One Less Frustration

One of the things I have to learn about owning this farm is that I absolutely have to go outside every day. The psychological benefits of the natural beauty and space are powerful. The weather today is like my impression of the weather in heaven. Cool and moderately sunny, with a gentle breeze.

My friend Travis is in a hospital connected to machines, and I heard disturbing things about him this morning. It has not been a pleasant day, so I decided to make some more 10mm ammunition and go out and test it.

I started reloading around a decade ago. I bought a Lyman 1500 XP digital scale because I assumed digital scales worked. The ad copy didn’t say anything like, “This scale is convenient but gives crazy readings.” I have since learned that digital scales were not reliable back then, and incredibly, nothing has changed. If you want a good digital scale now, the very lowest price you can pay is over $300, and your $300 scale won’t really be all that great. If you REALLY want accuracy, you have to spend $465 on an A&D FX-120i. But if you REALLY REALLY want accuracy, you don’t even want that; you want a Prometheus scale. I believe you can buy several FX-120i’s for the price of a Prometheus.

I will never have a Prometheus. Not unless my reality changes completely and I find myself shooting competitively at 1000 yards.

I got perfectly okay results with the Lyman 10 years ago, but it looks like storing it in a garage hasn’t done it any good. I made up several test batches of 10mm, and I kept getting average speeds of something like 1070 fps. That was no good. If I wanted underpowered 10mm bullets, I’d buy a .40 S&W. I wanted at least 1225 fps.

I looked for reasons for the power shortage. I cleaned my equipment to make sure it dispensed correctly. I tried new primers. I tried a different powder. Nothing worked. Eventually, I found out my old scale was exaggerating the weights of charges, even when I calibrated it.

My power problems led me to research digital scales, and I also learned about mechanical scales, like the ones you used to use in chemistry class. Mechanical scales are slow and not fun to use, but they are a lot cheaper for a given degree of precision.

It’s even more complicated than that, I’m sorry to say.

Mechanical reloading scales used to be made very well, but…China. A company named Ohaus made scales for companies like RCBS and Lyman, and of course, they quit making the good ones about 40 seconds before I realized I needed one. Ohaus still sells reloading scales, but they get complaints.

There is a guy who is known for taking old scales and polishing them up to make them more precise. The problem with this approach is that you still have to find an old scale for a decent price. I believe you’re looking at around $125 on Ebay before even discussing his $85 fee.

Sadly, there is more.

Cheap digital scales can be made to work well enough for pistol shooting if you stay after them constantly, but you may have problems. One problem is that they drift. Another problem is that they are programmed to resist drifting. Reloaders like to dribble tiny bits of powder onto scales, very slowly, in order to get very precise loads. A cheap digital scale may think it’s drifting when you do this, so it may ignore some of your powder in order to be more accurate.

I was not planning to do any dribbling right away. The proper term is “trickling,” if it matters. I needed a scale to check my powder measure’s accuracy. A powder measure is a machine that drops premeasured weights of powder. In order to make pistol rounds, you use a scale to adjust your powder measure. You drop a charge, weigh it, adjust the measure, and so on until you get the same correct charge over and over. For that, I didn’t need a drift-proof scale. I just needed one that would weigh a premeasured charge and give me a single accurate reading.

I decided to try a new cheap digital while I worked on my problem. Covid has made it hard to get scales quickly, and I was having trouble finding anything good anyway, so I figured I would get something reviewers like and see what happened. I bought a Chinese Brifit pocket scale. It’s an amazing machine. It’s very easy to use, it will give something like 6 different units, and it seems more accurate than the manufacturer’s claim. Problem: it can’t read odd tenths. If you measure something weighing 12.3 grains, it will give you 12.2 or 12.4.

I was very discouraged, but then I realized I could weigh two charges at once and divide by two. I had faith that my powder measure was pretty consistent, and the new scale gave perfect results when I weighed my old Lyman test weight, so I thought I could probably come up with pretty good weights this way. I got the powder measure to give me 24.0 grains on the new scale, and I made 6 cartridges. I used Winchester primers because I have learned that you don’t put Wolf primers in Glock ammunition you might depend on to save your life. The failure rate is high.

Here are the speeds I got today:

1246
1222
1247
1232
1238
1237

Average: 1237.0 fps.

This will work. I guess I could go higher, but this is more than acceptable. I would probably be doing something like 1260 in the big Glock with the longer barrel.

My plan is to mark down the micrometer reading on the powder measure. I should be able to reproduce the exact setting in the future when I have a better scale. Then I can find out what my charges actually weigh, and I can put it in my log.

I have a log now. Having to guess at my old recipes has taught me a thing or two. You need a log.

I bought Blue Dot powder because I had read that it was very good for 10mm. Then I had problems because of my scale, and I went back to Accurate No.7. The old powder worked perfectly. So what do I do with two pounds of Blue Dot? It’s a powder with limited pistol applications. I guess it will be fine for target ammo.

I took the old Nylon 66 with me today. It had been too long since its last workout. That gun brings back a ton of memories. I remember shooting it into a bullet trap with my cousin, in my grandfather’s driveway. The trap was maybe 50 yards away, and we were missing part of the time, which was inexcusable. My grandfather walked by, took my cousin’s Winchester pump .22, and rapid-fired a series of shots into the trap. He handed it back and said, “There’s nothing wrong with that gun.” We were impressed.

Today I shot my gongs from maybe 30 yards, just playing. I put 13 rounds in the Nylon 66, lifted it to my shoulder, and rapid-fired at a squirrel gong until it was empty. Didn’t check the sights on a paper target. Never missed. Suddenly I realized I was shooting better than my grandfather. Wow. He was no slouch. I didn’t see this coming.

I don’t know if I would still measure up if we were shooting at the same gong from a longer distance. The bullet trap wasn’t much of a test for him.

I hope Travis gets to shoot the gongs some day.

I’m going to crank out some 10mm defensive ammo because I need it now, and then I’ll order me a scale. Then maybe I’ll move on to .45 ACP. I have a ton of 9mm brass I need to get rid of, so I might actually make 9mm target ammo I don’t need. I find it easier to store cartridges than components.

Things are going well on the firearms front. I can’t control the world and make everything perfect, but there are a lot of things to feel good about.