I have a .45-70 Sharps replica (admittedly a cheapo uberti) and thought it would be neat to play around with it a bit with black powder.

It shoots reasonably well (for me with buckhorn irons) and I am thinking of putting a tang peep on it.

My first attempt with BP reloads for it have been not so good. However, how I am loading it is by using one of those cheap brass "powder measures" that is basically a dipper that you can set the volumetric amount in 5 grain clicks.

I recall there being a Harrel black powder measure but they don't even have it on their web site anymore. Doing a web search just brings up more of the brass jobs like I already have.

Any thoughts on what is the current way to get accurate measure dispensing? My smokeless stuff is all either electric or has plastic (ie static electricity risk)

Is there any somewhat midlevel or higher level advanced book that you guys who are experienced with it might recommend?

As an aside, I do use BP for muzzleloading hunting, I have a couple BP percussion pistols, and do load some brass shotgun shells with BP for the odd clay target or hunting day for the hell of it, so I am not wholly inexperienced with black powder, but the cartridge load was pretty sorry- 70 gr of FFG with a commercial cast 405 gr LSWC (.458 dia) gave a group that was 4x larger than my smokeless round with the same bullet...