Mark Ducati
11-11-2011, 11:36 AM
Last night, I primed and belled the mouth of all of my new Starline brass... so, I pull my scale out to load just a few rounds.
For 50AE 300gr bullet, I use 33.5gr of H110 powder... so, I pull my balance beam scale out to zero it and it was still set from last week's reloading batch... only the front weight was on 40! Indicating I loaded my cases with 43.5gr of H110 powder! 10 grains of powder too much :(
My first thought was crap, I'm going to blow my gun up... but yet, I was sooooooo careful weighing the powder (sober, no kids, no distractions). I couldn't believe I made that mistake, so I randomly pulled a few bullets out of the 200 rounds I loaded and reweighed the powder... yep, I was at 33.5 grains. I did load my cases correctly. I think putting the scale up, the front weight moved from 30 to 40 grains.
So, then I weighed out an oversized load of powder to 43.5 grains just to see what it looked like... normally, the 33.5 grains of H110 fills the case about 3/4 full... but 43.5 grains of powder filled the case about 7/8 full... IF I had overweighed the powder, there wouldn't have been any room to seat the bullet.
So, I guess the point of my post is that different powders require different grains of powder amount... for example, for my 50AE 300gr speer GDHP bullet: I need 33.5gr of H110 and Accurate No. 9 powder recommends 23.5 grains of powder...
If I had been using Accurate No. 9 initially and put 10 extra grains of powder in, the bullet would have still seated and I may not have known/noticed...
This H110 may require more powder for the load, but visually, there's no way I could make that kind of mistake nor get the bullet to seat...
So, for my particular batch of 50AE with H110 powder, its a "safer" powder for a noob like me to use.
I really understand now why Schuetz recommended absolutely no distractions when loading... no drinking, no TV, no kids, no radio... just concentrate on the job at hand. It's way too easy to make a simple mistake.
For 50AE 300gr bullet, I use 33.5gr of H110 powder... so, I pull my balance beam scale out to zero it and it was still set from last week's reloading batch... only the front weight was on 40! Indicating I loaded my cases with 43.5gr of H110 powder! 10 grains of powder too much :(
My first thought was crap, I'm going to blow my gun up... but yet, I was sooooooo careful weighing the powder (sober, no kids, no distractions). I couldn't believe I made that mistake, so I randomly pulled a few bullets out of the 200 rounds I loaded and reweighed the powder... yep, I was at 33.5 grains. I did load my cases correctly. I think putting the scale up, the front weight moved from 30 to 40 grains.
So, then I weighed out an oversized load of powder to 43.5 grains just to see what it looked like... normally, the 33.5 grains of H110 fills the case about 3/4 full... but 43.5 grains of powder filled the case about 7/8 full... IF I had overweighed the powder, there wouldn't have been any room to seat the bullet.
So, I guess the point of my post is that different powders require different grains of powder amount... for example, for my 50AE 300gr speer GDHP bullet: I need 33.5gr of H110 and Accurate No. 9 powder recommends 23.5 grains of powder...
If I had been using Accurate No. 9 initially and put 10 extra grains of powder in, the bullet would have still seated and I may not have known/noticed...
This H110 may require more powder for the load, but visually, there's no way I could make that kind of mistake nor get the bullet to seat...
So, for my particular batch of 50AE with H110 powder, its a "safer" powder for a noob like me to use.
I really understand now why Schuetz recommended absolutely no distractions when loading... no drinking, no TV, no kids, no radio... just concentrate on the job at hand. It's way too easy to make a simple mistake.