Harrell's vs. Chargemaster

[Western Living]

I'm looking to transition away from an auto powder drop and a progressive press towards loading powder off-press and using an single stage (or arbor press) for bullet seating. I'll be loading magnum revolver and rifle cartridges. At this time I am using mostly spherical powders even in the rifles, like H335 and Ramshot Magnum. Presently, I don't load any extruded powders, but it's conceivable I could want to use some like 8202 XBR, 7828SSC, or RL22.

I was thinking of getting a Harrell's pistol measure and a Custom 90. The alternative for about the same expense would be an RCBS Chargemaster.

I used to load 1000 at a time on the progressive with the powder measure, but I'm slowing down. When I wanted more precision, I used to manually trickle loads (on a Gem20), but it's tedious to do more than 10. Now I'm looking for precision and to avoid damaging case mouths on the powder actuator. I want to load about 200 handgun cartridges at a time or 50 rifle cartridges. I believe a Chargemaster Lite would be too slow, but maybe if I had two. The Matchmaster or an auto-trickler with an A&D scale are too much money for me and I certainly couldn't afford to buy two to speed things up.

I'm mostly wanting to get off the case-activated powder measure, but I'm hoping to improve consistency. I presently get drops within a range of 0.12 grains with the best-metering powders (which are what I choose).

What's your opinion on whether I should buy Harrell's or another drum powder measure like Redding perhaps, or should I get an auto-trickler type device?

 

[lightman]

Over the years I have owned or used about every powder measure on the market. After I got used to them and developed a technique or rhythm about all of them were pretty equal in being consistent. Oh, I had to work on a few of them a little. One was so rough that I used a brake cylinder hone on it to smooth up the roughness in the casting. ( brake cylinder hone just dated me I guess) The Harrells stands out for a couple of reasons. It runs on bearings and has a smoothness that you won't find in most of the others. And the click adjustments on the metering chamber are very repeatable. More so than the others.

I've loaded thousands of cartridges using a powder measure to throw the charge. Both rifle and pistol. None of the measures that I used threw extruded powders consistently. They do fine with ball powder and even flake powder.

I love my Chargemaster and use it with extruded powder. But I would not want to load a large quantity of pistol cartridges with it and I don't feel that its necessary.

 

[Guns&WhiteWater]

If you use mostly spherical powders then you will love the Harrell’s. It’s smooth and extremely repeatable. With a lot of powders, each click equals one tenth of a grain. Loading with 748, Benchmark, CFE BLK, Win 296, Titegroup, and other ball powders is very fast. Takes about three seconds to pick up a case, charge it, and set it down. It is not as consistent with extruded powders but it’s still useful. I set mine to throw a little less than a half grain below target, then dump into my beam scale, and then trickle up when using stick powders like Varget, Reloder 15, etc.