Electronic Scales - 01/29/20
I had a chat yesterday with a nice fellow who lives in El Paso. He was trying to load cast bullets for his 303 British, but couldn't get the amount of powder into the case that the manual called for. He wanted to know what he was doing wrong. When he described what he was doing, and the powder, bullet, etc, I thought he might have been loading a 303 Savage. It turned out that he wasn't.
I was stumped until he told me about his scale. It was an inexpensive, Chinese made, battery operated scale that switches between grains, grams, carats, etc. In short, his scale was not weighing correctly. I suggested that he get a new scale, but not one from Walmart or a dollar store.
Whether you have an expensive scale, or a cheap thing that you bought from ebay or Wallyworld, make sure that you have a weight that you can use to check that it's weighing correctly. Most reloading scales come with check weights, but more and more people are buying pocket sized, cheap off shore scales. I cannot convince everyone to buy a scale made for reloading, but most would agree that a way to verify that the scale is weighing accurately is important.
Get a 50 and 100 gram weight, if you don't already have one lying around. Let your scale warm up for a few minutes and verify the accuracy with your weights before you start weighing powder. Or buy an old timey mechanical scale. They don't depend on batteries and are accurate.
I was stumped until he told me about his scale. It was an inexpensive, Chinese made, battery operated scale that switches between grains, grams, carats, etc. In short, his scale was not weighing correctly. I suggested that he get a new scale, but not one from Walmart or a dollar store.
Whether you have an expensive scale, or a cheap thing that you bought from ebay or Wallyworld, make sure that you have a weight that you can use to check that it's weighing correctly. Most reloading scales come with check weights, but more and more people are buying pocket sized, cheap off shore scales. I cannot convince everyone to buy a scale made for reloading, but most would agree that a way to verify that the scale is weighing accurately is important.
Get a 50 and 100 gram weight, if you don't already have one lying around. Let your scale warm up for a few minutes and verify the accuracy with your weights before you start weighing powder. Or buy an old timey mechanical scale. They don't depend on batteries and are accurate.