I almost had a disaster and wanted to pass it on to everyone to be careful. I have been reloading for 50 years and have reloaded 100's of Thousands of rounds without issues. Last week I was working up a load in my 10MM and as usual I started with the staring load. The load range was 6.3 to start and 6.7 max. I load 5 rounds at 6.3 and go outside to test. (I have a range at my house) All 5 fire and function as expected and as normal I inspect the fired brass and immediately note that there is considerable primer flattening and metal flow in the firing pin hole. Defiantly signs of too hot a load. I go in a recheck everything to make sure nothing is wrong and everything checks out. I load 2 more cases and retry and get the same result, so I take everything apart and inspect it and reassemble and try again with same result. At this point I have been at it for almost 5 hours so I quit for the day and come back the next day. The next day I am looking at maybe the components have an issue so I check the diameter of the bullet and that is fine so next I put the bullet on my electronic scale and it reads 190 grain. Ok time out that is suppose to be a 180 grain. Well a quick check on load data and 6.3 is well withing the acceptable load range of 190 so that is not the problem, however, it was bugging me why a good quality bullet was so far off in weight so out of a whim I dug out my old balance beam scale and weighed some bullets on that and they tipped the scale at 180. SO now we have a discrepancy between the electronic and balance scale. Now I started checking the two scales with known weights and the balance beam was spot on every time and the e-scale was all over the board. I weighted the charge I was using in the 10MM and the e-scale showed 6.3 the same charge showed 7.3 on the balance beam so the 7.3 was over max but luck was with me because I have a strong gun and I had started with the starting load. The scary part is I calibrated the e-scale every time and it passed perfectly. I have been using this same scale for over 10 years and it has never had an issue until now.

If it would have just died I would not have had an issue but to calibrate correctly and then give wrong reading really bothered me. I just bought another e-scale yesterday, but you can bet I will verify it every time on the old reliable balance beam.

I have the same fear when I use my e-scale, i have never had an issue but it
is always in the back of my mind. I spot check my loads every 5 rounds.
BB

quote:

Originally posted by bigbull:
I have the same fear when I use my e-scale, i have never had an issue but it
is always in the back of my mind. I spot check my loads every 5 rounds.
BB

How do you spot check your loads, just doing it on your e-scale i.e. reweighing every 5th load, is only going to show your scale is consistent but as in MEH's case it can be consistently out which doesn't show up until you check against another known accurate scale i.e. a beam balance.
Having to constantly check e-scales against beam balances rather negates any advantages, perceived or real, of using an e-scale?

I have a couple of bullets from known manufacturer that are in the range of the powder charge I am throwing. Calibrate, weigh bullet. For handgun loads an air rifle pellet, two or three. Not as good as a weight set but cheaper. A good weight set over the range you are throwing is not all that expensive!

I use the powder pan.
I weighed it on a couple of different scales and know what it is.
it actually gained a couple of tenths, from new as it picked up graphite from the various powders.
then it settled out.

I scribed the weight on the scale so it's right in front of my face.
turn on the scale without the pan, set the pan in place and make note.
zero the scale with it in place then take the pan off and watch the minus come up.

the double check every time sets my mind at ease and if the scale starts being weird it's easy to spot because the minus will start wandering before the plus does.

Interesting and I have the same doubts with an E scale. So I don't use them Way back in 1972 I bought a Redding balance beam scale. Used it up into getting in the 2000's. Bought a RCBS balance bean scale. Had weight consistency problems with it, which had to due with the magnetic dampening. My old Redding has oil dampening. So you know what I did. I brought the old Redding balance beam back into operation. I use my little cheap E scale just to quick weigh things, not for the important work.

Very strange!

We have been using electronic scales for so many years and ever had any problems!

I had issues with my electric scale holding consistent values when I first got it. I traced it back to voltage and frequency fluctuations of my incoming electricity.

I plugged it in to an Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) that absorbed all the incoming utility variations and it's been absolutely perfect since then.

Be wary with beam scales, too.

My 45-year-old Lyman D7 appears to have been calibrated with shot under a cover on the hooked pan holder. One day I found the screw holding the cover had loosened and then worried that some of the shot may have escaped. I checked the weights of a variety of factory projectiles, which all seemed predictably close to the box claims, so don't think any shot did fall out.

