I see there are a few threads on scales here but I really can't find what I'm looking for.

I spent equivalent of about $100 a couple of years ago on what were supposed to be scales accurate to +/-1mg up to a max. weight of 10g. In actual fact what I find is if I start to load them up they don't register any weight till around 7mg or 10mg or 15mg in a sort of random fashion. When you're up to 30mg I think it all becomes fairly accurate.

I recently had a friend who wanted to try incremental doses of spice of 5, 10, 15mg to start him off and I basically had to eyeball it by taking 20mg and dividing it up more or less. I've also recently been given some other substances that really do need me to tell the difference between 3, 5, 7 and 10mg and I really don't fancy eyeballing these!

Anyone any suggestions on what other people use either in terms of methodology or equipment?

(If the mods think it best not to mention exact makes of scales please put a comment after ... or feel free to delete this post even )

A trick is to weigh 10 (or 100) times the amount you need and to dissolve this into an amount of solvent that you can accurately measure. Then measure and evaporate a calculated amount of solvent containing the otherwise hard to weigh payload.

Say you need dmt in 5 mg quantities and you can weigh 100 mg with 10% accuracy (10 mg deviation) and that you can measure 1 ml of liquid volume with 10% accuracy. Weigh 100 mg dmt and measure 20 ml ethanol. Dissolve dmt in ethanol. Measure 1 ml of ethanol with 10% accuracy and it will contain 5 mg dmt with 10% accuracy. Now instead of 5 mg +/- 10 mg dmt that straight weighing on the 10 mg deviation scale would give you, you have 5 mg +/- 0.5 mg dmt - a twentyfold increase in accuracy.

Credit goes to starway6, who is the champion of this method for dosing spice. He says it has the added benefit that a bottle of liquid is a lot less questionable to keep in the fridge than a vial of white powder. Same for a dropper or measuring syringe vs. a milligram scale.

At least if you don't want to spend a fortune on analytical balance.

If you are sure that your scales are accurate after the 30mg mark why dont you put a piece of paper/card weighing 30mg or more on them. Get an initial reading; And then load your substance of choice onto the paper/card. Also try replacing the battery in your scale.

This is generally what I do because I run into similar issues with those small amounts. Mine is a milligram scale and it will weigh 5+ milligrams but it likes to fluctuate if any lower (this is after many calibrations with the weights that came with it) so if I start with my tiny square piece of glass that weighs exactly 10g (from a miniature picture frame), I can usually get a precise reading.

I use a Gemini-20 portable milligram scale. If it is not okay to mention scales I will remove it, although I've come across a few other threads with people mentioning them with no problem such as:

What scale do you use?

On page 8 post 155 anrchy posted a picture of the exact scale I have.

Hey what great suggestions! Will experiment with them all and see what works best. Many thanks guys

I have a Gempro 250 which is very reliable.
It really a +/- 1mg scale and not like those cheap eBay-scales.

It has adjustable feet and a water compass so you can see when the scale is perfectly straight.
After calibration (I only use it about once a year so I calibrate it before use) it will always show my 10g and 30g
weights as accurate down to the zero.

Say that I want 30mg 2cb in a capsule.
I weigh one half of the empty capsule about six times. Sometimes it will measure an extra mg in any direction
so the more times you weigh the better the precision of the true weight.
Then you add the powder and do the same thing.
I dont "tare" the capsule but just add the weight. I don't know if this is necessary or just me having
to do this with cheaper scales from before so I just continued to do this.

So, if the capsule weighs 76mg I want the finished average to be 106mg.

It looks like this scale is a lot cheaper now then it was when I bought it many years ago.
I think I paid more than 300$

This can happen when you put powder directly on a scale.
To prevent this you should not weigh something directly on the scale but use
a small container of some sort that you can lift off to add the substance.
Also make sure that no cellphones or other electronics are lying next to the scale as this can interfere
with the accuracy.