quick review-new lee auto drum powder measure

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Have you determined just how accurate you Chargemaster electronic scale is? Have never seen a electronic that does not vary a little.

It's not a chargemaster, it's an older powder pro actually made by pact for RCBS. Although it's over 20 years old, it has never failed me, I just trust it.

But you make a good point, I hadn't calibrated it for a while, it just never needs it. But in interest of making sure it's reading correctly, I jut let it warm-up for ½ hour, then ran the small Lyman check weights through a series from .5 to all of them that add up to 10 grains. It was spot on on all of them!

If all I had was a balance beam scale, this test would never had been done. Not by me anyway. I'm a pretty patient guy, more so now that I'm retired and single, I have plenty of time to devote to trivia. Not for that kind of test though.

The beauty of a digital scale is you can tare any empty container, (as long as it fits on the platen and is not too heavy), then put something in it to determine the weight. Just a few seconds added to the loading process on my LCT.

Is the drum able to throw lighter charges than the Autodisk? I reload alot of 380.

Good question. But I think I can say that the way it's built should mean it can get down to ½ grain of most anything pretty well. The adjustment screw, plug, in the small drum is flat and if all-the-way-in would leave darn little space for powder. I'll give it a try with the 800-X that's in it right now. BRB.

Screwing the metering screw way down I was able to get a reliable ½ grain of 800-X. I have no doubt that a powder like W-231 or any of the ball powders would do quite well.
 
Great testing! As a fan of Lee equipment I was about to pick one of these up to try, but now I will stick with my uni flow for pistol and my lyman gen 6 for rifle.
 
Well, I took the bait and ordered one, along with a rifle charging die, last night from FS Reloading.

I have been using a Pro Auto with the charge bar. That set-up didn't like dropping charges of Titegroup under 4 gr.
 
It's not a chargemaster, it's an older powder pro actually made by pact for RCBS. Although it's over 20 years old, it has never failed me, I just trust it.

But you make a good point, I hadn't calibrated it for a while, it just never needs it. But in interest of making sure it's reading correctly, I jut let it warm-up for ½ hour, then ran the small Lyman check weights through a series from .5 to all of them that add up to 10 grains. It was spot on on all of them!

If all I had was a balance beam scale, this test would never had been done. Not by me anyway. I'm a pretty patient guy, more so now that I'm retired and single, I have plenty of time to devote to trivia. Not for that kind of test though.

The beauty of a digital scale is you can tare any empty container, (as long as it fits on the platen and is not too heavy), then put something in it to determine the weight. Just a few seconds added to the loading process on my LCT.



Good question. But I think I can say that the way it's built should mean it can get down to ½ grain of most anything pretty well. The adjustment screw, plug, in the small drum is flat and if all-the-way-in would leave darn little space for powder. I'll give it a try with the 800-X that's in it right now. BRB.

Screwing the metering screw way down I was able to get a reliable ½ grain of 800-X. I have no doubt that a powder like W-231 or any of the ball powders would do quite well.

Well you did say Chargmaster;)

I have a older RCBS Uniflow with both rotors and even it will vary a hair here or there with some flake or stick powders,

A .1 or .2 gr variance I do not feel would make a whole lot of difference especially in a rifle load of over 20 something grains. Cut a stick powder particle and it will throw it off.

A slight breeze from the AC or heat or electric lights can throw a electronic scale off more than that.;)
 
Got mine in today, ran a batch of 200 45acps. 6.2 grains of BE-86. Was within .1 grains with ever one of them. No leaking of powder at all. I took the safety thing off right away. Overall it works really well for that application.
 
Ordered one today. Delivery on Thursday. Will report. [emoji41]
 
Mini Review

Received mine Saturday. It's another clever design by LEE. They use the same hopper as their other powder measures.

A few things I do not like at all.

The hopper just sits on the top of the dispenser, nothing holds it, It is a loose fit. If you happen to hit it or revolve the turret to fast I fear it can fall off, dumping powder.:confused:

The hopper shuts off if you turn it which is good, BUT it leaves a lot of powder in the actual measure unit. The Disc method you could pull the handle say 4 times with a case under it to clear it. This one holds a lot more so you have to unscrew it to dump out the powder:confused: OK I can live with that I guess.

