Its for rifle. I have a Savage Axis 22-250. As for accuracy, in my books...nothing is really good enough. I mostly hunt, not into competition shooting if thats what you mean. For powder I use the IMR 4895, more cylindrical. Like I had mentioned about my powder thrower: most of the time its a tad low, sometimes maybe 5/30 shells its a tad high and rarely its bang on. If it was a touch low 'Always" I`d fine tune it, but the way it is now....I can`t touch it.
Some people might say: "Just throw the charge, its close enough....whats a couple grains either way?" Well when I developed the load for this gun, 34 and 35 grains were a little big on the grouping and 34.5 was perfect. Not much room there to just guess.
If you get a Redding measure with a micrometer adjustment, you can generally throw right into the case for most applications until you get into "long" range. 4895, Varget and other cylindrival powders stress that statement out a bit. You could easily have .2 to .5 grain variance from charge to charge with the big stick powders. So checking on a beam is smart if you want better than that.
(Keep in mind that .25 of a grain is a bigger deal when your total charge is less than 25 grains (like in a .223) than it is in a big casing like a .308 where your charge is over 40 grains...)
CHARGEMASTER - I have one and I love it. I use it for most of the charges that I load. For my bolt guns I use Chargemaster and doublecheck every charge with a beam, and I adjust as required. (not much) Typically, I add three of four granules of Varget to maybe 2 out of 10 charges it throws. This is about .1 of a grain, and only on 2 out of 10 as I said. For my big 6.5 gun I use over 55 grains of H1000 powder which has even bigger granules, and I get about the same results as I do with charges like 46 grains of Varget.
For my AR15s, I don't bother checking any more. In an AR15 , even at 4-500 yards, there is so much to shooting that gets lost in the noise that a tenth here or there doesn't impact a whole bunch.-- but I would seriously worry about someone suggesting "what's a couple grains either way...?"
For ammo I load for National match AR that I shoot from mags at 200-300yards, I use the Redding measure and don't check anything unless a casing seems obvioulsy "fuller" or "emptier" than the rest. For ammo I single load at teh 600y line, I use Chargemaster and also don't check. Chargemaster does a better job with varget than the Redding thrower. But the Redding is FASTER and "good enough" for the short course ammo.
I think this means that for your 22-250 load of 34.5 grains, you could go straight from Chargemaster to casing with high confidence. I would even suggest that if you had a powder thrower like the redding, with a decent micrometer adjustment, you might get away without checking -- but that's a tall order to keep it within a couple tenths with a long extruded powder like 4895.
What I DISLIKE about Chargemaster was paying for it. But after throwing 500 rounds for my 308 yesterday, and hitting the bench next week to throw probably over 2000 rds.... I totally think it's worth it. I still eyeball the beam - but it's usually "bang-on" and ultimately, even with a bit of fiddling - I don't suffer from eyestrain nearly as much in long loading sessions as I did before.
If you're talking just the powder thrower (not the combo thrower/scale) the Redding is the Rolls Royce.
