Relief

Today I blue-Loc-tited the left pawl screw on the Hornady LNL, and then I pounded out a couple of hundred rounds of .45 ACP. I had maybe eight bad rounds, none of which were related to the left pawl problem. My own stupidity was clearly the cause of maybe four, and it was a strong suspect in a couple of others. This is acceptable performance. From the press, I mean.

You really have to shove the lever hard to make sure the primers go into the cases. I had several rounds that ended up without primers (I am not including the ones I tried to prime after the primer tube emptied), and I suspect that I either forgot to shove the lever, or I didn’t shove it hard enough. Also, I have gotten lazy about cleaning cases, and I have taken the advice of people who say not to bother with lube, so it’s possible that dirty primer pockets have caused a problem or two.

In case anyone is Googling “Hornady Lock-N-Load AP” and trying to solve an indexing problem, I’ll spell the name of the product out.

I put Loc-tite on the left pawl screw, screwed it in, and ran the press in order to adjust it before the Loc-tite cured. Unbelievably, it was dead-on. I don’t know if you realize how weird that is. You can throw the indexing off with an eighth of a turn of that screw. I would say the odds of hitting the right spot by blind luck are something like 1:50. Maybe six full turns to set the screw. That’s roughly 50 eighths of a turn. In practice, maybe that estimate is high, since you can narrow it down to fewer turns before trying the press.

Sorry. Former physics grad student thinking out loud. I can’t help doing things like that.

I let it set up for about half an hour. I figured it didn’t need an all-night cure for a problem this undemanding, and I guess I was right, because I didn’t have to touch it after that.

Someone said I should not put a weight on top of the primers in the feed tube. I researched this a year or so ago, and I came to the conclusion that it was not a problem. Some guy on a forum responded to the same suggestion, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He discussed what it takes to set a primer off, and how little that resembled the weight of a light iron rod. I think he was right. You can put a huge amount of pressure on a primer by stupidly trying to prime a primed case (not that I would know this from first-hand knowledge), and it doesn’t even begin to crush the primer.

If I blow up, you will have the satisfaction of saying you told me so.

Whenever you end up with powder in an unprimed cartridge, the powder spills onto the press. Eventually it may accumulate in the slide thing that feeds primers, and although I don’t think it caused me any problems today, it could conceivably stop the press by making a primer obstruct the little primer ram deal that pushes primers into cases. I don’t know; maybe it depends on how low the ram goes. Probably not. Anyway, I went in with a Q-Tip soaked in Hornady One Shot after a while, to make sure no gummy crud was in there.

I need to make a little alarm to tell me when I’m out of primers, especially since my primers and bullets are out of phase. I use 100-round boxes of bullets, and primers come in 100-round trays, but for one reason and another, I am starting every 100-round box of bullets with a primer tray that is already down to 80. That means there’s a pretty good chance that I won’t notice when I’m on bullet #81 and there are no primers left in the tube.

The design of a buzzer alarm would be simple. Put a contact on top of the tube. Put another one on the rod that sits on the primers. When the primers are gone, the rod drops and puts the contacts together. BZZZZZ.

I have the dumbest goals and dreams. I really do. A lot of men dream of riches and Ferraris and power and endless sex. I’m pretty excited because I have this:

I guess I should be pleased that I am capable of being satisfied. A lot of men are not.