Mortar and Pestle w/Extruded Powders

[pre64hunter]

Changing the powder structure is one reason you shouldn't tumble live ammo. I've also heard of bad things happening when guys have ammo laying around bouncing around in ash trays and door pockets in a vehicle for extended periods of time. The loose powder vibrating around in a cartridge breaks up, becomes smaller or turns to dust and catastrophic results have been reported.

 

[outrider58]

Changing the powder structure is one reason you shouldn't tumble live ammo. I've also heard of bad things happening when guys have ammo laying around bouncing around in ash trays and door pockets in a vehicle for extended periods of time. The loose powder vibrating around in a cartridge breaks up, becomes smaller or turns to dust and catastrophic results have been reported.

IDK. I have a buddy who tumbles his loaded ammo he uses in his 03 Springfield Classic Sniper that he shoots at Camp Perry every year. He and his teammate usually finish somewhere in the top 3, including 1st.

 

[BFMIN]

I'm not concerned by restructuring in the least. My concern is by effectively cutting sticks you've changed the burn rate & possibly other things too. Many powder granules are coated with a bunch of stuff & now you've opened up a lot more un-coated powder to the mix.

 

[lazarus]

2 MOA with irons is pretty darn good!

I have some stick powders that don't do as well with the auto drum. Heck, A5744, one of my favorite subsonic powders, has such large grains that it can bridge powder funnels!

My auto drum has a hella stiff return spring, too, and if not set up exactly right, can crush or bend in case mouths, especially if repeatedly using the same case (e.g. while dialing in the charge weight thrown.)

So I've been using a deluxe perfect powder measure more lately. It works with the same drums, which is good because I have spare drums dialed in (and labeled) for my favorite loads. With this, rather than trickling, I can just weigh and "throw back" any powder drops that don't meet my accuracy criteria for that load. After I get into a groove on operating the handle with the exact same vigor and timing every time, I don't have to throw back too many. I use the same fired case to drop powder into every time, so after doing an initial "tare" with that case, charge weights are quick to measure on my electronic scale. I also replaced the new style hopper on my perfect powder measure with an old style red hopper with a lid, which makes it easier to "throw back" non-conforming charges. Grafs had them for about $4. Same hopper works for auto drum, too.

I may get an electronic powder dispenser this Christmas (Chargemaster or Auto Charge Pro). Hesitating a little because I'm not universally hearing great things about their longevity, I'm not sure they'll be any faster or more accurate than my current "weigh every charge" procedure with the perfect powder measure, and because my small bench is already pretty crowded.

Yeah, 2MOA at 100yds is basically my absolute limit of my skill, and that is more like one of my good groups...

At 50yds with decent irons I can shoot 2MOA most of the day. I am kind of curious what the 1903A3 would be capable of with a scope (it is drilled and tapped for one). Someone cut it down and sporterized it. I silver soldered back on a front sight and reinstalled a proper rear sight. But the stock is glass bedded. At some point I need to file the front sight as it is about 3" low at 50yds.

The PPU Garand safe .30-06 I have handy shoots more like 3.5MOA out of my 1903A3 and about 4MOA with my Garand (the Garand shoots about 2.5MOA at 50 with my handloads).

No direct experience with the electronic scales. The few deep reviews I've read, they are great if you need pretty accurate and relatively fast. However, almost none are going to be more accurate than a good scale and trickle (or like what you are doing, weigh and toss back any that aren't right).

The better ones are still about a tenth of a grain off for SD and some ES pushing two tenths of a grain on rare occasions. A tenth of a grain you are probably talking large single digit FPS variations in velocity. Heck, with CFE223 in Grendel, a half grain charge weight difference is almost exactly 40fps for 120/123gr loads. So a tenth grain is less than 10fps.

Just depends on the accuracy you need and how fast you want to load it. I charge on my lee classic with an auto drum, for precision loads I dump in the pan on my Hornady scale. Ball powders 80% are spot on, and they get dumped back in the case and back on the press to seat and crimp the bullet (if a crimp is used). Less than 10 seconds to charge the case. The other steps to prime and seat are less than 10 seconds. So if an electronic scale can measure a charge with high accuracy in less than 20 seconds, it might speed things up, but I'd still need to dump the powder in the case (which I could do on the press with a powder through die) so really you'd probably need to be more like 15 seconds to measure the charge.

Then again, that 20%, I have to trickle, which takes a few seconds to adjust the charge. But usually that's only about 5 seconds or so.

Basically, I can load about 120-140 rounds an hour this way.

Most plinking stuff I don't bother weighing the charges and at that point, charging is right quick and I can easily push out 200+ an hour. But for me, I shoot so little "precision" stuff is kind of doesn't matter to me and I enjoy it and I'd rather it be as accurate as possible. Other than testing loads, match and hunting get trickled. An hour of loading a hunting load might set me up for a decade. Match? I don't really shoot long distance much (rare) and even for 100yd and in splitting gnats, for a gun, I might care to shoot ~100 rounds of match ammo a year in a gun if even that. 10 hours of loading would easily take care of all of my rifles for at least a year, if not two of shooting.

Now plinking mixed, that's a number of hours more loading.

I know plenty of guys though can easily burn through 100+ rounds of match in one range session and do that every week.

 

[atblis]

Changing the powder structure is one reason you shouldn't tumble live ammo. I've also heard of bad things happening when guys have ammo laying around bouncing around in ash trays and door pockets in a vehicle for extended periods of time. The loose powder vibrating around in a cartridge breaks up, becomes smaller or turns to dust and catastrophic results have been reported.

Those are full on Fudd lore. Nobody has ever been able to cause that to happen. It’s been tested repeatedly.