Clays powder in Lee Pro Autodisk hopper

[ghbucky01]

I posted about this in another thread, but I'm hoping someone can offer some advice:

I have been struggling to get Clays powder to throw consistently in my powder measure. I had thought the issue was related to the adjustable charge bar. I switched to using the disks and had some luck.

However, today I was cleaning up after a session and I placed the Lee hopper over the powder container and opened the hopper to full.

When I checked a minute later, the powder had stopped flowing. A tap sent it to flowing again.

So, Clays is apparently bridging in the hopper? Has anyone else seen this and figured out how to solve it?

[243winxb]

Search "Pro Auto Disk" here. http://leeprecision.net/support/inde...roduct-support Dont know if it will help? Good luck.

[Gadawg88]

What press are you using? If it is the LCT then the action of the turret rotating, bullet seating and sizing should negate any bridging that might be happening in the hopper. I use the LCT with the pro disk and have had no bridging issues with a variety of powders (but never used Clays). If you were trying to throw small charges (under 4 gn) with the adjustable bar, don't. It will drive you insane. I do use it for my 45 acp throwing 5.1 or so. If you are using the LCT, make sure to operate the press through a full rotation when testing throws, it makes a difference.

[ghbucky01]

Heya GADAWG

I am using the LCT, and I have learned the lesson on working through the rotations between test throws. It is good advice

The shocker for me was to see the powder stop flowing over the hopper orifice. Not talking about a dick cavity, or the charge bar, it just stopped flowing when I was dumping powder back into the bottle.

I told myself that was no big deal, that normal press operation would shake that loose. That was a mistake. What I should have done was pull the rounds I had just loaded because one of the 5 test rounds squibbed

I've used Trail Boss with no issues, but Clays seems to hate me.

[Gadawg88]

Sorry you had that happen, but thanks for sharing the information. Like I said, I have thankfully not experienced that, but I will take your case as a word of caution. I wonder if a baffle would help. I found the following post. Check out #10.

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217615

RCBS baffle for sale at Midway or if you are handy might be able to make your own.
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/493...-powder-baffle

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_6_42/29...re_baffle.html

[243winxb]

A funnel placed in the top of the measure can act as a baffel, but it needs refilled a lot.

[ghbucky01]

Last night I ran 60 throws of Clays powder through my PAD using 2 different size disk cavities and rotating the turret through all stations between throws. I accumulated the throws in a digital scale pan and recorded the cumulative weight of each throw to 10 throws.

I secured a .... (ahem) 'Personal Massager' to the hopper with some rubber bands and I got pretty consistent results. It was interesting though...

First set of 30 throws were done using the .49CC cavity, and the 3 sets of 10 ended up at: 34.5, 32.9 and 33.6.

The second 3 sets of 10 I ran using the .53 cavity and the cumulative ended at: 36.2, 35.6 and 36.1

I'm not really sure if that proves anything, but I wanted to gain some confidence in what I was doing and thought if I had recorded it, I might as well share it.

My digital scale is a Frankford Arsenal that claims +/- .1 gr accuracy and I calibrated it before I started and again after the first 30.

[edit] I punched the numbers into excel to get standard deviation. The .49cc Cavity came out to 0.1184 and the .53 cavity came out to 0.0999.

In other words, on the nose with the scale's accuracy. I guess it isn't going to get much better than that.