"Old" RCBS Chargemaster worth it for "Newbie" in reloading ?

[Schütze]

I see these units for sale at $319 and a $75 mail in rebate. I'm getting slowly my reloading equipment together. Bought a forster coax and forster dies so far.
Will be mainly reloading 6.5Creed with H4350.
What would you experianced guy's advice be, get one of these or rather start directly with the Autotrickler V3 ?
Not a competition shooter here, just shooting for fun. Not in a hurry to buy equipment either.

Thanks

 

[muddawg]

I tell you what, I have 2 of them and they just work. Are there better ones out there, probably. But these are pretty simple and get the job done accurately and efficiently. Not to mention RCBS has fantastic customer service. You might look around this site too and see if you can find a used one. I just bought one off here about 2 months ago and its in better shape than the one I’ve been babying for 10 years and I paid far less for it.

 

[Cobblestone]

I see these units for sale at $319 and a $75 mail in rebate. I'm getting slowly my reloading equipment together. Bought a forster coax and forster dies so far.
Will be mainly reloading 6.5Creed with H4350.
What would you experianced guy's advice be, get one of these or rather start directly with the Autotrickler V3 ?
Not a competition shooter here, just shooting for fun. Not in a hurry to buy equipment either.

Thanks

I just got my autotrickler in and it looks to work amazingly well. Did I really need it who knows but I found my self down the rabbit that is reloading and wanted to go a little further down the hole. My chargemaster lite worked great had it for 9 months nothing wrong with it. Just wanted more precision weighting system.

 

[Dthomas3523]

If you can afford a v3 auto trickler, just get it.

 

[Lunchbox27]

my progression of reloading over the last 6 years, with scales

1. powder drop and beam scale
2. powder drop and cheap digital scale
3. powder drop, cheap trickler, GemPro250
4. Chargemaster1500

Currently I'm waiting for delivery of my FX120 V3 combo. If you're only loading 100 rounds at a time, the CM1500 will suffice. My struggles came when it would take me 2+ hours to throw 200-300 charges of just 1 caliber that I loaded for.

as Dthomas said... If you have the cabbage, start with the V3. You will be happy you did.

 

[Schütze]

If you can afford a v3 auto trickler, just get it.

I guess that is what I was thinking already, not enough reason to start with the old stuff and get the best I can to beginn with.
Thank you Guy's

 

[Schütze]

my progression of reloading over the last 6 years, with scales

1. powder drop and beam scale
2. powder drop and cheap digital scale
3. powder drop, cheap trickler, GemPro250
4. Chargemaster1500

Currently I'm waiting for delivery of my FX120 V3 combo. If you're only loading 100 rounds at a time, the CM1500 will suffice. My struggles came when it would take me 2+ hours to throw 200-300 charges of just 1 caliber that I loaded for.

as Dthomas said... If you have the cabbage, start with the V3. You will be happy you did.

That's a good example, I did this too with other stuff. In the end this progression will be as much as the V3 combo.

 

[Crabcore]

Has anyone upgraded from a pair of Chargemasters to a V3 combo? I am currently on the fence about getting a third Chargemaster, or investing in a better setup. I don't really enjoy reloading, so want to waste as little of my time as I can doing this. I would love to hear some real world charge throw rates from people who made the switch.

 

[straightshooter1]

I see these units for sale at $319 and a $75 mail in rebate. I'm getting slowly my reloading equipment together. Bought a forster coax and forster dies so far.
Will be mainly reloading 6.5Creed with H4350.
What would you experianced guy's advice be, get one of these or rather start directly with the Autotrickler V3 ?
Not a competition shooter here, just shooting for fun. Not in a hurry to buy equipment either.

Thanks

The Autotrickler is definitely better than the Charge Master 1500, but like you, I'm not a competition shooter and find that my CM1500 actually dos a pretty good job. When I want my ammo to be more consistent, I use a GemPro 250 to tighten up the loads as I can get ES of ~.04 gr with it where my CM does an ES of ~ .9 (sometimes more , but still good enough for a non-competition shooter . . . unless one get real anal about it. ). If you're a VLD shooter and shooting for tight groups, you'll what something that does a little better the the CM, otherwise, it's a good choice IMHO.

 

[Gustav7]

Idk man... if you're not competition shooting and you're new to reloading, you can get A LOT of good equipment, bullets, powder, primers, etc. with the $600-$700 difference in price between the Chargemaster and the A&D.

I don't see how its worth it for you right now, especially since you can sell your chargemaster later if need be. I've had my chargemaster for about 9 years now, and it wasn't exactly taken care of for the first 5 years. It runs great, and once I adjusted the settings, throws quite a bit faster than my brand new Chargemaster Lite 90% of the time.

