ORIGINAL: cayugad
To tap or not to tap... that is the question. I think Will Shakespeare once wrote that.
Actually some rifles you do not have to be all that fussy. Even 5 extra grains of powder will not be the end of the world in accuracy. Other rifles through, demand a certain charge to achieve their best accuracy and you have to be a little more careful with them. It seems the traditional rifles with patch and ball are not the fussy ones for some reason.
Although tomorrow I will be taking five premeasured charges and a loaded rifle is all....
I'm with Cayugad... I "tap" my measure a few times to settle the load and then top off the measure again and just "dust" what little excess there may be from the top. I always use the same measure and I always write down the load data for each gun...powder, grains, type of cap used , patch thickness, roundball or conical (with or without a bore button)and type of patch or bullet lubeused. I haven't weighed any of my charges yet, although I've considered doing so just to see how close I am, but I try to do everything the same...every time. Including how I seat the projectile albeit conical or ball and I ALWAYS carry pre-measured loads for the gun I'm using measured the same way I sighted in.....BPS