Accurize a balance beam scale?

what happens when you just touch the beam to make it swing and re settle....
i would reccommend not removing the pan..just touch the beam.
the others have noted pivot point issues....changing things on the pan holder may change these pivots....

just 2 cents worth ...not worth much more

mike in co
 
what was the scale used to determine weight ???
a typical beam scale is not accurate enought for this type of comparison.
mike in co

sicero said:
Here is something you might get some enjoyment from.
Someone elses words. Not mine. Copy from another forum. Kenny--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gunpowder "burns" by volume. Not weight. Weight is only used because it is easily interpreted and most folks can undertsand it.

A few years ago I did exhaustive tests on the subject for an article that I neveer finished writing. In every test, volume was more accurate than weight.

BUT......You need a good powder measure and a perfect cadance to get the poder to drop consistantly. For most folks, they will have more "consistancy" by weight.
Click to expand...
 
Trevor,
it sounds like your scale has a problem for sure. The only time my Scott tuned scale gets stuck is if it moves too far in the down position if I am clumsy and bump it and a gentle nudge get's it moving again but otherwise it's smooth as silk and the pointer detects each grain of powder hitting the pan even from a static position it 's just amazingly precise and smooth.
I just loaded it's initial thousand rounds on it and can say after careful study using a magnifier to enlarge the pointer/graduation marks (really helps alot when your blind like me) that it's never failed to detect a kernel of powder and when it's off by 2 or 3 kernels it's clearly evident by the amount of deflection shown on the hash marks and almost goes to the next graduation.
You should call/email Scott first to see if there is any user or equipment error and he will get it right for you. Make sure the pivot points are fully engaged in the V-blocks when you set the scale up and that it's not rubbing on the arm. Also it helps alot with a beam to dump fairly light and then trickle up which stops the pan from gyrating up and down excessively adding time waiting for it to settle plus it won't hang in the magnets from excessive movement. After dumping light stay on the trickler slow but sure to keep the pan falling smoothly and not bouncing and when you get near the correct weight just tap in the last couple kernels. Once you get the rythm it becomes fast since your not waiting constantly for the scale to gyrate then settle and you keep it on track going in the right direction instead of dump-wait-dump-wait etc which can get ugly fast at first till you get a little practice with the trickler. 20 to 25 seconds for single kernel accuracy is about as good as weighing powder gets even with an Acculab scale (drives me nuts drifting around) and you can use a cheap $20. Lee powder thrower to boot and save money there (it's a great measure especially at the price).
Let us know what Scott says.
 
since you are making cliams that your beam scale is as good as an acculab lab scale, might you bless us with some more information.
you claim you can see each grain of powder change as it is added...well i say prove it...
send us a vidieo of you adding single grains of 4227 or oem 8202 to your scale and show us the movement .
open ended, no data statements are just plain bs....add some facts to your claims.
what powder were you using ??/
mike in co

twentytwoguy said:
Trevor,
it sounds like your scale has a problem for sure. The only time my Scott tuned scale gets stuck is if it moves too far in the down position if I am clumsy and bump it and a gentle nudge get's it moving again but otherwise it's smooth as silk and the pointer detects each grain of powder hitting the pan even from a static position it 's just amazingly precise and smooth.
I just loaded it's initial thousand rounds on it and can say after careful study using a magnifier to enlarge the pointer/graduation marks (really helps alot when your blind like me) that it's never failed to detect a kernel of powder and when it's off by 2 or 3 kernels it's clearly evident by the amount of deflection shown on the hash marks and almost goes to the next graduation.
You should call/email Scott first to see if there is any user or equipment error and he will get it right for you. Make sure the pivot points are fully engaged in the V-blocks when you set the scale up and that it's not rubbing on the arm. Also it helps alot with a beam to dump fairly light and then trickle up which stops the pan from gyrating up and down excessively adding time waiting for it to settle plus it won't hang in the magnets from excessive movement. After dumping light stay on the trickler slow but sure to keep the pan falling smoothly and not bouncing and when you get near the correct weight just tap in the last couple kernels. Once you get the rythm it becomes fast since your not waiting constantly for the scale to gyrate then settle and you keep it on track going in the right direction instead of dump-wait-dump-wait etc which can get ugly fast at first till you get a little practice with the trickler. 20 to 25 seconds for single kernel accuracy is about as good as weighing powder gets even with an Acculab scale (drives me nuts drifting around) and you can use a cheap $20. Lee powder thrower to boot and save money there (it's a great measure especially at the price).
Let us know what Scott says.
Click to expand...
 
