Thread: Measuring case capacity on North Shore?

Any good buggers on Auckland’s North shore who would measure the water case capacity of a fired shell for me?
TIA 👍

For comparative purposes comparing case weight can be almost as good. You can also use a fine or ball powder.
GPM.

Easy to do, well potentially messy, on your own reloading scale. Although longer cases don't sit in the pan well - the potentailly messy bit!

Just fill case with water and weigh.
The issue is getting the case completely full. A meniscus forms. One way to minimise the meniscus is to add a wee bit of dish wash detergent to the water.
Some use meths which doesn't form a large meniscus but I don't know what the difference between water versus meths specific gravity.

To be honest, I only ever did it once, to compare against my Quickload software. And I won't bother ever again.
Otherwise I just guestimate capacity using the chosen powder.

Yes it's to stick into QL but really just out of interest against the standard 56 grains

The other option is the Nosler on line data which gives net capacity for different projectiles. The only time I measured case capacities for comparative purposes I used Winchester 748 powder and the Nosler data. Didn't need any water. This allowed me to calculate what should be possible in the 6.5x55 for which data is highly variable.
GPM.

Originally Posted by on2it

Yes it's to stick into QL but really just out of interest against the standard 56 grains

OK same as me. I only ever did it the once, when I was setting up for my new 284W. I think I did 5 and found a wee bit of variability which I took the average of the 5.
With my ancient eyesight I used a magnifying glass to view the top of the case when filling.