Hello,
After 20+ years of NOT reloading, the kids are gone and it's time to start shooting again. I dug out my old pacific press and removed rust from various parts but everything seems fine. I have been thinking of upgrading to a digital scale, are the new scales worth the $$$$? I'm not a heavy reloader (not yet anyway) but who knows what the future will hold. I will reload my 45 acp and a rifle 22-250. I have never reloaded a shouldered round. What should I look out for? Should the case be full resized or is the neck resizing fine and still have good accuracy? Any suggestions on dies?

Thanks

Tony in Indy

with normal scales you know exactly how much powder your putting it. with digital its usualy to 1/10th of a grain. so you could be putting in 54.56 grains of powder, and with a analog its a bit easier to tell you have the .06 more in there. might only make a little bit of difference but i like to know exactly how much im putting in.

I've used the same RCBS balance beam scale since around 1984 so you can guess what my answer to your scale question would be. I do have some Lyman weights to check scale accuracy with occasionally and it's still right on.

As far as shoulder necked cases (a.k.a. bottlenecked cartridges) are concerned, at least for the .22-250 you are probably better off just neck sizing. Doing it that way should give you better accuracy and longer case life. That would not apply if you were reloading with a lever, pump or semiauto gun (which I doubt you would be with this cartridge); those need to be full length sized. I like Lee collet dies for neck sizing since no lube, and no mess, is needed.

You will need to trim occasionally. I have a Lyman case length guage. I generally only trim cases that have lengthened to be out of spec.

Thanks for the reply's. It seems you have saved me some $$$$. The only items I really need to get started is a case tumbler, dies a set of weights to check my scale.

Thanks again

On the other hand, I have the RCBS chargemaster 1500 and I would not go back to my blaance beam and dispenser unless I lost power or some other disaster.

i use my balance and am well satisfied. have been using same scale since 1970 and i load around 2500 rounds a year.