With these two modifications the performance increased to roughly 80% accuracy with only a handful of charges going over weight out of 100 throws. It takes the machine a little longer to dispense each charge, but that allows me time to seat and crimp the bullet into the case that received the last dispensed charge so it works out well. With my .38 Special loads of 3.0 grains of Bullseye about one in four charges are over (25%), while the .45 Colt loads of 10.5gr of HS-6 are slightly better with only two out of ten being over (20%).
However, even with the greatly reduced number of overcharges after the mods I still find the process to be a lot slower and more time consuming than my previous method. If you're only loading up a a couple dozen rounds for a match or something it's not bad, but when you're loading a large batch of several hundred rounds it's less than ideal.
What I see as the real drawback of the RCBS Chargemaster Combo is that how accurately it dispenses is going to vary from powder to powder and charge weight to charge weight. I suppose one could spend an afternoon or two playing with the program settings and finding the ideal combination for each type of powder he/she uses, record those settings, and then reprogram the machine to match the powder/load your working on each time you use it, but that's just more work - something I'm trying to cut out of my reloading process. The other option would be purchasing multipe units and setting each up specifically for a given powder, but that would get expensive fast and take up a lot of room on the reloading bench.
Since reprogramming the unit and doing the straw mod I have used the RCBS to load up several hundred rounds each of .38 Special and .45 Colt, 200 rounds of .22-250 AI, and twenty rounds of .375 Winchester. Powders used have been Bullseye, Reloader 7, Hodgdon H4530, Hodgdon HS-6 and IMR Trail Boss. The very and large (Trail Boss) kernel powders seem to be the most finicky in terms of program settings as one would expect.
At this point I'm pretty confident that I can get it working efficiently with whatever charge weight and powder I need by simply reprogramming the speed change points, but the real question though is would I buy one again and at this point I really don't know. The ChargeMaster Combo clearly offers some benefits, but it's far from the ideal product and I would probably give a good Culver-type powder measure like those from Harrell's Precision a try before dropping the coin on another ChargeMaster. They're priced about the same when the ChargeMaster Combo is on sale, but the Harrell is portable in that it doesn't require electricity and it doesn't require one to do any modifications to get working as it should. I will say however that the ChargeMaster works better with bulkier spherical powders like TrailBoss and stick powders like H4350 than most Culver-type measures I've come across.
That said I think the ChargeMaster 1500 Combo still has it's place on a reloaders bench. If you primarily use one powder for several different cartridges you can reprogram it to work with that specific powder and not have to worry about it and it will consistently throw accurate charges for you. If you are constantly trying new powders or use lots of different powders for different cartridges you would probably end up wanting multiple units or be better off just sticking with standard powder measures. As always one has to take their own needs and intended uses into account to select the best tools for the job.
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Contact Information
RCBS Operations
605 Oro Dam Blvd
Oroville, CA 95965
(800) 379-1732
www.RCBS.com
RCBS Operations
605 Oro Dam Blvd
Oroville, CA 95965
(800) 379-1732
www.RCBS.com
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