Monday, February 26, 2007

Homemade Dipper

I made a powder dipper tonight. Crude by most standards, it'll serve me well.



It's cut from a piece of .45-70 brass and has a coat-hanger wire handle. It holds just exactly 27 grains of my surplus 4895, which I use for cast bullet loads in .30-30. Under a 311041 bullet, this load gives me avg 1900 fps out of my Winchester 94 with no leading. It is a great load for deer, hogs, and similar game.

The bullet is cast on my bench from wheelweights I've scrounged. The brass is recycled. The powder is surplus. The only thing I use that's new is the primer. I figure these loads cost me about 5 cents apiece to put together, which is very, very inexpensive ammunition. Figure a dollar for a box of twenty.

I like using dippers for all but the most exacting ammunition. I find that when I use a dipper I get extremely consistent powder charges, in the neighborhood of 1/10th grain. Plus, I don't have the hassle of setting up the scale and the trickler and the powder measure. When a dipper is set for a particular powder charge I can make ammo anywhere.

2 comments:

Bradley said...

i have done that with my favorit loads from 44 mag cases, trimmed down to the size/load i want. I then paint the case a set color and put a dot of that in th eload book so that i know what dipper goes with what load. Simple and fast. I like it.

Anonymous said...

The Olde Fashyndde method of arriving at the correct measure is to put a dab of beeswax in the bottom of the dipper, then carefully scrape it out until the right volume is gotten to. This makes making measures out of antler tips, bits of thick twigs and such like quite easy. Tedious, but easy.

Gerry N.