Lyman Gen6 Powder System

you so the weather is being difficult today you know can't get out on the range so we're going to come inside and do a little product review this is going to be a look at the Lyman Gen 6 compact touchscreen powder system so people have been bugging me forever to get one of these or to get a powder dispenser of some sort and I took a really really serious look at these things at the beginning at the beginning of this year about 6 months ago after the RCBS chargemaster light came out and at that time as I looked and compared I decided to go with the Lyman Gen 6 and since that time I've just kind of been you know waiting right these things aren't cheap none of them are cheap so since that point I've kind of just been holding off waiting on waiting to finally get frustrated and spend the money I guess so this kind of worked out pretty well because not too long ago some alignments people got in touch with some of my people to see if there was anything I wanted to have a look at and the Lyman Gen 6 was on the top of the list so they sent me this dude to have a look at but hopefully my opinion isn't compromised too much try to give you a fair assessment here it is a very small unit which is definitely one of the big the big pluses here I'll tell you what the best way if you take a lion powder bottle and a hodgson powder bottle that's pretty close like we get a little bit of space left here in front but it's a pretty good approximation approximation of the footprint so it's a pretty small unit which I like a lot it should tuck away nicely on the bench and be out of the way so that was a big factor you know whenever I chose this guy I think what let's have a let's have a quick look at the market so there seemed to be five units out there mainly that I know of and here they are from most expensive on the left to least expensive on the right I checked prices that you know some of the major retailers Midway Brownells amazon Natchez and mid-south shooter supply and I came up with an average price and then also the best price and I was surprised I mean for out of the five the best price was at Natchez now the ones on the end the RCBS chargemaster combo they call it that's the original it's been around forever and all the way on the other end the Hornady Lock and Load unit has been out there and available for quite some time so those two on the ends kind of represent the previous generation maybe so I don't know if our CBS is going to fully drop the original chargemaster soon or not but the charge master light has really taken its place the only thing the light can't do that I know of is store loads the original charge master and also the Lyman gen 5 are capable of storing information you know if you've got if you shoot those same loads over and over and you're looking for a unit where you can program it in to have I guess like quick quick access to stored memory then the Lyman Jin 5 and the RCBS chargemaster are your best options I had no desire for that options I'm always shooting something different so there's nothing I need my skill to remember for me and well and the point I was trying to make a minute ago that the two on the end the Hornady lock and load and the RCBS charge master they both have a lot of issues with overthrowing extruded powders like stick powders have always given them a lot of trouble and there's a lot of modifications out there that people have come up with over the years of you know using a stroll inside of the trickling tube and things like that to try to get the flow smoother and that seems to be the biggest difference between previous generation and the current generation is the current ones they went to some different designs with the trickling tube and those sorts of modifications are not required anymore to avoid overcharging we'll get a whole get into that a whole lot more here in just a little bit the Lyman Jim 5 is just too big for my needs it was just just takes up too much bench space for my situation so it was out so it really came down to to the RCBS chargemaster light in the Lyman Gen 6 the number one thing is cost you know the Lyman is less expensive 25 or $30 but what really led me toward the Lyman is the way that it is broken down and cleaned and I'll tell you what at this point let's go a little bit up close here and see if we can have a look at the way this guy is torn apart let's shut this guy off really quick now the the hopper portion up here comes off very easy there's a push button and then it tilts so that is your unit you got the cap that just comes off this is a nice tight press fit it does come apart but it's a nice tight fit that was one thing I liked about this guy is this all kind of came off in a unit it snapped in place so I wasn't going to absolutely knock it off or end up spilling powder everywhere I think the much the other unit's just kind of sit down in and I worried about that a little bit you know ended up spilling powder everywhere so once the hopper is off on the side there is a little chute that you used empty the unit and we're going to get that this is definitely I would put this in the category of most likely thing to break before the end of this video so far it's done ok but it does just seem it has a has a cheap feel inside of the unit actually I guess I could have shown you with this part still