n133 thrown charges at a match

M

mike in co

Guest
ladies and gentlemen,
at the best of the west match at raton nm, i asked a bunch of shooters
to provide me with thrown charges of n133.
first..i noticed a lot of rcbs chargemaster's, and few guys with electronic
scales for their thrown charges.
i only got two guys to submit samples, so not a very scientific sample size.
i "think" some know how bad n133 throws and choose to not participate.
i got 9 thrown charges from 2 shooters. bagged and taken home. weighed on
my a&d fx120i....good to 0.02.

shooter one
24.80
24.72
25.02
24.92
24.62
25.08
24.48
24.76
24.80
spread 0.6
avg 24.80

shooter two
29.04
28.94
29.10
29.08
29.00
28.90
28.76
28.98
28.82
ave 28.95
spread 0.34

i still contend that throwing n133 means the shooter
is leaving accuracy on the loading bench.
both of these shooters finished in the top 20.
the guy with the .34 spread finished above the guy with the .6 spread....
was it better shooting or better loading ??
 
Having spent more time than anyone that I have ever heard of or read about trying really out of the box ways to throw 133, (something that only requires powder, a measure, and a very good scale), and having observed how shooters throw powder at matches, I am not surprised by the results of your survey, however small the sample may have been.
IMO given the node width of 133 and the average, and even above average thrown charge consistency, I think that your conclusion is correct. For everyone who cannot throw exceptionally well, they are probably leaving something on the table. I just wish that any of this would result in better rifle handling, picking a better condition to start ones group in, or reading flags. I would also add that I have seen any number of teen aggs shot with thrown charges. Go figure.
 
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I've never weighed powder when shooting benchrest. A skosh better rifle using thrown charges will beat the weighed charges every time. I don't see why weighed powder wouldn't win given equal rifles (or the same rifle) but I don't know that to be true. It really doesn't matter much given those that weigh, and those that don't, are not going to change.

If your rifle shoots a .3xx agg while others are shooting teens, weighing powder is a complete waste of time.
 
By how much did the 0.34 spread "finish ahead of" the 0.60? As for me, I'll continue to throw for short-range. If weighing really netted much, I think you'd see more pre-weighing in the sport. Meanwhile I'll continue to practice my throwing technique as Boyd described. If I can stay within a 0.3 spread or so I'm happy....I doubt anything tighter could be seen at 100/200.

-Lee
www.singleactions.com
 
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When I started out in bullseye pistol eons ago, I scrambled around looking for tips and tricks to help me. I asked one long time shooter for help. He told me, "if you're shooting tens, then some things may turn some of the tens into X's, but if you're shooting nine's, nothing will turn them into X's except practice."
 
I have fired thousands of rounds, burning up some pretty good barrels in the process, trying to find a demonstrable difference between weighed and thrown charges. Not with N133 as I've never used it. My 30BR is loaded with H4198 (except for a dozen or so trying LT-32) and my 6PPC eat 8208XBR and LT-32. I am, at best, a "middle-of-the-pack" shooter but nobody enjoys it more than I do.

1. I have filled spreadsheets with data, results, etc., to no avail. Not a single repeatable result on the paper.

2. There are so many things that affect a tiny group or high X-count that the miniscule difference in powder charge is meaningless. I can move a 30BR hole in the paper by 1/2" just by varying my shoulder pressure on the buttplate. At 200 yards, the result of poor "bench manners" is scary. Tightening or loosening the front bag moves the bullet. Pushing the stock against the stop or letting it slip back a bit moves the bullet.

3. Even carefully weighed charges carefully trickled into the cases through a long drop tube, end up at different levels in the case. This indicates the internal area of the cases are different. Given that (and no, I'm going to fill the all with water, etc., etc.) what difference in actual pressure and burning rate does a few tenths make?

4. The wind and mirage are nobody's "friend". Therein is the secret to tiny groups, regardless of how your charges were determined.

5. Dicking around with "concentricity" in short-range BR with a custom chamber is borderline lunacy. My chambers and FL custom dies leave .001" (.0005 per side) of free space at all points in the chamber; the bullets are sitting in a zero freebore throat just kissing the lands. Where in heck can there be any concentricity issue? If I intentionally skew a bullet to .010" out of concentricity, simply chambering the case straightens it out.