As to metering, I had Power Pistol out and weighed 10 charges at 5.5 gr on a Dillon (Ohaus) beam balance. All were dead on. No real test but it works. Will have to try Unique or something,

The unit is OK but something needs to be done about the powder hopper just flopping around on top! Some kind of set screw or something. Send a e mail to LEE.:scrutiny:


Just weight 10 charges of Unique individual and combined. Set a arbitrary 4.0 gr. The average of 10 charges was 40.5 gr. I do not care for the average method but that is close enough for me!

I wrapped a piece of blue painter tape around the hopper. It fits snug now.
 
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Thanks a lot for the info on this, guys. I totally didn't know this was coming along.

I've been wrestling with my auto-disk for a while now. I've had the usual problems: it doesn't like Unique (which is otherwise my favorite powder), and I need small charge weights for 38 S&W. Overall it does the job well enough that I wasn't willing to spend $100+ on anything better.

I think I'll pick this up in another week or two and see how it does. I'll probably sell off whichever of the two performs worse overall as I'd rather not deal with two different measures.
 
Received mine Monday. Got around to setting it up last night.

Set it up to throw 29 gr. of IMR 4198. This extruded powder reminds me of Varget as far as size. (I have very limited exposure to rifle powders.) At this weight, I had to use the small drum.

I measured 10 throws, with 8 of them weighting at 28.8-28.9 gr. 1 was at 28.7 gr. and 1 was at 29.0 gr. (This is with being straight out of the box, no preconditioning with graphite or any other treatments.)

I didn't feel or hear any crunching. It has a smooth action feel to it.

Next stop will be Titegroup in 380 Auto at about 3.0 gr. or less.
 
Received mine yesterday, set it up and tried it out tonight. I found it easy to set the drums and tried 4.0 gr & 5.2 gr of Red Dot, my plinking powder. I was able to get the measure to consistently throw the exact weight set after running enough cycles to coat the inside of the measure and the drums. I also converted the larger drum to pistol size with the included adapter--works just fine that way. So far, it's a winner for me. Next stop is to try it with other powders... I finally found some W231 that I want to try!
 
I just ordered one as well. I finally placed the order to upgrade my pro1000 to a dillon 650 so $35 added on top seemed like it was worth the gamble.

So far, I have heard very few negatives from those who already have them.
 
Of course, this measure came out a few days after I broke down and bought the adjustable charge bar for my pro auto disk since the difference between hole sizes made it impossible to get the charge weights I wanted to test. I may pick one of these up anyway.
 
I just set mine up for the first time yesterday to load some .223.
Put it on the loadmaster.
Set it to drop 25gr of H335.
I stopped several times along the way to double check the powder drops.
There was never more than a +- .1gr variance.
But what impressed me most was it didn't leak a single bit of the 335.
I think we have a winner.
 
I agree that it meters well but doesn't the lose fit of the hopper bother you guys?? I also do not care for how much powder it holds in the unit (not hopper) so changing powders the who;e thing needs to be unscrewed and dumped.

I fixed the loose fit with a piece of tape, I wrote to Mr Lee and he did not seem to concerned. Figured they could make the force fit tighter.

Just picky I guess.:D
 
I should copy and paste the review I typed out on another forum. My findings are downright horrible. It would not meter consistently w/ a few different powders. And it leaked like a sieve from around the drum. H110 and W748 ended up all over the bench and floor.

Had issues w/ the drum returning to the same position every time. I suspect this is the reason for the charge inconsistencies. And there was anywhere from 70-95 grains of powder left in the body after removing the hopper.

Maybe I bought a lemon. I bought a second one but haven't had the time to test it. I was really let down by this measure.
 
1st, your drum was not tight enough. I know the destructions say to not tighten it too much, but it does need to be snugged up well. Cycle the measure before adding powder as you tighten the drum. If it begins to drag enough to slow down on the return stroke, it's too tight, back off a bit, now it should not leak. Mine does not leak with any type of powder.

