Yes, too low for that. Woulda been one hell of a crimp too, and I'm not crimping these at all.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind the board that ds762 is a trained professional... and the rest of you should not attempt this at home :mad:

I don't understand. What should we not attempt at home? Blowing up our 300 WTF rifles?

I pulled the remaining loads from that string of ammo and it revealed inconsistencies of charge weights and is leaning towards overcharges.
I'll be getting ahold of RCBS and see about sending in the scale for re-calibration.

I shipped the barrel to spook and hopefully next week we can determine the extent of the damage to the barrel and see if its worth saving.


In the mean time this is an excellent opportunity to remind everyone that F-ups do happen to everyone. Be safe.

I’ve had a RCBS digital scale for years. One day I discovered that it was off by about 2 grains. The problem with fliers @ the 800 yard line suddenly had an explanation. I sent it back to RCBS. $100 and five months later, I had the scale back. I was not amused.

I would not buy dies from a balance manufacturer or a balance from a die manufacturer.
Sartorious and Ohaus are to balances what Redding and RCBS are to dies.
http://precision-toploading.balances.com/

I use a 20 year old Sartorius and it's still within 2 milligrams. Part of using any balance is routinely checking it with a calibrated weight. Blowing up one firearm is more expensive than a good balance.

Handloading is dangerous but so is driving. One mistake in many things we do could be lethal.

RCBS scales are made by Pact. Pact also makes scales for several others. I use two scales that check one another. Anything can fail regardless of cost or quality.

My training is as an analytical chemist. Is good to check a reference weight at the beginning of a loading session regardless of the kind of weighing device you use. The few seconds it takes can avoid the one event you'll never forget (if you're lucky).

Thanks Alleycat
 

I am sufficiently scared to put my back-up balance beam scale back on the bench to double check what my electronic scale is telling me. That and of course eyeballing every powder drop in the case to see that they look the same. Never had anything like that happen but a first could be a last.

Thanks for pointing two scales out.

A set of calibrated weights is cheaper than an extra balance. I'm not against having a second balance as a spare, but if the two don't agree you still need a reference weight to tell which (if either) is correct.

There are a lot of ways to mess up with any balance. The most likely one is to improperly tare the tray used to hold the powder being measured. The balance itself doesn't have to be defective to give wrong readings.

Make sure your body, bench, and balance don't have an electrostatic charge both for weighing accuracy and safe powder handling. There are pros and cons for using conductive and non conductive tools. There is slightly more spark hazard with metal tools but they greatly reduce electrostatic errors. I use a metal bench and metal chair on a bare concrete floor. Basically the same setup as for handling semiconductors.

How many of you weigh each of your loaded cartridges? I reject any cartridge which is more than 1% from the average. With heavy bullets and small charges of fast powers (45 ACP for example) that will always detect no powder or double charges though it doesn't insure velocity consistency.