6. The problem is we spend much more time at the loading bench than at the range. And I can spend copious amounts of money to get the "exact" this or that; and I especially love the "fooling around".

Bottom line to me: nothing will improve your results on the target like methodically paying attention to the conditions and your bench manners. Body position will negate many tenths of a grain of powder. Not understanding or seeing a minor condition will ruin a group much worse than .02-gr. of powder.

The good side of this for me is that I do this whole crazy hobby for the shooting, so I enjoy getting to the range and shooting. Barrels actually cost less than the "must-have" loading equipment I've accumulated over the years. There may be 10 shooters in the sport who can outshoot .02-gr. of powder, but I've never met one of them.
 
reed. this was specifically about n133.
16yrs ago when i started looking at club br n133 was the powder of choice.
but when i tried to throw charges i ran into this issue of large spreads.
so here it is 16 yrs later and it has not changed.
i weigh my charges for 600/1000 in both 300 win mag and 6mm dasher. i do the same with h4198 and lt30 for my 30 br.
no thrown charges in competition..none.
try lt30 in the 30br...straight from lou's lips...a bit more powder, a bit more velocity..all the accuracy.

ReedG said:
I have fired thousands of rounds, burning up some pretty good barrels in the process, trying to find a demonstrable difference between weighed and thrown charges. Not with N133 as I've never used it. My 30BR is loaded with H4198 (except for a dozen or so trying LT-32) and my 6PPC eat 8208XBR and LT-32. I am, at best, a "middle-of-the-pack" shooter but nobody enjoys it more than I do.

1. I have filled spreadsheets with data, results, etc., to no avail. Not a single repeatable result on the paper.

2. There are so many things that affect a tiny group or high X-count that the miniscule difference in powder charge is meaningless. I can move a 30BR hole in the paper by 1/2" just by varying my shoulder pressure on the buttplate. At 200 yards, the result of poor "bench manners" is scary. Tightening or loosening the front bag moves the bullet. Pushing the stock against the stop or letting it slip back a bit moves the bullet.

3. Even carefully weighed charges carefully trickled into the cases through a long drop tube, end up at different levels in the case. This indicates the internal area of the cases are different. Given that (and no, I'm going to fill the all with water, etc., etc.) what difference in actual pressure and burning rate does a few tenths make?

4. The wind and mirage are nobody's "friend". Therein is the secret to tiny groups, regardless of how your charges were determined.

5. Dicking around with "concentricity" in short-range BR with a custom chamber is borderline lunacy. My chambers and FL custom dies leave .001" (.0005 per side) of free space at all points in the chamber; the bullets are sitting in a zero freebore throat just kissing the lands. Where in heck can there be any concentricity issue? If I intentionally skew a bullet to .010" out of concentricity, simply chambering the case straightens it out.

6. The problem is we spend much more time at the loading bench than at the range. And I can spend copious amounts of money to get the "exact" this or that; and I especially love the "fooling around".

Bottom line to me: nothing will improve your results on the target like methodically paying attention to the conditions and your bench manners. Body position will negate many tenths of a grain of powder. Not understanding or seeing a minor condition will ruin a group much worse than .02-gr. of powder.

The good side of this for me is that I do this whole crazy hobby for the shooting, so I enjoy getting to the range and shooting. Barrels actually cost less than the "must-have" loading equipment I've accumulated over the years. There may be 10 shooters in the sport who can outshoot .02-gr. of powder, but I've never met one of them.
Click to expand...
 
i did not get permission to post names..
the 0.34 was 7 up from the .6
they are actually very high in the top 20.
for correctness of reporting, Jim Hemmert was throwing charges, but i do not think he was using n133.

Lee Martin said:
By how much did the 0.34 spread "finish ahead of" the 0.60? As for me, I'll continue to throw for short-range. If weighing really netted much, I think you'd see more pre-weighing in the sport. Meanwhile I'll continue to practice my throwing technique as Boyd described. If I can stay within a 0.3 spread or so I'm happy....I doubt anything tighter could be seen at 100/200.

-Lee
www.singleactions.com
Click to expand...
 
