More Bullets!
March 23rd, 2009Hollow Points
I finally got started on my free Hornady .45 ammunition. And the press is getting on my nerves again.
You can do about 40 rounds before the left pawl goes out of alignment. So you have to stare at the shell plate while you run the press and make sure it lines up, and when it doesn’t, you have to compensate by hand and run through the shells already on the plate. That empties it so you can adjust the pawl without screwing up any cartridges.
On top of that, the slide that feeds the primers stopped on me, so I had to knock it loose and hit it with dry lube. I don’t think the dry lube makes any difference at all. The slide is either out of spec or not designed well, because it has never been reliable. It’s clean and undamaged, and so are the parts around it, and it still stops up every so often. I added a steel rod that sits on top of the primers in the primer tube. That presses them down into the slide and makes it less likely to jam, and I put a little mark on the rod that tells me when I’m out of primers.
Irritating, but probably a whole lot faster than a basic press that does one cartridge at a time.
I’m going to have to Loc-Tite the pawl screw. That will solve one problem. Of course, I have no Loc-Tite on hand. Going to the store kills half an hour of loading time.
If you got 230-grain XTC .45 bullets free from Hornady (#45160) and you like Unique, here’s a recipe from the Hornady manual.
LOA: 1.230″
WLP primer
5.1-6.1 grains Unique
I’m using 5.8. That is supposed to give 800 fps, I think.
I can’t believe how many .45 cases I have. If you go to the range and let people know you reload, they’ll actually bring them to you. Aren’t gun people nice? Proves what they say about an armed society. Hippies, on the other hand, are among the nastiest creatures imaginable.
One nice thing about jacketed bullets is that they don’t have grease or wax or whatever it is all over them. That stuff probably doesn’t make the press run any better.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:08 PM
From what I’ve read, any possible chemical contamination that could get into a primer is to be avoided due to unknown action on the ignition rate. I would not place anything on top of primers stacked in a vertical tube either. That would supposedly set you up for igniting the whole stack in the tube. That info I gather from the Lee manual. For as much as they seem to know about reloading, they certainly regard primers as some sort of mystical evil. Mr Lee apparentley had some sort of falling out with the Federal and CCI people.
I’m interested to see how the lathe plans turn out.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:13 PM
I’m telling you Steve, if you’re having these problems, you need to send the thing back to Hornady because something is wrong. I, and thousands of other happy LnL users aren’t having these problems.
March 24th, 2009 at 6:54 AM
Why I prefer a single-stage press (verse 3) LOL.
No tinkering to keep the timing right. Granted, I’m not trying to load 1000 rounds at a time. but with a little organization you can run a couple hundred through a single-stage press surprisingly fast.
Also, charging the rounds with powder one at a time makes it much less likely to miss a round or double-charge one.
For that reason I tend to use charges that mostly fill the case (with space allowed for the bullet), so that a double charge overflows it.
My $0.02.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:15 AM
I think it’s a good product, and I would not want to load 200 pistol cartridges on a single-stage machine. But you can’t just pop it out of the box and expect it to work, even if (unlike me) you have reloaded on other machines.
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The forums are full of questions about the indexing and the primer feed, and there are other very common issues. I haven’t had all of the problems this press can present; thanks to the Internet, I am able to read up on solutions, and I am trying to get ahead of the game. For example, a lot of people are gluing dimes and washers to the frames of their presses because some part associated with the primers is banging the aluminum.
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Off the top of my head, I can recall three primer-feed issues people have mentioned. First, the guide wire for the primer-feed slide sometimes has to be adjusted; I’ve already had to deal with that. Second, you have to make sure there is no grease or oil anywhere in the works that could keep the feed from working. Third, you may have to polish the slide and the groove it runs in, to prevent it from sticking. I may try that.
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The minor difficulty I’m having with indexing will disappear as soon as I apply Loc-Tite, so the primer feed issue is the only remaining problem of any significance.
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I think it would be great if someone set up a “Wiki” or wrote a comprehensive pdf to help people troubleshoot this press. The inadequacy of the troubleshooting section of the manual is a very big problem, and that’s a shame, because it could be corrected in two days.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:39 PM
The rod in the tube helps ensure that the primers near the end of the load drop properly so you’ve done right there.
As for the times when the auto-prime fails, you may consider fitting a switch on the lever or connecting arm. All it needs to do is to set off a light or a clicker that activates when the travel is further than normal seating allows. For me a light would be better, but you may hear well enough that a click or buzz would work.
Have fun,
Woody