This update is coming on a Tuesday, instead of the usual Monday. Life just got a bit busy. I do not have very much in the way of firearm news to cover so I wanted to take a moment and share some data I was given. This was supplied to me to take a look at and pass some judgment on. The question on hand was whether or not the powder thrower was functioning as advertised.
Before I get into the data, here is a little preface. It is important for everyone, including precision hand loaders, to not only understand there is variation but to embrace a certain level of variation. Otherwise, you can spend a lot of time and money trying to solve a problem that is very likely a perceived issue rather than a significant or practical issue. We see these problems a lot in the manufacturing and engineering world. A considerable amount of time, effort, and money are spent chasing issues that are later determined to be of little consequence.
Handloaders focused on precision can often be swallowed by the “No Variation Monster” and it’s partly the industry’s fault. We sell people on the idea that absolutely no variation leads to winning matches. Like all good lies, there is a bit of truth to it, it is “A Factor” but not “The Factor”. Plenty of matches have been won with ammunition assembled hastily, sporting all sorts of grievous sins. It turns out, ammunition and rifles tend to outperform shooters, even competitive shooters, and the deciding factor between wins and loses comes down more to raw ability rather than equipment.
When it comes to handloading, I have set my own rules on dealing with variations that I follow. I share these because they keep me from going insane, and they have worked well for me. Keep in mind, that sometimes adjust the rules for specific loads, and that I base the powder measurement rules on using a powder measure that measures powder volumetrically.
Jay’s Rules for Handloading Sanity:
- Charge weight
- +/- 3% if less then 25gn of target or +/- .2gn which ever is greater
- +/- 1% if greater then 25gn but less then 50gr
- +/- .5% if greater then 50gr
- Case Length +/- .005in
- Cartridge Overal Length (COAL) Base to Meplate +/-.005in
- Cartrdige Overal Length (COAL) Base to Ogive +/- .002in
- Bullet Weight Variation for Pistol +/- 1.5gr for rifle +/-0.5gr
There are a few reasons why I allow greater variation for small charges, and it deals with how volumetric throwers can sometimes struggle to throw small charges accurately, and that most scales are not very accurate at the lower end of the weight range. I also am not shooting these cartridges extremely long distances where I would expect to see the point of impact shifts from velocity variation.
So let’s dig into the data a bit. I’ve run some quality control charts for the sample set, to illustrate how this thrower is performing and to quantify how many “bad rounds” I would expect to have. The below chart is based on the thrower being set to 42.0cc, with a sample size of 10 throws.
Based on these results, my +/- 1% rule allows for +/- .265 grain of variation. This sets the acceptable upper charge weight of 28.86 grain and the acceptable lower charge weight of 26.33gr. The performance of the powder thrower was well within the upper and lower spec limits that I set. If I was consistent in my throwers, I would expect that there would be very few “bad charges” thrown. Because the sample size is so small, and there are no sub lots it is very hard to say if this is sustainable. (It likely is not) However, based on these results, I see no issue with this powder throwing a ball propellant. In my opinion, there are likely other significant sources of variation that I should spend my time on.
Let’s take a look at an extruded powder. The sample size here is even smaller at 7 throws, which is less than ideal, but we will do what we can.
Ok, this is a bit more interesting. At 58 grains we are close to cut off for 1%. We applied the tighter 0.5% spec and it would seem that this spec is a bit too tight for this powder in this thrower. About one-fifth of the rounds loaded would have a charge weight that was either too heavy or too light as we have it currently spec’d. Now that is not to say there is a problem and that I should completely scrap the process. Only to say we probably should dig into this a bit deeper. Statistically, this is a significant variation, but we have yet to determine if the variation is practical. If it is, then I am going to have to throw a charge light and trickle in the last few grains. Doable, but that takes more time. Let’s run the ballistics through QuickLoad and get an idea of what the difference might be.
Shown above is the QuickLoad Set up for the nominal Charge of 58.54gr. This charge is a little light for the 300 Win Mag, but for comparative purposes it is fine. Notice the velocity and pressure, 2,440fps and 45,086psi respectively. That is the nominal load.
Increasing the charge to 58.83 grains yields 45,660psi and 2450, while decreasing the charge to 58.25 grains results in 44,524psi and 2,429fps. In velocity that is roughly a difference of +/- 0.4%. Pressure is about the same. So a .5% tolerance in powder weight in this load yields approximately the same difference in pressure and velocity according to Quick Load. Again, you may look at this and say, that could be significant. So there is one more step we need to take to properly display the practical effects of this. That is to run the ballistics on each load based on predicted muzzle velocity.
This is where we begin to see the actual difference that .5% charge weight makes in this particular load. Notice the drop at 1000 yards, it is basically within 1 MOA at 1000 yards. That is 10.47 inches difference in impact from the highest shot to the lowest shot. Keep in mind we are looking at a singular factor. There are many variables that impact where the shot ultimately will land. These variables can cancel each other out or can stack and magnify one another resulting in a flier that is greater than 1 MOA from the center of the group.
So, after doing all this work, what have we learned, and are we going to change our process? Velocity variation that results from the .5% tolerance does not become a significant factor until we reach ranges beyond about 600 yards. Beyond that, it is application-specific, keep in mind premier factory ammunition is almost always +/- .5 to 1.0gr at these charge weights. If I was shooting 1000 yard bench rest or F-Class, I might say this is not acceptable, but if constrained on time, and did not want to weight every charge, then I would probably let it slide.
Was the unit defective? What sort of consistency should we expect from our powder throwers? Honestly, this is the consistency I would expect in a powder thrower. The next level is throwing charges light and trickling in the last grain on the scale. As previously mentioned factory ammunition uses volumetric throwers. Even on “Top of the line” premier products, the machines just are not capable of consistently holding tighter than +/- 0.5 grains of powder over a given run. Especially when throwing charges over 50 grains. Thrower performance varies with brand, quality, and user.
Anyway, that is what I have for this week. As always if you are looking to get in touch, the best way is to send me an email at jay@theballisticassistant.com. You may check us out on Parler, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. If you’d like to submit a load to our load database, the instructions are here.
As always, shoot straight and stay safe!
The Ballistic Assistant