Unfortunately I, and I'm sure quite a few others, can't afford $650 for a scale.
I got my acculab for $300 shipped. Lots of accurate scales out there under $500. IF it sounds like a lot, its probably cheaper than trying 9 other cheaper things first. Buy once cry once.
Every time i had not gotten the tool i thought I needed because it was too expensive, i always ended up with the tool in the end, but wasted a lot of time and money in the meantime screwing around with half solutions.
I have has a RCBS trickler and it did nothing to speed things up, it actually slowed things down.
I'm not sure how a different balance beam scale could be faster than another?
Some scales settle down faster, but in general, I find some scales are more prone to fumbles and spills. LIke wise some tricklers measure very nicely, some are prone to dropping big clumps with at the line and putting you over.
I made a little trowel our of aluminum to fish out excess powder one grain at a time.
You can also speed it's dampening by putting a magnet under the pan.
Um, wouldn't that affect the reading?
I remember an article or two a few years back on poweder measures, chargemasters and scales with tricklers comparing the speed and accuracy of all three. I believe it was by Barsness in either Handloader or Varmint Hunter magazine. I was surprised to see that a quality powder measure came out on top in all categories tested. There was even a bit in there about many benchrest shooters using measures for match ammo versus weighing each one. I never researched or fact checked the article but I wish I could find it. To me the chargemaster is slow, but I usually seat bullets and pick up the next case to charge wilhile its weighing.
I have no doubt that there are a few bench rest shooters that just throw a charge without measuring, but I think you would be hard pressed to find a benchrest champion that doesn't weigh every one. I stand ready to have my mind blown.
OP, chargemaster won't be as precise as your beam scale.
If your target is let's say 42gr of powder, and are ok with 41.4gr to 42.6gr of variance, chargemaster will work for you
Tested mine extensively next to an fx120 and these were my numbers
I saw your post about the type with the numbers, so let me confirm. You threw a bunch of "42.0" gr charges on the chargemaster, and then re-weighed them with an FX120 and got a distribution between 41.14 and 42.16?
If so, that is certainly well outside the rated performance of the chargemaster, by an order of magnitude. 41.14 is 0.84 gr under, more than 8 times outside the permissible 0.1 gr.
Personally i would be hesitant to very an electronic scale with another electronic scale. One of both of them could be suffering from drift, and if too close to each other could cause problems as well.
I would be interesting to hear what would happen if you through 10 '42.0" gr charges with charge master, and re-weigh those charges on the same charge master 20 minutes later.
I would also want to see if a properly calibrated beam scale showed the same spread.
One thing to consider with these electronic scales, is to understand how much of that 0.1 gr tolerance translates into variability for a given charge.
A 4 gr charge for 9 mm and that 0.1 = 2.5%
a 70 gr 300 WM charge and its only 0.14%
Since pistol powders pack tighter and have a more consistent volume/mass ratio, i would have no problem using a thrower or even a custom scoop instead of an electronic scale.
For rifle calibres though, I'm quite happy with the RCBS, especially the big stuff.
