Opinions wanted

Ok so I have the Florida State Championship coming up in Oct so I set my trickle charger up and got everything ready to make my long line 45 ACP rounds. I do this methodically and one stage at a time. 
100 brand new Starline Brass
Federal gold medal match primers
3.6 grains of N310 
Zero 185 SWC because I am out of 185 JHP
Seated .925 at the shoulder 
I use a frame mount dot so 3.6 for the long line and 3.0 for the short runs perfectly in my pistol. 

It takes forever to make 100 of these long line rounds

So here is my question 

Wonder how close to these would my press come if I just run them through like I do for my practice rounds? 
Do you think it’s worth the extra time to get a few more points? 
What do you folks think?

What takes more time than building your practice rounds?

Making my long line match rounds takes forever

I don't think its worth it. Ive ransom rested my 45 with rounds loaded on a progressive and they all were around 1.6 inches.  Don't think loading then slowly will make any difference.

I am think this is my last time doing it because I didn’t think there was much of a difference either
Only noticeable difference is my Spread is under 10 FPS instead of 20-25 FPS

How does a factory make match cartridges? Not one at a time!

Ok, you asked for opinion.  

(1) Every time you make a change, even a little one, you need to make sure it works. 

(2) Every time you get to shoot, you should shoot what you're going to shoot at a match. 

(3) If trickle charging, single stage loading, etc., gets you ANY more points, then your other reloading setup needs some work. 

(4) Matches are not the place to test any changes, let other competitors do that if they want to. 

I run everything on a 650, including powder drop. Whatever ain't in the X ring is my fault.  Better to reload on a progressive, use the extra time to dryfire or something.  

And since it's the same loads, set ups and dimensions; I don't have to worry about shooting loads in a match that I haven't already shot a couple of thousand times before.  A couple of other posters on the forum have some really good stories about making up "special" loads, traveling lots of miles to Perry and then having ammo issues.  

By the way, just because it's new brass doesn't necessarily mean it's better. It just means it's new and you're betting on the manufacturer's quality control.  Now 99.99999% of the time it's not a issue, but you never know for sure until it goes though your gun. 

So for matches, load in batches as big as you can with loads that you know work already because you've been firing them. Then it doesn't matter which box comes up next, you'll have confidence at the match that the ones you've fired before were just fine.  Let the other guy worry about his "special" loads, which he might do after the first refire string.  And if he thinks they are getting him points, then why wasn't he shooting them before?  And if his score is the same or worse, then what do you think he's going to work on back home? Not dryfiring I bet.  You, on the other hand spent some quality time dryfiring and reducing things that clutter the mind at matches.

CR

Not sure how relevant this is but I was testing some new factory loaded 185gr JHP by a known manufacturer this summer and it was astoundingly awful out of my RO. I had some short line practice ammo that I had loaded with me and thought I'd try it out at 50 yards as it is the same load as my long line EIC, I just use old unsorted brass. It blew the doors off the factory stuff. This brass was mixed headstamp fired probably 20 times and easily held the 10 ring at 50 yards off a sandbag. I'm pretty attentive to long line loads but the 25 yard stuff I just hammer out on my 550.

james r chapman wrote:How does a factory make match cartridges? Not one at a time!

Other than Atlanta Arms factory Match is just a name and can easily be outdone by hand loaders

CR10X wrote:Ok, you asked for opinion.  

(1) Every time you make a change, even a little one, you need to make sure it works. 

(2) Every time you get to shoot, you should shoot what you're going to shoot at a match. 

(3) If trickle charging, single stage loading, etc., gets you ANY more points, then your other reloading setup needs some work. 

(4) Matches are not the place to test any changes, let other competitors do that if they want to. 

I run everything on a 650, including powder drop. Whatever ain't in the X ring is my fault.  Better to reload on a progressive, use the extra time to dryfire or something.  

And since it's the same loads, set ups and dimensions; I don't have to worry about shooting loads in a match that I haven't already shot a couple of thousand times before.  A couple of other posters on the forum have some really good stories about making up "special" loads, traveling lots of miles to Perry and then having ammo issues.  

By the way, just because it's new brass doesn't necessarily mean it's better. It just means it's new and you're betting on the manufacturer's quality control.  Now 99.99999% of the time it's not a issue, but you never know for sure until it goes though your gun. 

So for matches, load in batches as big as you can with loads that you know work already because you've been firing them. Then it doesn't matter which box comes up next, you'll have confidence at the match that the ones you've fired before were just fine.  Let the other guy worry about his "special" loads, which he might do after the first refire string.  And if he thinks they are getting him points, then why wasn't he shooting them before?  And if his score is the same or worse, then what do you think he's going to work on back home? Not dryfiring I bet.  You, on the other hand spent some quality time dryfiring and reducing things that clutter the mind at matches.

CR

I 100% agree
I still use my progressive press to make the rounds really the only thing is that I use a trickle charger instead of my powder measure. Everything else would be the same

James Hensler wrote:

james r chapman wrote:How does a factory make match cartridges? Not one at a time!

Other than Atlanta Arms factory Match is just a name and can easily be outdone by hand loaders

And non single load .

CR10X wrote:it doesn't matter which box comes up next, you'll have confidence at the match that the ones you've fired before were just fine.

Cecil makes some very good points, which is why every opportunity I get, I snatch a few boxes of his ammo out of his gunbox.

Do you think it’s worth the extra time to get a few more points? 
What do you folks think?

I once spent an evening dropping and weighing charges of Bullseye and Winchester Super Target, 100 of each.
The Standard Deviation of dropped charges was about equal to the Probable Error of my scale.  Statistically, that meant that ~66% would have an undetected variation, and ~95% would be +/- 0.1 grains.  

So now I set my powder dispenser so ten dropped charges weigh ten times what I want one dropped charge to weigh and keep my hands off the adjusting screw.

I agree with Cecil (CR10X).  But if you want to speed up the process, get yourself a powder dispenser like an RCBS Chargemaster lite.  It works well for that kind of work.



H

I've got a full size RCBS chargemaster, it's great for extruded rifle powder for my 600-1000 yd rifle loads but sucks for ball powder like BE or WST, I recall trying it once and being disappointed how slow it was, just doesn't feed ball well. I don't recommend wasting the effort on it either for pistol. Maybe if you're trying to go from 2650 scores to 2660 scores but most of us don't have to worry about that.

I use a RCBS Charge Master Lite