A year ago I got a cheap ($8) digital scale from Ebay.

It worked good until I took it camping. Left it in car. Weighed my sleeping bag before and after to see how much weight (water) it gained.

Scale doesn't work anymore : (

It sort of works but it's very sensitive and unstable.

Bummer, bought another one from amazon.com for $15.

Maybe I won't take this one with me camping.

Weighed sleeping bag with a different scale - 28 7/8 ounce after sleeping for 6 nights, 28 5/8 ounce after I dried it out for a few days - it gained 1/4 ounce of water after sleeping 6 nights - in this case it absorbed very little water

Bummer! Was it overheated? Anyway, hopefully, doubling of price will mean way more than doubling of useful life. :)

What scale did you replace it with?

http://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-SC-2KG-Digital-Pocket/dp/B001RF3XJ2/

$15

2000 g

0.1 g resolution

I know nothing else about it but for $15 I can't go too far wrong

What is your method for weighing larger and bulky things - like your pack.

Edited by jleeb on 03/31/2012 16:33:05 MDT.

I only have to weigh my heaviest item which is less than 2 pounds which is less than 1000 grams

I do have a bathroom scale that measures to 0.1 pound accuracy which I use seldomly

Actually, if you're talking your total pack weight, I don't think you can tell the difference between 0.1 pound so that is probably accurate enough for the total.

I mean like weighing your actual backpack, which is too large for a small scale. I guess I need to find an accurate body scale and weigh myself with my bag on and off.

To weigh my actual backpack I use the bathroom scale which is only accurate to 0.1 pound. Yeah - weigh myself with pack, weigh without pack, subtract. Or you can zero it without pack, then weigh with pack and it will do the subtraction.

But you don't really need to weigh the total.

A couple of years ago I was all ready to go out the door for a 2-day drive to Wyoming and weighed my pack at the last minute. I found that the pack weight (on my reasonably accurate bathroom scale) was almost 2 lbs. less than my spreadsheet total.

Of course I thought for sure that I'd left something out! I went through my spreadsheet printout (which I use as a checklist) to find out. Everything was checked off! So I unpacked everything and started checking it all off again. I finally figured out that the weight discrepancy was the food. I used an average day's food to calculate the total, and that's how much the total was off. I threw in a couple of breakfast bars (which I didn't need) to help with the discrepancy and finally got on the road.

As a result, I got to my motel in Idaho about 11 that night instead of at 6 as I'd originally intended!

Now, when packing, I weigh my food bag and put the actual weight on my spreadsheet! Most of the time I trust the spreadsheet total, too.

There's probably a moral here someplace! :-)

Edited by hikinggranny on 03/31/2012 17:49:23 MDT.