I ended up grounded with a flat on my tractor and won't have a tube and a service truck until tomorrow, so I spent more time the Auto Drum and running stats.
I looked at "soaping" the drums again against not doing anything and mica. Soaping with Dawn wins hands down everytime, it cuts SD & ES in half. Okay, that's settled so then I started in on just how much powder needs to run through these things before you start using them. I looked at the information from a statistical standpoint. Speaking of statistics, a statistician for SAAMI went to great lengths to try to explain to me that all the stuff that I do, pressure trace and velocity strings, should contain 17 points. He told me at great length why less than 17 points are mathematically invalid and why more are statistically immaterial. I'm a very basic thinker so said "okay, 17" and didn't worry about the rest.
By this time, I had the feeling that eliminating the first three drops would prove, statistically, to be good enough, so I started running strings of twenty charges. Out of those twenty,
- I would drop the first three, and
- Calculate the SD and ES from the remaining string of 17.
I continued to look at H110 at loads that would be used in a revolver and then I added TiteGroup and Unique, two more dispenser unfriendly powders, as they would be used in the 25 Auto and 9mm Luger. What I found was that the:
- SD would be <1-grain
- the ES would be 3-grains (desired charge +/- 1-grain)
I truly can live with this.
I then looked at how I filled the housing, but the bottom-line is that it is immaterial if you drop the first three charges. All kinds of schemes had no effect on the statistics, 17 point strings, as long as the first three charges were dropped.
Next, how do I empty this thing? Using it with the 25 Auto was bugging me and you ae using such a little charge. A said case of over thinking on my part. Hey, you shut it off so just pull the hopper off and dump it. Then, unscrew the housing from the charging/expanding die and dump it. Duh! You just need to be sure that you have shut the hopper off so like many of us, mark your hopper with references.
Whew. I'm done with statistics, I'm done with worrying about the performance of the Auto Drum.
I now own four of them and 40 drums for my inventory loads. One each will go to the Load-Masters and one will be shared by the Turret and Automator.