Was messing with the Hornet and Vihtavouri Tin Star powder - hair pulling exercise for 2.2 grains of powder! It is very a bulky powder but suffers static problems so does not dump very well with volumetric powder measures. My RCBS, Lee and Harrell's could not throw a consistent charge. RCBS was the best of the bunch but still not very good.
So I was looking at my BEL analytical balance and started to mess around with a powder trickler which although slow worked quite well.
I decided to 're-purpose' some scrap and some bits 'n bobs.
Unfortunately I had to order some 12mm vibrator motors as I managed to break the one I had.
So The BOM is;

Moka coffee funnel
1" square Aluminium scrap
Broken carbon fibre arrow shaft
3mm screwdriver shaft
Aluminium disc for base (just what I had  kicking around)
5mm grub screw with 1 bb lead shot
12mm Ø  3v vibrator motor





Probably will mess with an 18650 3.7v battery and tune the speed with some diodes and add some weight to the arrow shaft to add variable dampening as well.

Waiting for the motors to arrive 5 for £5!

I would   throw that powder out  or quit reloading. ......Paul H......

Would love to if there was anything else available with same performance!

Quick test, works a treat will cobble together a control box tomorrow - found the parts I need this evening!

Complete, uses a 6vdc wall wart.









...

I assume that the switch is on/off; the knob is a rheostat to control the magnitude of the vibration; so what's the red button for?

Paul

The toggle switch and push button are connected in parallel. The button for momentary action and toggle switch for when loading the tube, setting up etc. The rotary switch is not a rheostat but a single pole 12 way  switch with a diode wired across each contact giving me 7-8v ish total volt drop.
The fine tuning is done with that sliding weight on the drop tube.
The real result from this little experiment was being able to deal with the Tin Star powder without its associated static problems.
It dumps the powder quicker than faffing around with a hand driven trickler into the pan  - it works well. 2.2 grains Tin Star drops in approx 8 seconds - considerably faster than manual trickling.
It is a solution to a particular problem, I usually just use powder throwers but Tin Star refuses to play friendly!



As you can see I have good access to the pan without moving the trickler...

Pretty skookum!

Paul

I just gotta say Joe,...


Your stuff amazes the living he!! out of me.  Your prototypes look better than many finished products I've seen.  From the designs through the execution.


Well done,...   Yet again.

Thank you for the kind comment Jamie.

Here for Paul t'other side... and a pic of the vibrator motor.







End result.



1040fps approx 100ft lbs at muzzle - no need to carry the hornet adaptor in the field!
Bunnies n squizzers watch out...

Adaptor (easily lost)





...

Had a conversation with Paul Hoskins yesterday, and he suggested trying 80-grain bullets in the Contender, (that has the 1:8 twist barrel on it), to try and get a subsonic load that I can actually hit something with. I thought I had some of the 80-grainers, but I don't. The heaviest I have are 70-grainers. I also have 69 and 63 grain bullets. Maybe one of them will work for a precise subsonic load. Honestly, I'm not that interested in subsonic. I'm interested in a "reloadable" .22 magnum or .22 long rifle. Something in the 1200 to 1600 f/s muzzle velocity range. It's not difficult to get to those MVs, it's just been impossible to get them go where I point them.

I might buy a pound of Tin Star if I can find it, but I don't have much hope that it will work any better than Trail Boss, and Trail Boss did not 'work' with the wide variety of bullets I tried.

Paul