Thread: Newbie reloader, questions on weight of powder

Originally Posted by Stefanhope

Hey,

So made my first batch of rounds today, awesome feeling to get them on the range (which is outside my reloading shed)
Didn't group bad but definitely get better grouping out of my factory loads.. for now I hope.

I had a few questions, while I was putting powder in my brass (Ari2217) I was doing a starting load of 67.5 but I found with my cheap Hornady digital scales I was getting a varied reading eg 67.4,67.5,67.8 etc... how important is it to get the exact same amount of powder?

Also what is everyone's technique of case prep?

Cheers team

Hey mate,

I'm also pretty new to reloading and am learning a lot from this forum.

Definitely get your powder weights exactly the same - treat the powder thrower as highly inaccurate. Sometimes it'll get it right, some times it wont - make sure the scales are calibrated and then adjust the amount of powder to suit. A powder trickler is a good tool for this.

I have a set of the Hornady digital scales and pretty quickly got my hands on a set of decent beam scales - they've helped a lot.

Case prep - quick clean, scratch carbon from primer pockets, lube body & neck, resize & deprime, measure, trim if necessary, chamf/debur, clean lube off, prime, then ready to go. A lot of more experienced people are more careful about case cleaning, and I'm sure I'll get more OCD about my routine as time goes on, but I'm getting some decent groups coming through now for a start.

Cheers,
Elliott