Having tried "everything" for literally 30yrs......I have every case-measuring tool and prep'ing station, I've segregated, aggregated, annealed, congealed and repealed, bell-curved, indexed, primer-pocketed, flash-holed, neck-tensioned and seating-depthed myself blue in the face. I've swapped powders and primers and bullets around, ran cut-rifled against buttoned, and neck against neck....and finally achieved success using a scale. A GOOD scale....... I can now easily make FACTORY rifles log single digits.
Really, everything else kinda' fades into the background once you start accurately weighing loads. I got in on an initial offering of the Denver Instruments MXX 123 which easily indicates individual kernels of powder which turned me on to the fact that a KERNEL of extruded powder is worth from 3-8fps depending on application.
IMO the middle-of-the-road cases from 308 to -06 and including the WSM cases (basically a short-action -06) are the easiest to get into single digit ES, with smaller ones and larger ones offering some small challenges, easily surmounted challenges but challenges ne'rtheless.
Weighing powder to the kernel allows one to assess the effect of case size, shape and variation without any velocity bias......it's eye-opening!
I would no more load without a good scale now than I would frame a house without a tape measure, or put away my calipers and mics and run my lathe just off the dials and a machinists rule...IMO the single-kernel capable scale is THE absolute secret to low ES, the solution.
