Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mule Deer's Article on Powder Measuring

Agree. John and Wayne VanZowell are about the only two that if I see their name will purposefully buy the magazine. Most times it will be for that particular article only.

Rick: What are your thoughts on weighing and matching case volume for your LR loading? Not a BR or LR shooter, but it would seem if you load the exact same charges in cases of different volumes things just went out the window.

Its irrelevant to me, I'm not truly "long" range for anything other than play. 600 is my limit on killing. I don't mind the thought of taking a chance on that last 100 yards. Yawl got me wanting to throw some charges tonight I secretly have been wanting to trash the Chargemaster in the last few years.

I got enough wiggle in me to destroy a single digit ES.


When a guy works up is magical handcrafted load, shoots them one every 5 minutes, in late August, it tells you a lot about that load, when shot every 5 minutes, in late August.

Everything changes everything and although many are slight changes, enough of them together makes a difference.

I don't weigh cases. I have seen difference in load performance at long range with as little as .2 grains in cases with similar volume to the 6.5 Creedmoor

As I mentioned to battue in another thread, I'd sooner shoot a critter at 20 yards than I would 500. That ain't nothing against shooting long.

Only way I know to ensure I'm not tempted to use something again.

They are a nostalgic item for me now. Early on I learned to ignore the Lee chart and made my own with the specific powders I wanted to use.

When I was a Hunter Safety Instructor, I held an optional class to introduce students to handloading. Used the dippers along with examples of other powder measures. The kids preferred the dippers.

My Dad and Granddad made their own dippers from shells with wire handles soldered to the case.

Shootist,

As I mentioned earlier on this thread, I've owned a Lee Dipper set for many years. Mostly I use it when working up loads, and found that if I tilt the dippers a certain amount I can come very close to the desired charge. Then I top it off with a trickler.

With finer-grained powders the dippers can work pretty darn well. In fact I found one of the smaller ones throws 13.0 grains of Li'l Gun, exactly what I use in the .22 Hornet with 40-grain bullets. That's just by burying the dipper in the powder and pulling it out upright.

rcmuglia,

In the article I specifically talk about the possilbe effect of thrown charges in long-range shooting. I believe the specific example I used was my 6.5-06, where I load 56 grains of H1000 with 140-grain bullets. If I weigh the charges, the rile will group three shots into something less than 1/2 MOA out to 600-700 yards.

If I threw them with my old measure (the one called Brand X) in the article) I'd get about a .5-grain variation, or even a little more. This would open up groups at least an inch at 600-700, mostly by vertical dispersion.

After using better powder measures in other loading for the past year or so, I'm now eager to try throwing loads for the 6.5-06 and seeing what happens. Have just about shot up my supply of loads put together with the old measure and will be doing that sometime soon--but in the article I certainly didn't suggest throwing loads for 1000-yard competition.

As a more general comment, this thread could have been a lot shorter if people who haven't read the article had done so before posting.

One of the reasons I started posting on the Campfire over a decade ago, after lurking for a while, was the day when somebody posted about an article of mine they'd liked. The poster tried to summarize a 3000-word article in two sentences, and of couse created a sh'tstorm of comments from people who'd never read the article, almost all of which made vast assumptions about the article's contents. This was partly due to the 2-sentence summation not being entirely correct, but it was also due to the tendency of Internet posters to start typing without knowing exactly what in hell everybody's talking about.

There are moments on "Ask the Gunwriter's" where I feel like posting the article in question, whether mine or some other gunwriter's. But that's not why magazines pay us to wrote for THEM.

I need to resubscribe to Handloader and Rifle, but for now I will put my money where my mouth is and buy this issue from the news stand as soon as it arrives here.

John,

It does little good to defend anything on the net. Your friends trust you and don�t need an explanation. The skeptics will only use what you say against you anyway.

But that said. Thanks for posting here and sharing your knowledge with us. It is much cheaper time and money wise to read your results than doing all the testing for myself. Please keep posting here. I for one need and use your knowledge. I too, buy the mags because you have an article in it. Keep up the good work.

Richard

I read the article.

Thanks John. I haven't read the article as you can probably tell. I subscribe to Rifle Magazine. My comments were simply based upon my experience and the experience of some folks I know and shoot with.

I'm shooting games/hunting at ranges where precision in all facets is necessary and well beyond what 99.5% of recreational shooters and hunters need to do to enjoy rolling and shooting their own.

I have known that throwing charges is common in the benchrest game and we all know the kind of accuracy they get

Yeah, I did mention that! But also emphasisized the difference between short- and long-range benchrest shooting.

One of major points of the article was how many hunters think weighing every charge is essential to getting sub-inch groups in their factory deer rifles--when it ain't.

Yep. I've shot enough sub .75 MOA five shot groups at 300 yards with thrown charges of crunchy 3031 and a 6x scope to know if your deer rifle won't go below an inch at a hundred it ain't thrown charges or lack of magnification holding it back.

Which is kinda what I said.



Funny how that stuff works out.

As usual JB nailed it. Every few years I'll do a thrown verses weighed charges experiment, usually the thrown charge groups are more accurate.Why? probably just too small of sampling there is probably no real difference. I think we used to weigh charges because it was one of the variables we could control trying get poorly bedded actions shooting mediocre bullets to shoot tighter. Old long grain H4831 and IMR4064 shooting near max charges are the only loads I would weigh anymore. I don't use those type loads very often anymore so the issue has been long settled for me.

For "normal" hunting and ranges, throwing is fine.

For 1K BR, I hope all my competition throws as well......

This is exactly what I was taught by Master Sergeant Lambert (who, BTW, has a brother named Jack who chunks a football passably well) at SOTIC on Smoke Bomb Hill in 1987. When he and his buddies shot for beer at 1000yd though, they weighed the charges when they made mexican match out of M118 and 190gr Sierras.

I've always heard that Tubb shoots nothing but Dillon measure dropped charges....except at 600yd.

I think there might be a lesson or two there.