ReedG said:
I have fired thousands of rounds, burning up some pretty good barrels in the process, trying to find a demonstrable difference between weighed and thrown charges. Not with N133 as I've never used it. My 30BR is loaded with H4198 (except for a dozen or so trying LT-32) and my 6PPC eat 8208XBR and LT-32. I am, at best, a "middle-of-the-pack" shooter but nobody enjoys it more than I do.

1. I have filled spreadsheets with data, results, etc., to no avail. Not a single repeatable result on the paper.

2. There are so many things that affect a tiny group or high X-count that the miniscule difference in powder charge is meaningless. I can move a 30BR hole in the paper by 1/2" just by varying my shoulder pressure on the buttplate. At 200 yards, the result of poor "bench manners" is scary. Tightening or loosening the front bag moves the bullet. Pushing the stock against the stop or letting it slip back a bit moves the bullet.

3. Even carefully weighed charges carefully trickled into the cases through a long drop tube, end up at different levels in the case. This indicates the internal area of the cases are different. Given that (and no, I'm going to fill the all with water, etc., etc.) what difference in actual pressure and burning rate does a few tenths make?

4. The wind and mirage are nobody's "friend". Therein is the secret to tiny groups, regardless of how your charges were determined.

5. Dicking around with "concentricity" in short-range BR with a custom chamber is borderline lunacy. My chambers and FL custom dies leave .001" (.0005 per side) of free space at all points in the chamber; the bullets are sitting in a zero freebore throat just kissing the lands. Where in heck can there be any concentricity issue? If I intentionally skew a bullet to .010" out of concentricity, simply chambering the case straightens it out.

6. The problem is we spend much more time at the loading bench than at the range. And I can spend copious amounts of money to get the "exact" this or that; and I especially love the "fooling around".

Bottom line to me: nothing will improve your results on the target like methodically paying attention to the conditions and your bench manners. Body position will negate many tenths of a grain of powder. Not understanding or seeing a minor condition will ruin a group much worse than .02-gr. of powder.

The good side of this for me is that I do this whole crazy hobby for the shooting, so I enjoy getting to the range and shooting. Barrels actually cost less than the "must-have" loading equipment I've accumulated over the years. There may be 10 shooters in the sport who can outshoot .02-gr. of powder, but I've never met one of them.
Click to expand...




Great Post ,ReedG. My Views and Motivation are similar. Some of my problem is not enough practice.



Glenn
 
PPC no more 133

After so many mixed results with 133 I will only load my ppc at the shop. It means loading a ton of rounds to have every one I need. But I can't throw 133 to save my life. Just starting testing xbr in the new gun. Time will tell. Might go back to 322 (old stock)
 
Ed Adams won the two gun throwing 133, I came in thrid in the two gun throwing 133??
So what's the problem again.
 
it is quite simple...most people cannot throw it at plus or minus 0.1
a chargemaster can.
your results convince people that it is ok to throw..even when they do not know how poorly they are doing.

congrats on your shooting!
TylerT said:
Ed Adams won the two gun throwing 133, I came in thrid in the two gun throwing 133??
So what's the problem again.
Click to expand...
 
I am back to throwing charges.

In my 30BR, the best scores I have shot were with thrown charges of 4198 out of my old, (1996), Bruno measure.

I use a Hensler in my 6PPC with 133. I have meticulously weighed each charge, and simply thrown them. I cannot tell the difference either on the target or over my Chronograph.

I have a Chargemaster. I have sat down with it in my office, weighed charges, and then checked them on my Denver Electronics TP153 Scale, which is very accurate. Guess what. If you throw 20 charges, the variation can be as much as .4 out of the Chargemaster. The resolution on their system is really not that accurate.

I also have a Lyman Electronic Range scale that does no better. You can put a case on it, zero it, Throw a charge and add powder as needed to get it exact, and it has about the same tolerance as the Chargemaster.

Unless you have a scale that has the resolution of this Denver unit, you are probably wasting a lot of time weighing charges.
 
