I believe I mentioned this before, but in the literature that came with my Lee Load-All II shotshell reloader it said that I didn’t need to bother measuring my powder drops. They’d already figured that out and had a nice little chart for me to refer to.
That didn’t sound right, and every reloading manual I’d ever read called BS on this, so I checked with my reloading mentor and he confirmed it: Don’t trust the damned chart. Get a scale.
So, I got one and popped in the bushing that should drop17.2 grains of Red Dot, dropped the powder, measured it, and I got 16.5 grains. Acceptable as I was going to load up a recipe that called for 17.0 grains of Red Dot. Used it for weeks like that, always checking the drop before loading up a box or two.
Today I venture into the basement to load up another box and with that same bushing in there, same bottle of powder, did a check on my powder drop that day: 16.0 grains. I checked it three times. I was tossing 16.0 grains instead of the usual 16.5.
Installed a bushing that was slightly larger than the previous and measured that one. It dropped my usual 16.5 grains of powder, checked it a couple of times, and then got to reloading.
So, now I’ve got a bushing in there that could, in theory, drop 17.7 or 17.8 grains of powder when the atmospheric conditions are right which would put me above the recommended charge for my components. So, now more than ever, it’s absolutely necessary that I check what its dropping before I do another batch.
That’s why you have to check this stuff.
Good show ole’ boy ! Safety first !
I have a lot of variance in my 9mm loads at times.. All within safe levels, but I’ll run a scale measure every 20 rounds or so to be sure. It’s an interesting time at the range when you go from a heavy loads, to a light load that doesn’t have enough umph to eject a round. Not as much of a problem with a pump/double-barrel shotgun though.