Hands up and up against the wall twentytwoguy, how dare you act like you know more then someone in here....
Dave T
 
well you got the words right
he ACTED like he knew something, but he provided no data.
i asked for data.
for a guy that could not get an aqcculab scale work , to turn around and claim his beam scale is as accurate as an acculab scale leves a little room for questions.
( of course, if what he was acttually saying was that he could not get the acculab to work , well then maybe his bathroom scale would be more accurate, so it would be easy to claim HIS beam scale is more accurate than HIS acculab.....lol)

glad to see you are still adding positive comments to the threads
mike in co
 
Back in the early sixties I was taught how to use a balance beam type scale in high school chemistry class. We were taught not to wait for the scale to come to rest or use the zero on the scale. We were taught that when the indicator is swinging equal amounts in both directions the scale is balanced. I was told that using this method is more consistent, more accurate, and much faster. I have an old Pacific oil damped balance beam scale. The oil damping pot is empty so it is only air damped and very free to swing. I have sharpened all the knife edges and polished all the places the knife edges rock on. I added a bubble level to be sure things are the same each time. I position a magnifying glass so I can more easily see the numbers on the scale. I have a calibration weight (filed down washer) for my standard powder charge which I check each time I use the scale. The normal household air currents affect the balance swing just like the very sensitive digital scales. In the winter I had to place shields to block cold air drafts. Now as for measuring or seeing the difference in one kernel of DuPont 4064 now IMR 4064 that was easy. I have removed short kernels and replaced with long kernels or vice versa to get the weight correct. However I got lazy and now use a digital scale good to the 0.1 grain, so I am plus or minus about two kernels of 4064 now days.
 
sicero said:
Here is something you might get some enjoyment from.
Someone elses words. Not mine. Copy from another forum. Kenny



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Gunpowder "burns" by volume. Not weight. Weight is only used because it is easily interpreted and most folks can understand it.

A few years ago I did exhaustive tests on the subject for an article that I never finished writing. In every test, volume was more accurate than weight.

BUT......You need a good powder measure and a perfect cadence to get the powder to drop consistently. For most folks, they will have more "consistency" by weight."
Click to expand...


I took two years of college chemistry and three years of college physics, and the person that thought this up should document all of it and present it to the Nobel Science Committee, cuz it truly revolutionizes the laws of Chemistry, thermodynamics, and Physics - there is at least one Nobel prize in it and they can probably get a university named after them...

----------------------------

This thread caused me to go look at my scale - a Lyman (Ohaus) M5, which makes it at least a century old. :)

Instead of removing magnets when I first got it, I took out the wimpy magnets and replaced them with monster magnets. It has agate bearings, and hardened knife edges for the pan support.

The scale now does two sweeps before stopping.

It always stops in the same place - ie, there is "0" drag. If it stops and you tap the beam, it comes back and stops in the same place, and it is readable to a tenth of a tenth of a grain.

Sensitivity - I just checked it and it will respond to one particle of commercial 8208 XBR - it doesn't "jump", but after a 1/2 a second, you can see the pointer is a tiny bit higher. A second particle will do the same, and move it a tiny bit more.

I once bought a Redding scale for a second loading bench, and threw it away, cuz it was so bad, I didn't have the heart to dump it on someone else.
 
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Good post, and it speaks to one of the major issues for balance beam reloading scales, the fact that small weight changes make very small pointer position changes. I find that a cheap webcam helps with this a lot, and because it is in a fixed position, it eliminates parallax, which is a significant issue when dealing with very small weight differences.

I have read at least one (possibly more) published test of thrown charges VS weighed charges. The results came out in favor of thrown. I believe that accuracy was tested at 100 yd. Obviously there must be other things at work here. Perhaps differences in the the way that the powder was dropped into the case, directly from the measure as compared to using a funnel and scale pan, and the resultant difference in grain orientation, may have made a difference in how the powder burned. I don't know, but the results were published, and I don not believe that there was any reason for them to have been falsified. One thing that is generally ignored is the variations in volume (not weight) within a given set of cases. It is also possible that the fellow was exceptionally good with his measure, and had a reloading scale that was not up to par.

One of the tests that I keep putting off is to compare the velocities of charges that weigh the same but which fill to different levels in a case, because of how fast and far they were dropped into cases. If it turns out that this makes a difference, I will have opened a real can of worms. I sincerely hope that it makes no difference.
 
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boyd,
i to have read several articles on thron vs weighed charges. the failure of all them, in the benchrest world, was the scale was just a std realoding beam scale...plus or minus 0.1 on a good day.
now if we could get a good shooter to do the same test with a lab scale vs thrown....hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

well actually we have, it just isnt published as an article, its published as results.....shooters who have gone from thrown to lab scale weighed.....

mike in co
ps
xbr...i am glad your scale responds to a single grain of 8208, but now you will have every tom dick and harry claiming THIER scale is better or as good as a lab electronic scale....ohhh we already have that too....lol
so how much does a single grain od 8208 weigh on your m5 ??
 
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I have a question and I know that there is a reason why not its just that I have no idea as to why.

