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I received an email today from a guy in the FaceBook Henry Group who had a bad experience with digital scales. He suggested that I repeatedly weigh something to see how consistent it is. I thought that was a good idea, so I gave it a shot before I began reloading tonight. You might want to try the same test with your scale. Here's my results:
(5) 83.6
(4) 83.7
(2) 83.5
(1) 83.4
That's 3/10 of a grain difference, which I don't think is bad. I assure you that if I were to use a beam scale, it would take so much longer to take the measurements that if I were 3/10 grain off, I'd be saying "Good enough". I'm sure some of you demand that the scale be perfect, but I'm not there yet. Maybe someday, but considering that lever action rifles aren't designed to split pubic hairs, it doesn't make that much difference to me. Run your own tests and post how you make out in the Comments area. Thanks.
Here's a response I received through the FaceBook Henry Group...
ReplyDeleteI don't own a set of cal weight as I think they're a waste of $.
The heavy weight you speak about is the scale calibration weight. Without getting too technical, the scale cal process corrects for temperature variations by generating correction factors of the form y = mx+b on the linear weight curve. The "b" term is the zero offset, and the m term is calculated by using the mid range weight (the heavy cal weight).
One useful suggestion I've gleaned from boards is that you should allow for a warm up of the scale before using it. The suggested time is 45 minutes. Some folks, like myself, never unplug them.
As for the error with very light weights....
What you're seeing in the jumps is the circuitry trying to filter the electronic noise. When you add tiny bits of powder, the scale has a hard time with not filtering that as noise. Once you continue to add powder, the weight exceeds the noise threshold and you get the jump in reading.
The way I get around this is adding the tiny amout of powder and using the spoon to very lightly tap the pan.