Contact the manufacturer. Lyman, especially, is really good about that sort of thing.

I had issues with an RCBS e-scale maintaining zero (based on return to zero when pan replaced after dumping powder), call to customer service and was told a fluorescent light source close to the scale can cause this. Replaced light with LED and no more problem. I do still check with known weights, though,

quote:

Originally posted by Sagebrush Burns:
Contact the manufacturer. Lyman, especially, is really good about that sort of thing.

I already did that and their reply was the scale is old and they only warranty electronic stuff for a couple years. I expected that I just wanted them to know about it.

I did some experiments with the e-scale the results were interesting to say the least. I took known weights and weighted them and also weighted some small stuff on the balance beam to get the weight and a pattern with the errors in on the e-scale is starting to show. On small weights the scale was fairly consistently low by about 1 grain. 6 grains weights 5, 10 grains weighted 9 etc. Accuracy got better as the weight increased to about 25 grains when it was pretty close. As the weight increased the scale was reading high. 50 grains showed 52, 100 grain weighted 103, 180 weighted 186, 250 weighted 260 and 350 weighed 360. I also bought a new e-scale and checked all the known weights and it was spot on, so I guess I will continue to use e-scales but with more checks against know weights before I trust one, especially while doing load development.

A similar thing happened to me - sort of.

A year ago I found my normal loads were spraying all over the place.

I rechecked all my powder charges and found them to be erratic. My 15 year old battery operated digital scale was giving variable readings. I then realised that it needed to warm up.

I checked against my Ohaus 505 scales and there was a wide variation in the electronic scale readings.

I immediately retired the 15 year old scales and bought a new one for $40 on Alibaba. This is very accurate and sensitive to just one kernel of H322, which is a very fine stick powder. It reads consistently to 0.02 grains.

I am back to my normal groups.

Oh, one other thing, the old scales were reading 0.3 gr lighter once they were warmed up.

The new scales are DC powered and so there is no issue with voltage fluctuation.

New technology has resulted in much more sensitive and reliable load cells in the market that are also a lot cheaper.

This is what I use now

https://www.temu.com/nz/profes..._sessn_id=akvyha0i89

I quit using electronic scales years ago. They are not reliable. If you don't trust them and check every so many rounds you still are not confident your loads are ok.

quote:

Originally posted by Nakihunter:
A similar thing happened to me - sort of.

A year ago I found my normal loads were spraying all over the place.

I rechecked all my powder charges and found them to be erratic. My 15 year old battery operated digital scale was giving variable readings. I then realised that it needed to warm up.

I checked against my Ohaus 505 scales and there was a wide variation in the electronic scale readings.

I immediately retired the 15 year old scales and bought a new one for $40 on Alibaba. This is very accurate and sensitive to just one kernel of H322, which is a very fine stick powder. It reads consistently to 0.02 grains.

I am back to my normal groups.

Oh, one other thing, the old scales were reading 0.3 gr lighter once they were warmed up.

The new scales are DC powered and so there is no issue with voltage fluctuation.

New technology has resulted in much more sensitive and reliable load cells in the market that are also a lot cheaper.

This is what I use now

https://www.temu.com/nz/profes..._sessn_id=akvyha0i89

I just got the exact same one and so far I have checked it on a variety of known weights and it is good. After the last one I will always check against known weights before I trust the e-sacle.

quote:

Originally posted by Lamar:
I use the powder pan.
I weighed it on a couple of different scales and know what it is.
it actually gained a couple of tenths, from new as it picked up graphite from the various powders.
then it settled out.

I scribed the weight on the scale so it's right in front of my face.
turn on the scale without the pan, set the pan in place and make note.
zero the scale with it in place then take the pan off and watch the minus come up.

the double check every time sets my mind at ease and if the scale starts being weird it's easy to spot because the minus will start wandering before the plus does.

Excellent QC method! Quick and reliable. I will begin using this method immediately. Thanks.

And thanks, MtElkHunter, for the heads up.

Had a Dillon E scale that would jump all over the place. After alot of fidling and research it was being plugged into the same circuit as a florescent lights. I moved the scale to different circuit and it stopped dancing. I had bought a RCBS in the meantime and haven't had any problems since, as far as the scale is concerned. I do check against a beam scale occasionally. They definitely don't like dirty electricity and are suspectable to outside signals