Powder tolerance. How tight are you

I hold myself to .2 like many others - not because I'm reloading for absolute accuracy, but because I'm somewhat new to reloading, and want to keep my personal tolerances tight and not start giving myself too much wiggle room and get used to being 'close enough'.

For the purposes of what I shoot and how i shoot, .5 grains wouldn't be enough to really make a big difference.
 
I keep to .1 or less, buts that's just because I enjoy that. Truth be told, within 400 yards there is no difference I me between loads charged via powder thrower vs .01 on a lab scale. Some of my rifles group within an inch at 200 yards either way.
 
I throw just a tad light and trickle to the line on an RCBS beam scale for every charge.
I enjoy reloading & don't begrudge the time & effort ... and am very satisfied with my results !
 
For my 308 rounds, I'm down to the same weight. For rifle plinking ammo, I'm within .2 grains. For handgun ammo, depending on the powder, I'm within 0.1gr.
 
With all my reloads, I load to the grain. If it's 45.3, then I measure out to 45.3 and yet even having the same brass , weight matched bullets , I sometimes get bigger deviations in speed than I would think. Puzzling to me, but even factory loads deviate.
 
For hunting and casual practice, the thrower does it just fine for me.

Over the past 3 years, My Chargemaster Combo does the work for me.

I do not believe that .2 grains either way will make a noticeable difference at game ranges. [<500M]

For 1000 yard competition, I get a bit fussier, but that is an entirely different scenario,

Regards, Dave.
 
I try for plus or minus .1 grain (.2 grain total) puts me within 0.5% on a 40 grain load
For a bullet traveling at 3000 fps 0.5% is 15 fps, this translates into a roughly 0.6 inch impact change at 500 yards.

Dan
 
i load .223, 9mm and .40cal on a dillon. for what its purpose is.. I dont really care if its plus or minus a little. I will trickle all my bolt gun ammo, as that matters the most.
 
When I was using my Lyman beam scale I poured every charge by hand to exactly the precise weight. Now I have the RCBS combo scale and powder thrower. It does a very good job of being right on the mark or .1 to .2 over every once in while. Which I don't see as a big deal since I am not Jed Clampet shooting wings off flies at 1000 yds. So if your a tenth of a grain or either way your well within acceptable limits and in league that most reloader's are not in.
 
Striker33 said:
Hey guys,

I am relatively (last 2 years) new to reloading, and was curious about how tight you are with your powder measurements. I started using a cheap lymann scale... which I hated as I figured I could be aout as much as .2 gn, so I bought a digital jewelers scale that measures to the 1/100th's of a gn. I noticed slight variations in weight when I measure the same load multiple times ( 2-4 1/100th gn) is this typical? I don't think it is anything to worry about, but I am curious how tight people go. When I pour, if I am out 2/100ths I don't worry... When do people dump and remeasure overages?

I am loading a 308 hunting round with 44.5gn IMR 4895 shooting sierra 150gn pro hunter bullets. I also noticed that my OAL varied from 2.765-2.785 with a target of 2.775. Is this also normal? I thought it was related to depression of some of the lead tips, but I am not sure.
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Getting the powder charge weight exactly correct is usually a lot less important than most people figure. Other things matter *MUCH*, *VERY MUCH* more (using a good bullet, seating it reasonably straight, etc).

The variation you are seeing in casehead-to-bullet-tip length (Cartridge Overall Length or C.O.A.L) is typical and there's nothing to worry about with that. Because of how the seater stem contacts the front portion of the nose, the relationship of the rifling in your chamber to part of the bullet that matters (where the curved nose portion meets the full-diameter .308" cylindrical part) will actually be much more uniform than the the .020" variation you are seeing in the position in the tip of the bullet.

My opinion is that if your powder charges fall within a one grain window (so 44.5 +/- 0.5 grains for all of the rounds you load) you will be fine (provided you have verified that you can fire a 45.5 grain charge without pressure signs, i.e. what I am saying is that you have determined that your charge of 44.5 is not on the very ragged edge of being too hot - it probably is OK but you must test and verify this).

I shoot a .308 target rifle in competition, using 155 grain bullets and H4895 powder - so pretty similar to your situation. I throw my powder charges with a decent quality powder measure mounted to my bench. My nominal charge weight is 44.5 grains of H4895 and most of my powder charges are in a +/- 0.2 grain window (so 44.3-44.7) however if I throw 50 charges and measure them all, there is a 0.8 grain spread from the lightest to the heaviest. Out to 600 metres I know (and have verified by testing) that this ammo shoots a half minute of angle (so three inches at 600 yards). I shoot this ammo in competition knowing that it is good enough for me to win an international-level competition at distances of up to 600 yards/metres (and to be honest probably 800m too). Actually for the past several years I have shot it at all competition distances 300 to 1000 yards but this year I shot extremely well and think I can tell that it is *just barely* not good enough to shoot international-level matches at 1000 yards (the great majority of my shots go into less than 1 MOA at 1000 yards but every 10-20 shots a shot will come out of that and open up the group to 1.5 MOA at 1000 yards). So next year I will weigh charges on my long range ammo (but will still use thrown charges out to 600)
 
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