Instead of knife edges why couldnt a bearing of high quality be used?
 
the cheaper scales will measure individual kernels of the bigger stick powders 4064/4895 etc. the problem is the scale your reading on the side of the balance beam is very small, you need very good eyes to see the movement. last eye test i had, i could still read the bottom line, and i have to strain to see that small of a movement.
 
Vern said:
I have a question and I know that there is a reason why not its just that I have no idea as to why.

Instead of knife edges why couldn't a bearing of high quality be used?
Click to expand...

Cuz knife edges have less friction than the highest quality bearings...
 
mike in co said:
"....

ps
xbbr...i am glad your scale responds to a single grain of 8208, but now you will have every tom dick and harry claiming THEIR scale is better or as good as a lab electronic scale....ohhh we already havet at too....lol
so how much does a single grain od 8208 weigh on your m5 ??
Click to expand...

"so how much does a single grain od 8208 weigh on your m5 ??"

1/17th of a tenth of a grain...

... Ok, just so we are speaking the same language, please understand that it does NOT read/resolve to a 1/17th of a tenth of a grain. I can't put a single particle in the pan and know it's weight - I do what all lab type people do - I set the scale so the pointer is exactly even with a graduation, then put the powder in until the beam pointer points at the next graduation, and count the particles.

There is a big difference between sensitivity (movement with the smallest amount of "stuff" in the pan) and "resolution" on a scale.

I think that the practical resolution of a scale with 1/10th graduations on the plate, is around 1/3rd to 1/4th of a tenth, if the scale is real good and working to it's limits.

And I doubt that resolution that fine is necessary for benchrest shooting... even 1,000 yard shooting.
 
re do your count....
zero the beam
move the tenths to the next figher tenth,
add powder till it zeros and count again....
let me know
(if you look back up the thread, you will see my wieght of oem 8208)

mike in co


XBBR Shooter said:
"so how much does a single grain od 8208 weigh on your m5 ??"

1/17th of a tenth of a grain...

... Ok, just so we are speaking the same language, please understand that it does NOT read/resolve to a 1/17th of a tenth of a grain. I can't put a single particle in the pan and know it's weight - I do what all lab type people do - I set the scale so the pointer is exactly even with a graduation, then put the powder in until the beam pointer points at the next graduation, and count the particles.

There is a big difference between sensitivity (movement with the smallest amount of "stuff" in the pan) and "resolution" on a scale.

I think that the practical resolution of a scale with 1/10th graduations on the plate, is around 1/3rd to 1/4th of a tenth, if the scale is real good and working to it's limits.

And I doubt that resolution that fine is necessary for benchrest shooting... even 1,000 yard shooting.
Click to expand...
 
This is another one of those "all things being equal" disagreements and is because some folks have a beam scale that is capable of reading kernels and some don't and some folks have good luck with electronic and others cuss at them.
Some day Comike will get to use a set of good beam scales and see the light like others have and maybe some day my Acculab scales will quit wandering all over the place.
I recently moved and they work much better at the new house due to lots of stuff out of my control like how the house is wired, power company, solar flares lol etc. but they still wander and can add as many as 90 grains even when your not using them which doesn't sound too good for accuracy and many others have attested to the same kind of issues and there are always many fixes discussed for these common problems like using APC backup units, magnetic line filters over the power cord (these really do help), unplugging everything else on the circuit and not using fluorescent lights etc.... but if they work so good why are there so many fixes anyways Lol???
The beam scale repeats no matter where it is thanks to gravity which must be pretty consistent in my neighborhood otherwise the Lee dippers would be the second choice lol.
If your beam won't show a log of Varget dropped in the pan you got problems.
 
sorry you are way too late. i have done lab work with good scales.......
i know what a good scale is...the typical relaoding scale is just good....not great....0.1 on a good day.
see below...then i'm off to a match...pistols
mike in co
twentytwoguy said:
This is another one of those "all things being equal" disagreements and is because some folks have a beam scale that is capable of reading kernels and some don't and some folks have good luck with electronic and others cuss at them.
Some day Comike will get to use a set of good beam scales and see the light like others have and maybe some day my Acculab scales will quit wandering all over the place.
I recently moved and they work much better at the new house due to lots of stuff out of my control like how the house is wired, power company, solar flares lol etc. but they still wander and can add as many as 90 grains even when your not using them which doesn't sound too good for accuracy and many others have attested to the same kind of issues and there are always many fixes discussed for these common problems like using APC backup units, magnetic line filters over the power cord (these really do help), unplugging everything else on the circuit and not using fluorescent lights etc.... but if they work so good why are there so many fixes anyways Lol???
The beam scale repeats no matter where it is thanks to gravity which must be pretty consistent in my neighborhood otherwise the Lee dippers would be the second choice lol.
If your beam won't show a log of Varget dropped in the pan you got problems.
Click to expand...
 
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