Had the Lyman gen6 delivered earlier in the week and had a chance to play around with it today. Paid $175 shipped from Amazon.
-Used 4 powders and threw 50 charges per powder and checked on a cheap Frankford Arsenal digital scale just for the hell of it. Cant really say I trust the FA scale to be all that much more accurate, but just was curious as to what two different scales would say.
-Kept track of over/under charges.
-Powders were Unique, H335, IMR4895, and H110.
Unique had a target charge of 6.0. Out of 50 charges...
-4 overcharges, all 6.1.
-7 under charges, all 5.9.
H335 had a target charge of 26. Out of 50 charges...
-3 over charges, all 26.1.
-1 under charge, 25.9.
H110 had a target charge of 15.5. Out of 50 charges...
-3 over charges, all 15.6.
-1 under charge, 15.4.
IMR4895 had a target of 46. Out of 50 charges...
-9 over charges, all 46.1.
-2 under charges, both 45.9.
Total of 19 over charges and 11 under charges out of 200 throws. So a total of 15% were off with 9.5% over and 5.5% under, although I never had a charge that was more than 1/10th grain off either way. Tbh, Im ok with that. If I were trickling by hand and ended up 1/10th over I'd call it good.
As far as comparing the weights between the two scales, around half or so matched up with the exception of the 4985 which didnt have a single charge that matched out of the 50 thrown. Odd thing is that if the Lyman threw a 46, the FA read at 46.3 almost every time. If it threw a 46.1, the FA called it 46.4 almost all the time. It was like there was a ~0.3 grain difference built in most of the time. There were also a total of thirteen .04 grain differences and one .05 grain difference. Again the FA is an inexpensive scale so it wasnt like I was checking the Lyman against something super accurate, just did it out of curiosity, wasnt so crazy about those results though. Kind of wish I had a really nice scale to compare with.
The Unique, H335 and H110 charges matched up around 50% of the time and when they didnt they were off by a tenth 90%+ of the time with 5 charges out of 150 all being off .02grains.
Cleaning between powders was pretty easy and got quicker the more times I did it. H110 tends to want to stick in the insides more so than the others and the IMR4895 was easiest to clean out Which was to be expected as ones a small flake and the other is a stick.
I noticed that Unique was slow when it got to the final trickle phase, more so than the H110.
I used the restrictor only when using the IMR4895 as they recommend that for stick powders.
Seems to have an easier time with smaller grained powders as the H110 and H335 had the lowest number of mischarges.
Might just be me, or because its new, but I seemed to have a hard time taking the pan off the scale without hitting the tube. That would typically cause a few grains to fall out and end up on the scale that needed to be cleaned off. Not a big deal, just a little annoying and might be something that would happen less often the more I use it.
They give you a little hook tool to remove the tube for cleaning but there isnt anywhere on the machine to store it. The cleaning brush and the calibration weight have their own little nooks to sit in which I like because theyre less likely to get lost that way.
Doesnt take up much room at all. Footprint is ~ 4x10x9.
Other than that, its accurate enough for me. If Im within 1/10th +/- Im happy. 85% of the charges I threw were right on, and the remaining 15% were within a 1/10. Even when trickling by hand if Im within a tenth I call it good. If my groups are opening up, its because of me, not because theres an extra tenth of powder in the case. As far as the differences between the readings on the two scales, Im taking it with a grain of salt for now. Maybe Ill do something similar with a beam scale but Im figuring it would take forever.