in it so that's where the powder goes down into you've got your little tube that spins and that's where your powder goes in so once that's off then you've got this they give you a little hook tool that is used to remove the trickling stem rod thingy if you twist it around there's a hole you put this guy into the hole to hold that in place and then you just twist it once it's twisted enough so that the you know the threads are are loose you can just pull this guy straight out and now the really cool thing you push this in it comes loose and that is the entire assembly torn apart and let's see they give you a little brush so you can you know brush out all of the problems and we'll get to a powder change here in a minute but I just wanted to tear this apart really quick to show you just how easy it is to get to and easy it is to thoroughly clean because I'm a very paranoid person the little powder dust that accumulates and stuff and gets into nooks and crannies I wanted the ability to just tear the thing completely apart visually inspect every single little nook and cranny that could get powder in it just I felt totally good before doing a powder switch so that's kind of what sold me on this unit I realize a lot of people are going to look at this and say man that is that is complicated and it does take a couple times of you know tearing it apart and putting it together before you get the hang of it but once you get the hang of it it's really not bad at all and it beats the alternative of having a unit that you really can't feel confident about your cleaning job with for the lid go I dropped it did not so let's see I showed you the little brush and it's got a little spot for the brush I show you do the little hook thingy for unscrewing that dude it comes with a 50 gram calibration weight and the holder for that calibration weight does not fit well at all so like if you push it down into far then you can't get it out and if you just kind of sit it in there a little bit it doesn't go in very well so that's that's a little bit of a frustration the only other thing that comes with our electrical adapters for your different yeah that one looks familiar that guy Andrew yep I don't know where that's from but there's that dude and then there's this big monstrosity like holy crap people what sort of electricity you guys using those could handle some current but yeah so those come with it and then a standard 2 prong north-america job as well one thing that kind of hate is the power cord over here and I think all of them are that way I know the Hornet ease that way I'm pretty sure there are CBS is that way I wish it was straight out the back just to narrow up that profile a little bit it's a little bit annoying here on the side does come with a nice pan a very nice pan as a matter of fact ambidextrous I know that never even dawned on me you left-handed guys must have a real pain in the butt trying to use a trying to use a pan like that yeah so this guy is ambidextrous now this guy is dead simple to operate let's go ahead hit the on/off button and it gives you a three minute count so this is a three minute warmup I've had this guy on all afternoon so if you want to bypass this you can't hit the cancel button and it'll just go ahead and bypass it otherwise it just wastes three minutes and then takes you here the calibration is very simple you're supposed to do it without the pain on so let's take the pan off let zero the scale let's press and hold the Cal button and it'll say Cal fifty we put our 50 gram weight on there and click Cal again and that's it we are calibrated so let's go ahead and run through a couple check weights cut some small check weights here is a five point zero here's a two point zero so four seven here's a point five here's a ten twenty so thirty seven point five fifty seven point five fifty nine point five and sixty point five so found the scale itself to be very accurate if you watch one of my recent scale videos you might wonder how quick it acts and it does seem to be a pretty snappy and fast scale you could definitely use it you know as a standalone scale and it would be a good one but I worried it would be pretty annoying a little bit dealing with this trickling tube kind of right there over your over your measuring surface but you can certainly use it alright let's dump some powder in first look this is let's start with hodgkin's Varga pour a little bit of that in I found the hopper holds about a pound of powder you know different powders are fluffier than others but in general I can generally get a pound in there now one thing I forgot to mention is this little black thing on the tip of the trickling stem this is a restrictor so it simply threads in and restricts the outflow of powder so it makes it throw a little bit slower but this was this was their solution to the overthrowing problem that I had mentioned before that the original RCBS charge master had and the Hornady has and I think there was a previous generation of Lyman I'm not familiar with that had the problem so this this is the answer to that so I'll tell you what let's start out without the restrictor in let's throw our pan on here and let's throw okay first we need to zero so this point we're ready to go looks through twenty-five grains so all you have to do is type twenty-five and you can see 25 