4350, TAC, etc. I'm not planning to spend the money on a Harrell, or anything, but I'm sure one or more of these other units is capable of the consistency that I'm looking for.

What has been your experience? Which powder measure would you go with, based on my criteria?

Thanks!
Jordan

+/- 0.1 grain of IMR4350 is pretty strict, especially for speedy mass production. Are the loads really that critical?

Jordan,

There is a big difference in dispensing "log" powders like IMR4350, short-cuts like IMR7828ssc and TAC. For one thing, TAC is a ball powder, and will dispense accurately in just about any powder measure. The short-cut powders are also much easier than long-granule extruded powders.

I've used a bunch of different powder measures and only one was totally a POS. (Can tell you that one in a PM.) Right now I have two set up, an RCBS and a Hornady, and both work well. The RCBS is used for day-to-day loading, especially of big game loads, and the larger-capacity Hornady for larger volumes, such as prairie dog ammo. But Redding is coming out with a new measure that sounds good, and I'll have to try that one as well.

Basically I just don't often use log powders in measures anymore, what with all the good ball and short-cut powders available. But you also might be surprised how accurate thrown loads with IMR4350 can be even when they vary a half-grain or so. Many handloaders assume that powder charges varying that much can't be accurate, but there are much more important variables in any load than a few granules of powder.

You don't say what the volume of 4350 is required ,but it has been tested and proven that as volume goes up , the requirement for exact powder weight goes down. ie, 1/2 gr in a 80 grain load is not going to be a signifiacnt variable in accuracy.Perhaps JB can chime in .

Some info I posted a while back:
http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/409119/1

The benchrest guys shoot tiny groups and never weigh..........except a few 1000yd guys. I use a large Harrel's and have been really pleased. It's a precision instrument.

+1

I haven't done it with IMR4350 since I don't mass produce cartridges using that powder. But I have five 308s that shoot nice small groups out to 300 yards with thrown charges of IMR 4064 and 3031. I'm using a Redding BR-30.

Lyman #55. Takes a learning curve to get it set up, but it throws charges fast and accurately.

Thanks, fellas! Keep it coming!

A lot of the shooting I do is beyond 500 yards, hence the desire for fairly consistent powder charges. I'm hoping to give up little if any precision to my electronic dispenser, which has 0.1gr resolution, but be able to do it faster.

I've been looking hard at the RCBS Uniflow and Competition measure, the Redding 3BR, Hornady LNL, and a couple of others.

I'm loading anywhere from 50-65gr of IMR4350, up to 70gr IMR7828ssc, 35-45gr TAC, and I also run up to 70gr IMR4831, RL17, etc. I realize that 0.1gr resolution may not be absolutely critical in these scenarios, but I like to hedge my bets, so I'm wondering which of these run-of-the-mill powder throwers, if any, offers the kind of consistency I'm hoping for.

Sorry, yes that's true. I was just listing off a few of the powders I commonly use to give you an idea of application. The first two are stick powders (as are the vast majority of the powders I use), and TAC is one of the only ball powders on my bench. But I have noticed over the years that it meters like a dream.

Take a peek at the JD Quick Measure. It is fast, accurate and CANNOT cut grains of powder. LINK

Before doing a lot of head scratching, etc,why not load up ten rounds hand weighed and ten rounds thrown and shoot them at the distances you expect to use them at.

Now that's an experiment I think I need to try. I usually weigh every charge when loading with stick powders, sometimes even with ball. If it works out that thrown is close or the same as measured then that little time spent at such an experiment might convince my persnickety mind to save time at the bench and spend it in the field.

My experience is that you'll almost always find that there's no significant difference in velocity (including variation) and accuracy between the two.

Thanks, Mule Deer. Do you find this to be true even when getting down to the smaller rifle cartridges like the .223, too?

I would, but I don't currently own a powder thrower

bruinruin,

Hmm. Good question, but I don't use big-grain powders in the .223 or similar cases. Even the extruded powders used, such as Benchmark, are very small-grained, so there's not much variation in thrown loads.

Part of my deal, too, is that I get to experiment with all sorts of newer powders. There are a bunch that work better than the "traditional" powders for similar uses, and I've switch to a lot of those, one of the criteria being how well the measure.

I don't use bulky powders in my .223 either, John.

I was just being curious. It seems plausible that a smaller case is going to be a bit more sensitive to charge weight consistency than a large one though, being that a difference of +/- .2 grains isn't diddly to a medium or large case, but may start to get significant as case size reaches the smaller end of the spectrum.

Thanks for your reply,

Scott

Here's a test I've done with a well developed load.

Load ten rounds holding the powder charges as close to perfect as you can. Load ten more with two perfect, two at +.1, two at -.1, one at each of -.2 and -.3, and one at each of +.2 and +.3 grains.

Now let someone else label them in such a way that all you know is you have two ten shot batches A and B. After you shoot, the other person is to give you the key to decode which batch was perfectly weighed and the other was perturbed.

The Lyman DPS is the slowest electronic dispenser out there. I have been using the RCBS Chargemaster for 5 years now, and I love it. It is very fast and very accurate. I shoot in F-class competition to 1000 yards and so I can load quite a bit for a multiple day match. In automatic mode, after the charge is dispensed, I dump it in the cartridge and replace the pan on the platten. At that point, the Chargemaster will start dispensing the next load and while it's doing that, I seat the bullet, make a final visual check, put the assembled cartrdige in the box, pick up the next empty case, run a neck brush to it and put on the funnel and usually the Chargemaster is waiting for me to pick up the next charge. Repeat as necessary.

The only way to load large amounts of match ammo.