The Chargemaster is plenty accurate. IF you do proper load development, and have good reloading practices, you can use a Chargemaster for competition or anything you need it to...short of maybe ELR.

 

[Dthomas3523]

If there’s a chance you won’t upgrade or you may need the money to buy other stuff, the chargemaster isn’t a bad idea.

If you know down the road you will likely upgrade or the extra $700 or so doesn’t really matter much......you’re throwing $100 or so away that you lose when you resell the charge master. Not to mention time you could be saving with the fx120.

 

[Gustav7]

If there’s a chance you won’t upgrade or you may need the money to buy other stuff, the chargemaster isn’t a bad idea.

If you know down the road you will likely upgrade or the extra $700 or so doesn’t really matter much......you’re throwing $100 or so away that you lose when you resell the charge master. Not to mention time you could be saving with the fx120.

Agreed. A question on the "time saving" with the FX120. How much faster is it than a stock Chargemaster? I adjusted the settings quite a bit on my CM1500, and its damn fast. To the point where I'm not sure how the FX120 could be any faster. On occasion my Chargemaster hiccups a little, but I think I only had one or two overthrows in the last 200 or so throws, and maybe 3-4 hiccups where it sort of stops short, and I gotta tap the tube and it starts trickling.

In my experience, the Chargemaster Lite is faster than the stock Chargemaster 1500. But I've watched a few videos of the FX 120 and I can't see it being any faster on average than the Chargemaster I'm using, albeit more consistently fast over time.

 

[Schütze]

After reading about lots of overcharging issues related to H4350 I came to the conclusion that I would need at least another high end stand alone scale to check what the chargemaster produced. So the $700 window gets smaller and smaller.
I just ordered the V3 A&D FX 120 combo from unknown munition, they stated the next batch ready next month.

I realize that that there are a lot of mixed options on this and really appreciate all of your inputs

 

[RTH1800]

If you purchase a used CM here and decide to upgrade later you can very likely get your money back.
Either unit will work exceptionally well. My vote goes to trying a used CM. Zero downside and less cash outlay.

 

[RTH1800]

Oops, too late.
You will like the ATV3.

 

[Gustav7]

After reading about lots of overcharging issues related to H4350 I came to the conclusion that I would need at least another high end stand alone scale to check what the chargemaster produced. So the $700 window gets smaller and smaller.
I just ordered the V3 A&D FX 120 combo from unknown munition, they stated the next batch ready next month.

I realize that that there are a lot of mixed options on this and really appreciate all of your inputs

Well I doubt you won't love the FX120, they do look pretty damn sweet. And theres something just so science-y about them that it really makes you appreciate good engineering.

A note on what you said though, overcharging would show on the Chargemasters scale correct? Every time I've had an overthrow on my Chargemasters its because the nozzle dumped too much with one iteration of trickling....which shows on the scale. It beeps and says its done, but then shows 0.1gr or 0.2gr over. So I don't think someone would need another scale to check.

I also check back and forth between my CM1500 and CM Lite and they're always accurate to each other. Anywho, just wanted to address that in case someone reads this in the future.

Also, all of my 4350 overthrow issues were fixed when I just fiddled with the settings a bit. I have it run faster up until it trickles, then have it trickle slower. Works for me.

Congrats on the FX120 purchase though, can't imagine you won't love it.

 

[LooseGoose]

I bought the chargemaster lite last week and used it for the first time over the weekend. I highly recommend it.

I can't put into words how much I appreciate it over manually trickling into a beam/electronic scale. 200 charges of 2230 ball powder and 75 rounds of 4064 extruded stick powder with 10> .1 overcharges is acceptable to me, it takes 10 seconds to dump it back into the hopper and get another charge. I got the reducer in the mail today to try out as well that is supposed to help eliminate overcharging . With the rebate I'm ending up under $200 before tax and shipping from Midway, cant argue with that.

 

[ditter]

I have a CM Lite for 4350 or RL 16. Runs like a champ. I have a little plumbing washer that weighs 41.4 grains that i use to verify the scale every 15 rounds or so. Only complaint I have is that I wish it were faster. Takes about 30 seconds to dispense, but it seems like it throws the first 39 grains in about 10 seconds. Every now and again it will throw an overcharge of 41.5 or 41.6 grains. If that happens you just take a couple kernels out and you're good.

Gets me single digit SDs all day. If the groups are not there, its probably my fault, not the scale.

 

[CrabsandFootball]

The CM Lite is actully an upgrade over the older 1500. Highly recommend it.