Lee Loader

I wonder what folks use to measure very small charges of powder accurately.
I loaded up a bunch of 223 rem subsonic with 55 grain gc hard cast bullets over 3.1 grains of titegroup, my perfect powder measure ended up like mary poppins resume, just practically perfect.
I gave up on it after the first run as I was concerned aver the accuracy.
I ended up measuring the loads with an rcbs 5-0-2 balance but getting that small of a load was very time consuming.
Eventually I bought a digital scale but again v. slow.
Assuming that small loads are your thing, how do you accurately measure loads this small bearing in mind that a 0.1 grain variation equates to 3% of a 3.1 grain load.

My 9X19mm load of 4.9 grains Bullseye is the smallest load I have and it's not a problem with an Auto Drum.

If it positively, absolutely just has to be 3.1 grains then adjust your powder measure to 3.0 grains and use a trickler to get the charge to exactly 3.1. I find that a beam scale works better when trickling to an exact weight.

I've used nothing but a digital scale and various LEE dippers for the last 10-11 years. Started out the first couple of years with a PACT scale a buddy loaned me, then bought a clone of the PACT in a RCBS RangeMaster 750 scale. Along the way I've found the proper dipper to get close to charge weight for various powders, so I can casually just dip the powder (sometimes just visually short of a full dipper) and drop into the pan .... then pick up a bit more powder and lightly "tap trickle" to hit my weight. It's really a lot faster than you might think, especially when you consider how much faster it is to occasionally wipe dippers off with an anti-static dryer sheet than to disassemble/clean/adjust a powder thrower.

But, I am a "Batch loader" doing mostly pistol type cartridges with 30-30 win being my only bottlenecked rifle cartridge. With that assortment of calibers I've been able to keep life simple and stick to my cherished LEE Hand Press rather than having to devote space to a proper bench and bench mounted press(s).

jd

I have used my Lee PPM (maybe 30 years old) to charge my 32 ACP handloads. Some W231 listed charges are 2.1 gr.-2.3 gr. and I weighed them on an RCBS 5-10. I would set my powder measure to drop a hair under 2.0 and trickle up. Yep, not as fast as could be, but no over/under charges...

FWIW; I found it nearly impossible and extremely slow to try and trickle up on any one of the 3 digital scales I tried..

Thanks all for your interest.
I spent half an hour in my "workshop" today prepping various cast and swaged bullets for reloading, I also parcelled up my rcbs 5-0-2 scale with a view to selling it locally but it may get a reprieve now thanks to some info.
I've found the scale is susceptible to drafts big time that throws readings off willy-nilly which was one of the reasons I wanted shot of it.

Blasphemy clause.......

I use a UniFlow.....well I have 3 .
I have no difficulty throwing 3.8 gr of Unique accurately every time . It's all iron and mounted on iron or aluminum stands . I've found that if I lift to charge and drop to dump that it is more accurate and consistent. I think I dropped 2.5 gr for 380 ACP and I don't recall doing anything but running the under the drop after it was set and checking #1,5,15,35 and 3 per block after that .

Don't get rid of the mechanical scale . They don't change , they don't vary , they don't get damaged by power bumps , lights and phones don't effect them and the batteries never die . I can't speak to all of them but my Ohaus M5 tells me when I have a heavy kernel of IMR 4350 . There's 9 kernels per 1/10 gr .

I use an RCBS Little Dandy for various plinking loads in rifles. That could be anywhere from 3.0 to 3.5 grs. of Bullseye to 7 to 8 grs. of Red Dot. I've tested the rotors enough times to be confident in my throwing technique to be +/- 0.1 of a grain.

I have used a Lyman #55 scale successfully on super light loads of Bullseye in 32 S&W Long rounds. The loads were lighter than any I have ever had to load, and no Lee product was able to go that low and still be accurate. Kind of a pain loading powder charges in a separate operation.

Meant to say that "I have used a Lyman #55 and Lee scale successfully........"