I have mentioned before that I am getting back into reloading after years. Before, I had always used my father's set-up but now all that stuff is mine and I pulled it out of storage where it has been since the mid 80's.
All my father (& I) had reloaded was 38spl and when I took the scale out of the box the other day, the charge setting was still set on the beam so I decided to make sure it zero'd out okay since I will be loading 45acp. I cleaned it up, including some rust on the beam pivots and made sure the pivot blocks were clean but I could not get it to zero. It was always 'heavy' with an empty pan
I checked and double-checked everything. I know there is not too much that can go wrong with a beam scale without some major damage to it so I was pulling what little hair I have left, out. Finally, I took the pan support apart and emptied out the lead shot that is used for calibration and found I could get a consistent zero if I removed 3 of the middle size shot. This shot is not terribly big, about the size of a period on this page, as seen in this picture of it sitting in the pan
With those three removed, I have a good zero with an empty pan
but I don't know if it is wise to be messing with the factory calibration. Could this thing have been off since it left the factory or since my father had bought it used, could the previous owner got the pan support swapped with a different scale? Since we were loading light target loads for the 38 and firing them from 357 revolvers, if the scale was off that little bit, I am not sure if the increased charge would have been noticeable.
Short of buying another scale or finding someone else with a scale to verify this one, I am hesitant to trust it when I start to load for my 45. Those 3 weights are about .9 gn which can be a big difference when you are working with 4-5 gn loads. Can anyone see any error in my way of thinking... something I have missed. I would normally tend to think that once a scale is calibrated in the beginning, that should remain the calibration short of some major upheaval of the situation and I shouldn't be trusting it if I have to remove cal weight but on the other hand, a beam type scale is not 'rocket surgery' and if I can get it zero and the micrometer poise has not changed weight or thread pitch, it should be accurate.
(btw, I had thought that if the shot weight was steel, some rust on the shot could attribute this but the shot is not magnetic)
All my father (& I) had reloaded was 38spl and when I took the scale out of the box the other day, the charge setting was still set on the beam so I decided to make sure it zero'd out okay since I will be loading 45acp. I cleaned it up, including some rust on the beam pivots and made sure the pivot blocks were clean but I could not get it to zero. It was always 'heavy' with an empty pan
I checked and double-checked everything. I know there is not too much that can go wrong with a beam scale without some major damage to it so I was pulling what little hair I have left, out. Finally, I took the pan support apart and emptied out the lead shot that is used for calibration and found I could get a consistent zero if I removed 3 of the middle size shot. This shot is not terribly big, about the size of a period on this page, as seen in this picture of it sitting in the pan
With those three removed, I have a good zero with an empty pan
but I don't know if it is wise to be messing with the factory calibration. Could this thing have been off since it left the factory or since my father had bought it used, could the previous owner got the pan support swapped with a different scale? Since we were loading light target loads for the 38 and firing them from 357 revolvers, if the scale was off that little bit, I am not sure if the increased charge would have been noticeable.
Short of buying another scale or finding someone else with a scale to verify this one, I am hesitant to trust it when I start to load for my 45. Those 3 weights are about .9 gn which can be a big difference when you are working with 4-5 gn loads. Can anyone see any error in my way of thinking... something I have missed. I would normally tend to think that once a scale is calibrated in the beginning, that should remain the calibration short of some major upheaval of the situation and I shouldn't be trusting it if I have to remove cal weight but on the other hand, a beam type scale is not 'rocket surgery' and if I can get it zero and the micrometer poise has not changed weight or thread pitch, it should be accurate.
(btw, I had thought that if the shot weight was steel, some rust on the shot could attribute this but the shot is not magnetic)
I thought about doing that with the lead swc I had for the 38 but wasn't sure exactly the tolerance lead bullets hold to.... I completely spaced off that I had the jacketed ones for the 45.
