Dillon 650 powder throwing accuracy

[Sim G]

The Dillon in my garage I've owned for over 25 years. The Dillon that saddler now owns, I bought at the same time when I got this one. I used to shoot over 500 rounds of pistol ammo a week back "in the day". They are outstanding machines.

Coming to rifles out of necessity, I went straight to my Dillon. I don't load rifle ammo on it anymore, unless it's for an ETR, through a straight pull. The powder measure is not that good.

However, Unique, Bullseye, TightGroup and Tin Star all go through the measure lovely in weights of between 4 and 9 grains. Periodically during a loading session I check the loads on the Chargemaster and they all seem to be where it was set.

Small amounts of flake powders good, large amounts of extruded and ball, bad....

[sapper811]

We'll I stand corrected mate. As a Dillon newbie if you have any tips

The purpose of a Dillon is to turn out lots of rounds quickly. If you want grain accuracy a Dillon will not be the machine. If you want a consistant usable load for your rifle / shooting discipline all the Dillon range can produce this. My 650 churned out 3500 rounds last year. Each one went bang as required. You can fettle them as Mr Bradley has via a detailed polish. This i am led to believe works wonders. When i have chance it is on my list of things to do.

If you want to weigh each powder charge then sell your Dillon as it's useless.

Incorrect. I make thousands of rounds on my Dillon with more precise charges than most are capable of measuring (+-0.02 by force restoration balance) and case dimensions that are as consistent as single stage processing, given decent brass to start with. Try loading 300 rounds per hour on your rock chucker.
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[ovenpaa]

Sim G, that is good news as it will be primarily used for my 9R (9mm-08) so 7.5 grains of Tinstar is about where I want to be for short stuff. The problems will begin when I get the urge to load something a bit quicker... Our Harrell Premium throws SP9 with superb accuracy, certainly 0.1 grains or better so if I could incorporate it into a Dillon process I would get the best of both worlds especially as QL predictions for the 9R with SP9 look to be more than acceptable.

[GRSporth1]

Just last night I was testing two types of 308 loads, both from a Dillon 650.

One had hand measured charges of N140, the other was thrown using the Dillon powder measure set to produce the same charge. Otherwise the two sets were identical. All were then fired from the same sandbagged rifle.

There was virtually no visible or measurable difference in the resulting groups (the machine thrown one was actually slightly better - but not significantly so).

Based on previous strings of measurements, this measure throws +/- 0.1 grains, very occasionally +/- 0.2.
It is polished internally and I make some effort to cycle the press smoothly (if I "bang it about" the charge weight can go up by ~0.5gr).

I doubt you would ever see benchrest quality ammo from these machines, but with a little care and a well developed load it will be more than good enough for most shooting.

[Countryman]

I have been loading N140 into .223 on my Dillon 550. These have certainly been good enough.

+\- 0.1gn

However I have just moved to Ramshot TAC for the .223 and it's clear that this will meter extremely well as its about as fine a powder as I have encountered.