. . .although probably thousands invented it before me, but anyway --

After all the cases have been charged with powder, and are all sitting mouth-up in the block, I take a standard fine-point plastic pen, like a Flair or whatever, and insert the flat back end of the pen into a case with a known-for-sure-blue-ribbon-no foolin' correct amount of powder in it.

(Of course, it could be a wooden dowel or almost anything. I just happened to see a plastic pen at the back of my loading bench first.)

With the pen or dowel inserted and resting on the powder charge, and with my forefinger just touching the case rim, I can then go down the line inserting it into every case to check by feel for approximate quantity of powder. It's not a fine-tuning device, just a final check before seating the bullet to confirm that each case has not less than one charge, and also no more than one charge.

Pretty slick, huh? If you use this trick, be sure to send me a dollar for each case checked, okay?

I just look into each case on my progressive press before I manually put a bullet on top of it to be seated. Thousands of rounds downrange with no problems yet.

Well, I mean I do this in addition to looking. Just one more check.

But I can see how it would not really apply to a progressive press. I use an RCBS turret press.

I saw an RCBS progressive manual-indexing press on TV that had a powder check stage/station.

I can't see the inside of the case at station 3 on my Dillon SDB to see if there's powder or not, but after 4000+ rounds with no squibs or apparent double-charges, I'm not worried about it.

Dave:

I think I'd use the wooden dowel; less chance of two undesirable things:

- a spark from static electricity

- powder clinging to the plastic pen (static, again) and (ever so slightly) changing the powder charge

I use a Dillon 550, so this is a difficult test for me to conduct...

JB

Those dollars are NOT rolling in, people

Let's get on the stick, here.