I am needing ways to speed up my precision loads. I am spending all week reloading what I fired on the weekend. I have a Giruad trimmer on order. I got a shell plate for my L-N-L so I can do an op or 2 on it.

I have been trickling every charge which takes about a minute each. I was considering a Chargemaster 1500 combo but the +/-0.1 doesn't sound real good, I trickle much better than that.
Yes I know loads shouldn't be that sensitive to charge weight.

I was wondering what people are really getting with the chargemaster. Are 99% dead on and a couple +/-0.1? I use spherical powder only(AA2230,w748) can I expect better results with it?

As a test last night I threw 20 charges and weighed each. I had, in order, 40.5 40.5 40.3 40.4 40.4 and the next 15 in a row were 40.3. I am going to try this again to see if I get similar results if so there may be no point in trickling.

These loads are for 600-1000yards so I want everything as perfect as possible.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

The chargemaster is perfectly fine for 600+ yard work.  I won on the 600yd line two weekends ago against a field that included 2 high masters and 4 or 5 masters, with ammo I made with my Lee cast press and chargemaster.  Maybe if I was going to camp perry and shooting the palma match I might hand weigh everything, otherwise I wouldn't waste my time.

With ball powder, I can load about 4 a minute after tweaking the programs parameters.  It will throw 26.4gr of ball powder, accurately, almost as fast as I can seat the bullet and set it in the ammo box.

See my thread below when you get to a computer and broadband.  My CM scale tracks my RCBS Ohaus 5-0-2 beam scale dead on.  If the scale reads 0.1 grain over, the CM lets you know it.  It seldom, if ever, goes 0.1 grain below.  I was using Unique at 4.7 grain dispensed.  What the CM threw at that setting indicated and agreed precisely within 0.1 grain of the 5-0-2.  

If the powder is a difficult config (anything but spherical, eg. big extruded grains, flakes, etc.), it may take a couple of dispense times to get dead on using the CM.

Sometimes, when my dispenser is grumpy, I set it to throw a low weight and then trickle by hand to the charge I want.  Getting the dispenser shimmed to the proper attitude always helps with consistency.  When it's absolutely level, it doesn't throw as well as when it's "tilted back" some.

However, I really haven't noticed any practical difference from taking these extra steps.

It seems like the rifle barrel and the wind are much more important than fussing around with loading procedures.  My 6.5 will fly 1 moa groups at 1K with little attention to the powder dispenser -- except to reject over weight charges.

When I started using A-max bullets rather than dinged up SMKs, flyers became history.  I really don't understand why precision target bullets are packed in bulk rather than in some fashion that protects the meplate during shipment.

We"tip" the meplats, weight sort the projectiles, base to ogive sort the projectiles, .001 grain tolerance on powder charge, and many voters tricks to 1.5 inch groups at 1000yds.o

Wow.  0.1 milligram.  That's pretty good shooting right there!

So just throwing a charge from my powder measure is at worst just as good as the Chargemaster and much quicker?

So it seems.  I know when we were setting up his XL650 powder dispenser, we tamed it down to where it was consistently throwing 4320 and 8208XBR at AR-15 weight ranges, and 4350 at Rem Mag weight ranges.  Good to 0.1 grain per the 5-0-2.  We did find that it was better to use the Magnum bar even for the 4320 in AR-15 weight range.

I have PLENTY of time to load for my son. Lots of steps. I have it down to about 12 minutes/ round. Being retired helps. He shoots 200 rounds per match. I cry..lol

Seem's that best's the World record's.  The two of you should step up.................

I just threw and weighed another 20 loads for rounds and got the same results. A couple making an extreme spread of 0.18gr(best I can tell by putting the poise between notches)but a total standard deviation of .066gr.

Well I will try 20 trickled and 20 thrown at the range over my chrony. I did this last week with 5x fire brass and the trickled did better but both were poor as compared to the annealed-trickled I had. I didn't have enough annealed at the time to test annealed trickled and thrown.

I can throw 100 charges directly into the cases in about 6 minutes so it would be quite a bit faster than the Chargemaster and apparently just as accurate( using ball powder)......And I can spend the $300 on something else.

I trickle my 8208 and other stick charges, but it's a waste of time with 2230( ball)

My Ohaus thows the ball charges as accurately as I can measure, so I just check every 10th charge to make sure nothing wandered off track.

I have PLENTY of time to load for my son. Lots of steps. I have it down to about 12 minutes/ round. Being retired helps. He shoots 200 rounds per match. I cry..lol

We are relatively new to long distance. I just completed a derivation of throat wear calculation.it helps a lot. More to come.

I derived a long time ago that throat wear comes from that hot stuff that makes the bullet fly.