Originally Posted by
Wise_A
Agreed. I would hold off on dropping 3-digit money on an electronic scale now. Not having a balance beam myself, I might be inclined to buy one of those just to have a different capability, but that's it. And to be frank, at a certain point, you just need to quit worrying about drift and interference and every other invisible thing. Later on, I would get the big Chargemaster, which is sort've the last step before you go really crazy and attach a trickler to a lab scale.
Here's my story, that I think really illustrates what the Chargemaster is like:
I had a Lee Perfect Powder Measure and base, a hand trickler, and Hornady Drug Dealer Edition mini-scale. Total investment, ~$100, I think. I loaded a spread of 6.5CM charges using best practices, chrono'd them, and got an SD of 9 off the best one. Pretty happy, but hand-trickling 50 charges took an hour by itself and gave me a sore back from hunching over the bench.
Got an RCBS Chargemaster as a birthday gift, best price on these was ~$300 a few months ago. Repeated the same 50-round test, got an SD of 7 off the previous best-performing charge. Within the margin of error, but the difference is that I was done in 30 mins with minimal effort. Without reprogramming the Chargemaster's trickle rates, I can seat a bullet on one round, and by the time I put that round back in the tray, it's finished weighing out the next charge for me to pour.
Totally worth the extra $200.