2nd it sounds like you didn't clean the internals before using it. Mine had a layer of some sort of grease that attracted the Varget I used the first time. It seemed to "leak", it was just the powder that was clinging to the insides finally letting go between throws.

Take it apart, clean it thoroughly, then either coat the insides with graphite, OR run a bunch of heavily graphite coated powder through it. Every new powder measure will need to be cleaned and broken in before it settles down to work right.
 
You are completely wrong on all accounts. The review is on Cast Boolits and goes into great detail. I did all the things you "recommend" whch are common sense. Maybe I got a lemon. But mine does not work well.
 
2 more tests with the pistol drum in measure #2. With 2 notoriously difficult to meter powders. Unique and IMR 800-X

First Unique, target charge is 6.5
6.5
6.6
6.4
6.6
6.7
6.6
6.6
6.5
6.5
6.5
6.6
6.5
6.7
6.8
6.5
6.6
6.5
6.6

Wow, .4 grain variance for unique? This was for my 45 again with the MP 200 SWC
Now for the 800 X target charge is 7.2
7.2
7.3
6.9
6.9
7.1
7.2
7.1
7.1
7.5 tossed it back, max is 7.9
7.2
7.2
7.2
7.1
7.2
6.9
7.0
7.1
7.0
Well, one high at 7.5 otherwise pretty darn even for such a hard powder to get to meter well. .6 under the 200 SWC is probably better than these old eyes can see to shoot. Pretty happy with the performance for pistols, I can see a couple of more in the future.
Excellent. Unless you are on the very high end limit, there is a wide range that is safe with Unique. Your results are great!

Russellc
 
Just ordered one. I found it both at FS reloading, and Titan reloading. Went with Titan as there is a 7.00 2 day usps ship option...FS was 13 and change with I believe it was UPS. Call me cheap...

Russellc
 
You are completely wrong on all accounts. The review is on Cast Boolits and goes into great detail. I did all the things you "recommend" whch are common sense. Maybe I got a lemon. But mine does not work well.

Seem to be in the minority. Return it for refund or replacement.:)
 
Got mine delivered, first use was Power Pistol. Loaded 25 rounds, all remeasured on a dillon (Ohas) beam scale (which I find super accurate and super easy to use) all rounds were spot on except 2...one slightly under and one slightly over...both of the variances followed forgetting to press the button, pulling the lever and getting no powder of course, then pressing and re pulling. Dont know for sure if there was a correlation, but that's when it happened.

Next up will be Unique. Power pistol isnt that difficult, not as free flowing as HP-38/WIN 231 or ACC #2, but a little more inconsistent with the Pro Auto Disk.

So far, works well and in fact more consistent than with Pro Auto disk. Not that it's a big problem, but if I am on the edge, I will double check weights on the scale before capping off with a bullet when using the Auto disk. It will occasionally short a few and dump a larger one (bridging) unless I routinely tap it before the pull. With the new measure, I did not tap anything, just pulled.

So far, very pleased with this reasonable priced gadget. (BTW, this was with a Lee Turret press, this device clears the priming device more cleanly than the Pro Auto Disk did as well)

Russellc
 
I disconnected (removed)the stupid "safety". I actually think it stands more chance of a no charge then a double charge,
 
I weighed 10 in a row charges that I set at 3.0 gr. of Titegroup. Using a LCT with 4-die set.

7 dropped at 3.0 gr and 3 dropped at 3.1 gr. I think that is good. :)

Next, I will check for leakage. I have a some AA #2 that is about as fine as powder gets.

Rule3, I did disconnect the safety right off the bat. I think they put that on there for new reloaders. It is good that they make it easy to remove.
 
Removing the safety on double charge disconnector is probably good idea on a SS or turret press because of the potential for an case not getting charged.

On Dillon 550B it works flawlessly and adds an additional layer of safety for preventing a double charge.

So disconnecting it depends on what press it's being used on. Visual inspection of every case powder level should be a part of the routine anyway. I have inspection mirrors on both my turret and progressive presses.
 
Why anyone would use the LEE powder measure on a Dillon 550B is beyond me,:confused:

Kind of defeats the purpose of a progressive press and the colors clash.;)
 
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