So, I got the last piece I needed in the mail today to start reloading. I tumbled some 9mm once fired cases last night and tonight set out to do 20. 4 1/2 hours later I have 20. I'm thorough frustrated though.
I was blazing along at a good clip, I deprimed and resized about 100 cartridges of brass. I then primed 20 of them and was ready to go. I then belled each brass and I'm pretty proud of myself. All the practicing on dummy rounds was paying off, well other than the first primer going in sideways. Not sure how that happened.
So, I pull out the powder, the funnel, the Powder measure the Lyman 100 XP Digital Scale and the Lee Old school scale. For the life of me I could not get consistent powder measures to come out of the Lee Perfect Powder measure. I'd tweak the settings, get a charge that was on, then run it a few times to make sure the charge was right then try and measure out the powder. I would measure, check it on the digital scale and if it was within .1 grains I would then double check it on the Lee weight scale. By the time I got a measure consistent it would just change on me.
I thought it was the scales, but I calibrated them both. Not only with the calibration stuff that comes with it but the RCBS check weights I have.
After hours of messing with it I was finally able to get 20 loads that weighed in at 4.5 grains of 231 (Win brass, CCI 500 primer, Win 115 FMJ bullet and 4.5 gr Win 231 powder. OAL at 1.1555) for the 20 bullets. The measure without touching it would swing from 4.2 gr to 4.8 gr (even 4.9 a few times). That is too big of a swing considering that is the full scale from what the books say for safe powder ranges.
Other than the powder measure fiasco, I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I checked and doubled checked OAL , case width, Cross referenced 4 different places for the powder charge.
So, my question is, What is a reliable, decent reasonably priced powder measure that doesn't jump all over the place?
Here is a picture of my first kids.
I was blazing along at a good clip, I deprimed and resized about 100 cartridges of brass. I then primed 20 of them and was ready to go. I then belled each brass and I'm pretty proud of myself. All the practicing on dummy rounds was paying off, well other than the first primer going in sideways. Not sure how that happened.
So, I pull out the powder, the funnel, the Powder measure the Lyman 100 XP Digital Scale and the Lee Old school scale. For the life of me I could not get consistent powder measures to come out of the Lee Perfect Powder measure. I'd tweak the settings, get a charge that was on, then run it a few times to make sure the charge was right then try and measure out the powder. I would measure, check it on the digital scale and if it was within .1 grains I would then double check it on the Lee weight scale. By the time I got a measure consistent it would just change on me.
I thought it was the scales, but I calibrated them both. Not only with the calibration stuff that comes with it but the RCBS check weights I have.
After hours of messing with it I was finally able to get 20 loads that weighed in at 4.5 grains of 231 (Win brass, CCI 500 primer, Win 115 FMJ bullet and 4.5 gr Win 231 powder. OAL at 1.1555) for the 20 bullets. The measure without touching it would swing from 4.2 gr to 4.8 gr (even 4.9 a few times). That is too big of a swing considering that is the full scale from what the books say for safe powder ranges.
Other than the powder measure fiasco, I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I checked and doubled checked OAL , case width, Cross referenced 4 different places for the powder charge.
So, my question is, What is a reliable, decent reasonably priced powder measure that doesn't jump all over the place?
Here is a picture of my first kids.