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When the wind is blowing like it was at Raton, the match is won by the person who reads their flags the best and doesn't lose that one or two shots to condition changes. A gun has to be tuned but how much of that tune relates to how exact the powder charge is? The rifle has to be tuned, but maybe not as well as it needs to be for trigger pulling conditions (conditions we very rarely ever see in the GC or MC regions). I've done enough ladder testing with widely varying powder charges from lower weights to higher weights that see very little point of impact shift from lower to higher powder charges. A rifle out of tune may look like its shooting but pop a shot out of the group. As long as the shooter can keep his rifle in tune, read the flags well, start the group and finish the group when it's best to do it and not have those group killer shots, that shooter will probably be at the top if not the top of the leader board. You see more and more people at matches using Chargemasters especially when using 133. However, with the very limited testing that I've done, I didn't see much difference in weigh variation between how 133 threw through a measure than how LT32 threw. At the World match in Australia, Don Creach told me that most of the U.S. team members were weighing their powder. It certainly doesn't hurt.
 
Before going to the "Best of the West" I decided to check my Dodd measure to see how well it would drop charges in the area I was likely to use, 27 to 29 grains of LT-32.
I used seven different settings on the measure and did ten drops on each. I weighed each drop on my Fx120i. The difference in the Hi and Low at each measure setting varied from .14 to .32. The average of the differences was .21. So, I guess you could say that, over the total population charges dropped, the variation from the mean was about 0.1. Now I'm no statistician, so I can't say if that is a valid assumption. I do have two chargemasters and like them but a measure is a lot less gear to pack. I also have a Harrel measure and I'm going to run the same type experiment on that.
 
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jackie,
have you tried the tunning tips for the charge master ??

jackie schmidt said:
I am back to throwing charges.

In my 30BR, the best scores I have shot were with thrown charges of 4198 out of my old, (1996), Bruno measure.

I use a Hensler in my 6PPC with 133. I have meticulously weighed each charge, and simply thrown them. I cannot tell the difference either on the target or over my Chronograph.

I have a Chargemaster. I have sat down with it in my office, weighed charges, and then checked them on my Denver Electronics TP153 Scale, which is very accurate. Guess what. If you throw 20 charges, the variation can be as much as .4 out of the Chargemaster. The resolution on their system is really not that accurate.

I also have a Lyman Electronic Range scale that does no better. You can put a case on it, zero it, Throw a charge and add powder as needed to get it exact, and it has about the same tolerance as the Chargemaster.

Unless you have a scale that has the resolution of this Denver unit, you are probably wasting a lot of time weighing charges.
Click to expand...
 
0.01 ??
explain that...
looks like plus or minus 0.12 at the best and 0.16 at the worst, for a average spread of 0.28.


i have done imr8208, thunderbird8202 and n133 thru my harrells. since Lou gave me some lt30, i will do it after the NBRSA 600/1000 nationals next week.



adamsgt said:
Before going to the "Best of the West" I decided to check my Dodd measure to see how well it would drop charges in the area I was likely to use, 27 to 29 grains of LT-32.
I used seven different settings on the measure and did ten drops on each. I weighed each drop on my Fx120i. The difference in the Hi and Low at each measure setting varied from .14 to .32. The average of the differences was .21. So, I guess you could say that, over the total population charges dropped, the variation from the mean was about .01. Now I'm no statistician, so I can't say if that is a valid assumption. I do have two chargemasters and like them but a measure is a lot less gear to pack. I also have a Harrel measure and I'm going to run the same type experiment on that.
Click to expand...
 
a simple change to improve your thrown charges

boyd and i have been talking.
he has published several times that he has worked hard at getting consistent
charges from a powder thrower. one of the thing he and i both agree one is that simplest
thing you can do is to maintain a constant level in the powder bottle. simply mark your bottle
at the half way point and then up an inch or so. keep the powder in that band and you CAN
throw more consistent charges.

any spot works, the narrower the height of the band the more consistent.

set up one bottle to feed the measure bottle (bottle on top of bottle). a three inch tube from the top bottle
sitting inside the second bottle will keep the level very consistent.
 
My approach is similar but slightly different. I have found that for 133, using my Harrell's measure, that there is a specific fill height band that works best for me (500 ml. bottles). My measure is put away in my range loading kit at the moment. When I first got the measure, back in the late 90s, testing showed that I got better results without the baffle.
 
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