point zero and then that's before you're ready you just hit enter you can see that error doubt that Thruway hi that's through 25.4 grains so let's go ahead and throw another one all right now this guy looks like it's light yup twenty four point nine let's do another this is actually doing better than I've normally seen so we've had one one overthrow and then two that we're pretty good normally without the restrictor and Varga it's been an overthrow just about every single time now I'm going to bring out a second scale and have it here and we could verify it but it's perfect just trust me I've weighed a billion charges on this guy at this point and whatever this scale says your other skills want to say it's been a very reliable scale occasionally very occasionally you'll have one - where let's say this reads 25.0 I usually like to you know give a little tip just have it to reread isn't a bad idea and occasionally it'll you know go to like 24.9 or something but for the most part once it beeps and shows you a number that's the real number now this unit is faster than I expected like this guy really seems fast there we go that one went over a little bit okay so that's enough of that let's put the restrictor in and try it with the restrictor in place there we go it just screws in get that little powder granular layer restrictor now once you put the restrictor in with a powder like Varga you are almost always going to throw a tenth under I was very much aware of this beforehand almost every review you watch you'll see that people say this this scale likes to throw light which is good I'll take light over over heavy any day because the vast majority of the time I'm going to be using this to get them close and then using a trickler separately and another scale to dial it right into exactly what I want so this guy came out there there was once he had said 25.0 before but you lift it up and let it sit back down sometimes it'll what it is it's a heavy 24.9 it's not lying to us it's right he's just right there on the borderline of twenty four point nine and twenty five but you can see the restrictor really doesn't slow things down all that much this is still a very fast charge go so it says 25 give it a little tilt cue it another one so yeah it's just it's just right there on the line which is actually perfect like that that's exactly the sort of charge I would want because if I'm doing let's say a 25.0 grain charge that guy that just a little bit like probably only needs like one or two granules of powder trickled into it to be perfect and then and then you're rockin and rollin 24.9 now this phenomenon of these guys throwing a 10th light it's so predictable that I saw a lot of people say that you know if they wanted to throw 25.0 they would just set the unit to 25.1 and then just throw out the ones that actually threw 25.1 the vast majority will actually be 25.0 that one's good kind of yeah it's good let's bump it up to like a 30 odd 6 charge or something 45 grains now one thing I haven't shown yet it does have so I mean this is really all it does there's no advanced features really the RCBS does have a trickle button to where you can manually tell it to go ahead and trickle a little bit more which this does not have I guess that could be handy but I'll worry about that well I would have to play with an RCBS to see just how responsive that trickle button is I have a feeling it might be hard to control but you know I don't know what I'm talking about but on this guy so auto repeat if we click on auto repeat you can see auto repeat I guess I could focus down there and kinda yeah you can see auto repeat right there below the whatchamacallit now I'll tell you what let's go back to let's do 20 grains just to speed things up a little bit so now if we click start on 20 grains see it says auto zero one it doesn't you know it shows a count of how many charges you've thrown but that charge you take it out you either trickle it up or use it and then you just put the empty scale back on it zeros and then it automatically goes ahead and throws the next charge I realize this is probably the superior way to do things but I've found that I prefer to leave it on manual but I might just you know I might just need to adjust the way I do things so after this guy finishes I'll run you guys through how to empty the unit yep another light one like I said this is this is what I expected I had seen this on lots of reviews saying that it threw light so I was ready for it and it doesn't upset me at all so you're not going to hear me complaining a whole lot about that I knew what I was getting into okay - empty the unit we've got it backed up here to the side of the bench we're going to pop this guy open and then we've got our little door there because they're going to bring it around get you a better view there you go so bottle under cap off the bottle first right under there we lift a little door and we're dumping powder right now once it mostly empties didn't yes give it a couple taps and at that point you know we can go ahead and pop this off because there's no set the powder down there we go there's no powder inside of that deed now you want to be sure to close this stupid door before you go any further I don't know where it was my crazy brain kept getting sideways I have left this open twice and closed that and