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Chargemaster Settings

jsthntn247

Gunny Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Feb 25, 2009
1,208
144
Mississippi
I read a thread on here a while back about changing the settings on my Chargemaster to prevent overthrows and speed it up. It's perfect when shooting my 308 with 45gr of powder. However, when trying to load 223 last night it was over throwing every charge. Is there a setting I can change back for loading rounds with less powder capacity and prevent over throws?
 
With the above setup, it does great with extruded powders. I very rarely get an overthrow. With ball powders it's better than stock, but not as perfect as extruded. I think it's worth the 20 bucks.
 
I have an insert that looks identical to the one in the ebay listing above. It works very well. A forum member makes them. His username is MDM. Could be the same guy with the ebay auction. I use the main insert for throwing extruded powders. It comes with a secondary insert that you can use to really slow down the powder flow, which might work well with ball powders, but I honestly haven't tried it.

LRI is also making an insert. Here is a link............https://www.longriflesinc.com/products/rcbs-chargemaster-velocity-stack.

Not knowing what powder you are throwing for your 223, I would suggest going with the one from MDM, or the ebay auction. The secondary insert will probably do the trick with your 223.
 
I've added the straw but might try one of those as well. Mine is just hauling ass from the beginning and not slowing down until it is very near the desired charge. I found an old post on here describing the same problem. He tweaked another the W_F setting to 25 grains which starts the unit out at a slower speed on charges under 25 grains. I'm going to try it and report back.
 
Factory settings and David's sleeve/insert combo has let me reload as many as 200 rounds of .223 ammo with 24.8 grains of Varget without a single overthrow. Highly recommend getting his products from eBay or sending him a PM via the Hide.
 
a cut off 6br case on the end worked better for me then the inserts. Still didn't like the chargemaster. just coughed up the cash for the Fx120i and the autotrickler and got about 5 minutes to play with it at lunch. Had 2 out of 20 charges go 2 kernels of varget(.04) over the rest one or .02 over. Can tweak that a hair. Faster and more accurate. As it should be for the cost
 
I've already got a fx 102i. Just have to save up the money to get the autotrickler. Waiting on him to come out with the automatic powder dump and get them shipped at the same time.
 
Tweak the settings to increase the times so it will slow down sooner. Or if the overthrow is due to a "clump" falling as the final trickle, then you need a different insert.
 
I don't know exactly what I have my settings at but I believe it starts slowing down about 8 grains before desired charge weight and then again at 2.5 to trickle. But I have 2 chargemasters and the second one I bought I had to switch it to 10 grains before because it was still too fast so it may take some tinkering on your part. I bought a couple of the brass inserts but to be honest the straw mod works a lot better for me. I have found that I have to change the amount of the straw sticking out with different powders. I like the straw mod because I can gradually push the straw back to slow down the amount of powder until I get consistency and then it's very accurate. Every time I set it up for a powder I have to mess with it a little bit to get it just right but after that it doesn't over throw that much at all.


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Guys, I used the straw, but also cut a zig-zag pattern on the end to help break up the clumps a bit. Still not perfect, but better. Another thing to try is to put a straw on the inlet slot (inside the hopper) to slow down the "uptake" of kernels on the inside. It helps smooth out the amount of powder entering the small tube at the beginning. Might also check the settings. When I modified mine at first, I missed a decimal place - that changes everything!!! LOL.