Worst thing you have purchased for reloading

[ronstone09]

JE, sorry you had trouble with your CM, mine works pretty well.

I don't use it for loads below 40 grains. A 40 grain load that varies .1 grain is only 0.25% variation, for anything but BR shooting, I consider that acceptable.

I check mine often with a Ohaus 304 scale.

Regarding the worse thing, would have the to be the Pac Scale/dispenser I bought about 5 years ago. Was supposed to be the newest and greatest thing. What a piece of junk. Extremely slow, and varied .3-.5 grains every charge.

They wouldn't stand behind it, so I put on Ebay for half price with note in all caps stating "it is not accurate!" Some guy jumped on it. Before I sent it to him, I made sure he understood what he was getting.

I consider myself lucky to have sold it, rather than trash it.

i use the chargemaster and set it for 1 less grain than recommended the i trickle to the correct load with a beam scale !

 

[ruby76]

i use the chargemaster and set it for 1 less grain than recommended the i trickle to the correct load with a beam scale !

To me that seems like an expensive powder hopper. I do the same with my rcbs hopper and trickle with a beam scale. Hopper is quick so I don't see a time savings either.

 

[Lunger]

sure glad I did not buy a chargmaster, Ill stick with the older "slower" way

 

[Roughwater]

I knew that some were satisfied with theirs and that was the reason I went down that road. I do things differently than some, and that was one of the reasons I didn't like mine. I don't overlap the steps like some do and will dump powder in batches before I do any other step like seating the bullets. I like to look at all the loaded cases in the batch to see if there are any differences in the powder charge and the case. Even though I weighted each one, if one does not look right, I re-weigh it to make sure. (Sometimes the powder charge doesn't compact the same, but I want to assure that there is not a problem.

The face that the Charge masters were notorious about error charges, left me uneasy when loading MAXIMUM CHARGES and I just lost confidence and decided to go back to what worked best for me.

I try to keep chance and Murphy's law out of my business when reloading, and it just seemed the right way for me to accomplish that .

J E CUSTOM

I totally understand. Everyone has their own way of doing things. A guy's gotta do what works for them. A primary objective should be safety and accuracy. If you are getting both done with the way you load then it's not a bad idea to stick with it for sure. Personally I feel more comfortable using an electronic scale VS a pendulem type scale. I used them for a while but to me they seemed soo slow dripping powder and waiting to see if the scale will balance completely out.

 

[tumbleweed7mmstw]

Sure a lot of negative comments about electronic scales on here. I'll pitch in an old "worst-thing-purchased-for-reloading" item ever. Back in the early 1990"s, I was looking for a faster way to produce a lot more pistol ammo reloading to keep up with my handgun practice. This was the early days of progressive loading machines. Purchased an RCBS "Piggy Back Progressive" system that was made to be added on top of my RCBS Rockchucker, thinking this would be the answerer. Not cheap either, paid over 200. What a mistake that was, never could overcome all the problems with it. Less than a few years later I spent over a thousand loading up a Dillon 650 with all the bells and whistles. Fantastic progressive loader, still using it today for most all of my pistol and 5.56/.223 loading. About electronic scale/powder dispensers, I do have and use my RCBS ChargeMaster, drop the charges short and finish them on the RCBS 10-10 beam scale with the Redding powder trickler. I don't like "digital" readings for measuring my high power rifle loadings as all digital readings are rounded up or down to the next closest reading. It's like looking at your phone to see what time it is, keep looking at it is now 12:44 or is it almost 12:45? No way to tell if that scale reading is just close to 58.6 grains or about to hist 58.7! Now with my RCBS 10-10 scale sitting dead level on the elevated shelf of my reloading bench, I'm looking straight ahead at my eye level and watching that line on the beam move to the dead center of the middle marker of the scale body as I trickle in the last little grain of powder. Consistency is what accurate round to round or shot to shot is all about. I do like that Chargemaster modification "Reloader28" has shown us and I'll be getting one.

 

[SmallHoles]

I once bought a Redding carbide expander ball for my 6mm BR Redding Competition Neck Sizing Die.

I bought it in the hope of opening up the tight necks of virgin Lapua brass so I didn't have to fire it once just to get the desired neck tension. I first tried lubricating the insides of my brass necks with Imperial Dry Neck Lube but it deformed the case neck asymmetrically and ruined both cases I tried it with. The same thing happened with Imperial Sizing Die Wax. I called Redding and they were surprised and could offer no suggestions for making it work right. At about $1/case I gave up on that idea pretty quickly.

 

[WYO300RUM]

Hornady handheld priming tool! Absolute junk! Constantly puts in primers in sideways, got a RCBS bench mount now. Only way to fly!!

I second that !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[villagelightsmith]

A clock.

 

[Truc]

Vibratory brass cleaner, complete waste of time, just hit it lightly with 0000 steel wool and be done

 

[John Klingenberg]

That squirrel cage looking thing you hand crank that's supposed to separate the tumbling media from your brass. Ya, no.

 

[aushunter1]

Where do you buy them from and what exactly they supposed to do?

The standard tube of the CMC is straight & wide, the insert restricts the flow of powder & it also acts as a bit of a funnel being wider at the inner side & smaller the outer edge.
Basically this reduces large amounts of powder dropping out at the end of the trickle cycle which usually results in over throws.

 

[John Klingenberg]

I hear you on electric charge throwers. Not consistent for finished charges. I always set mine to .3gr below target weight, then transfer to my RCBS 5-0-5 and trickle to the individual kernel. Exactly.

As for ELD-X/ELD-M......yeah. Not my cup of tea either. 3 out of 12 rifles have LOVED them. The other 9 were mediocre at best. Give me a green or orange/yellow box, and I am a happy man.

I bought the Hornady and was really disappointed. Solved most problems after calling Hornady. 1. No air circulating at all. 2. No music that has any base, even country, turn your treble down! 3. Turn it on at least an hour before you start and dont touch it, then calibrate. It works fine now.

 

[RandyinVa]

For me it was a high dollar famous powder charge. Might be ok for really small br stuff but sucked for my larger cases. My chargemaster is also set to drop a little lite and I pinch in or pinch out and stop when it settles on the money. I doubt the weights shown are absolute and don't care. I only care that each finished one is identical to the previous one. For my heaviest used case, I try to throw 45.6. It gives me the tightest group and I care not what it really measures unless I we're forced to build some away from home. The charge master also keeps you from having to buy probably the most expensive piece of kit, a high dollar pure scale.

 

[freddiej]

The worst equipment I have ever used/bought. I have had several bad pieces of reloading equipment.. first and foremost an RCBS 304 scale. it would never read the same charge weight twice even if I put the same charge on the scale 20 times. It would only come up with the same weight maybe 3 times at best out of 20 times I reweighed the same charge.. it was so bad I went to a Dillon beam scale and it was very good. then I started having problems with the dillon beam giving accurate weights. it was then consistently bad 100% of the time. it was off by 0.3 grains. then I made a huge mistake and bought a lot of three Lee presses, at an auction. NEVER AGAIN! I sold every piece of Lee equipment I had bought. cheap, crappy, almost broke each of the presses just resizing 30-30 and 270 brass.
the worst ever components.. R-P brass. splits every time. I had 600 rounds of 17 Rem after the first firing I had 100 left, after 2nd firing I had 20 left. 30-30, 18 out of every 20 would not make it past first firing. this kind of crap went through all my R-P brass. 270, 30-06 (M-1 Garand), 22-250, and the rest of my calibers.