ended up with freaking powder everywhere I got to be honest with you here at the beginning playing around with this guy it has been like somebody handed a toddler confetti around here I've been getting powder all over the place but I'm finally getting the point where I'm a little bit better with it alright here's a look down inside the unit if I can see around the camera and you just take your little brush and go ahead and brush the remaining powder down into that area and then at this point we are ready blow up yep for one thing I should have turned the scale off before we even started emptying it just for the heck of it off okay let me get cancel first and off I don't know what it was doing all right but you want to leave the pain in there because you know our tube is still full of powder and you're going to be dumping some powder I'll tell you what let me get an empty disc I put it right there now if you remember we've got our little our little hook thingy goes down inside of there and we just twist it alright once it's free you just make sure the little hole is up right like that's where the powder goes in you want it upward so you're not spilling powder and then we just pull this guy straight out and dump the remaining powder in the pan now if we go ahead and pop this guy out we do have some powder left down in there yep there it is so let's go ahead and put it in the and we're good so good pop this guy open we'll look around make sure we didn't leave any powder stuff laying around so there's something I want to show you that I think is very important they send you a set of these as spares I think they call them dust protectors or dust covers or something what it is it's that guy right there and that guy right there and you know our stem is a tight fit with these little white plastic kind of gaskets and it's a it's a reasonably tight fit through those guys so I think over time what happens is I actually I could show you with one of these dudes yeah there we are this little plastic part here yeah whatever you get it there's that white plastic is what has the fitted is what fits tightly around the outside of this and keeps powder from leaving this chamber and ending up that way and ending up this way and to replace those you just slide this guy back out and then you structure to just show you yeah popping them out like that I've had him out and in a couple times the first time through they were very very tight and what I ended up doing was taking this guy I'm not sure what the hook side is for maybe that's what this is somehow for but they do have a little yeah there we go they have a little lip that you can kind of get a hold of and use for pulling like this like that lip is right there so if you just kind of put it under there and pry a little bit that's how I had to do it the first time because I didn't want to get anything in here and screw up the you know the nice plastic tight fit so I don't know how often those are going to wear out all right it's me from the future this the length of this video is getting completely out of hand what are we are we're already at 25 minutes I've got like another half hour of footage we switch over to h3 35 and I we measure a bunch of charges with it we cover nothing new we're just going to end it right here one thing I'll warn you and the reason why I specifically showed h3 35 in the part you're not going to see was it splashes all over the place maybe I'll cut a little footage of that in right here we are getting powder all over the place here and when that happens is when it's just starting to trickle when the pan is empty the first second or so trickling causes a whole bunch of splash we go ahead and wipe what we've got now out of the way actually maybe I'll maybe I can zoom in get you a picture of the splashing these fine powders I tried a ch3 35 and on my own off-camera I tried accurate 4100 which is one of those like perfectly spherical powders that are like sand it bounced all over the place as well I just don't think it's something that can be helped because looking at the unit you know the only way to fix that would be to lower the trickling stem and it's already you know I wouldn't want it in you lower so it just might be that for ball powders I've just used my regular old powered powder measure ball powders mostly meter perfectly out of a powder measure anyway almost so if it ends up being that I use this for extruded and flake powders and then just use the normal powder measure for ball powders that I can live with that so this this guy's going to go into long-term review status right it's going to be in lots of videos so I'll probably have a follow up maybe you know as I learn its quirks as I learn its weaknesses maybe we'll cover it more but I mean I guess that would be one warning whether it's the linemen or if you go another direction you're buying a quirky little instrument you're going to have to learn what makes it work best and maybe bring a little patience to the table so we'll end it on that note if you would like to support the channel check me out at patreon.com slash reloading and I will see you guys tomorrow

Channel: Johnny's Reloading Bench

Views: 182,258

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Id: zFEmydtRODA

Length: 28min 48sec (1728 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 23 2017