Spend the Savings on Tagamet and Band-Aids

I just made a bunch of .38 Super rounds on my Hornady Lock-N-Load progressive ammo press.

I have concluded that “progressive” ammo presses are a myth, much like “progressive” politics. If you want the LNL to work, you pretty much have to prime the cases in a separate operation, which takes the “progressive” out of the job. A progressive press should size, deprime, prime, and reload cases, all in one circuit. If you try to do that with the LNL, you will suffer.

The press’s functionality seems to depend largely on the brass and caliber. I do okay with .45 ACP and old brass. Today, sadly, I’m using new Starline .38 Super brass. I don’t know if the primer pockets are tight or what, but you have to smack the lever pretty good to get the primers seated. That causes all sorts of problems. The dies move. Powder spills. The flimsy primer feed apparatus gets shaken out of whack.

When power starts spilling, it creates a cascade of issues. It lodges in the little thing that inserts primers, causing it to stick in the extended position and block the primer-feed slide. It obstructs the slide directly, by getting in the too-tight groove in which it rides. It gets in the threads of every screw, making them hard to remove and insert, and you WILL be removing and inserting them often, as the powder problems escalate.

When powder screws up the primer-feed system, guess what happens? Primers fail to seat. Then you get cases that are open at the bottom when they’re filled with powder. What happens then? More powder gets on the press. It’s a vicious cycle.

I learned some new things about the press’s deficiencies today. Guess how the little piston that inserts primers is activated? The rear end of it–hardened steel–bangs into the cast-iron frame of the press every time you make a round. They made it this way intentionally, if you can believe it. This means a hole gradually opens up in the frame, so the piston doesn’t get pushed as far up as it used to. And how do you fill the hole? Beats me. There is no way to get it under a drill press or mill, so I have no idea how I would open it up enough to put a sacrificial insert in it.

The primer-feed tube has an aluminum inner tube held in by…wait for it…friction. I’m completely serious. A set screw would have been the obvious move. When the press bangs around, an aging primer tube which is looser than it used to be (due to wear on the parts that press together) comes loose at the bottom, creating a cavity where primers pile up. Guess what happens then? Primers don’t seat…and POWDER POURS ONTO THE PRESS.

If someone drew a comprehensive flow chart describing every problem this press can have, I think every path would eventually lead to a box labeled “POWDER POURS ONTO THE PRESS.”

People have told me my press needs to be mounted more securely. It’s on a workbench made from two-by-sixes and two-by-eights. It’s held in by big lag bolts seated in lead retainers. I reinforced the wood directly under the press. You could literally rest a car on this bench without stressing it. The only things that would be sturdier would be concrete, stone, or solid metal. The mounting is not the problem. If the press needs to be mounted more rigidly than this, it’s not fit for consumer use.

Here’s another fun issue: it looks like the spring that lifts the press’s table back into position after every round is too short. It probably got that way after being whacked so hard, thousands of times, to seat primers. When the table doesn’t rise high enough, the primer insertion piston remains raised, obstructing the primer feed slide. Guess what this does? It prevents primers from feeding. No primer, powder in case: POWDER POURS ONTO THE PRESS.

I took the spring out and stretched it a sixteenth of an inch. May be helping a little, but there are so many other problems, it doesn’t matter. I tried putting a washer under it before stretching it, but the table wouldn’t lower enough to seat the primers. The washer raised it too high.

I removed every die except the sizing die, and I tried to run the cases through just to size and prime them. Didn’t work. I had to adjust it over and over. I should have been able to process one case every two seconds, but I got a failure rate of maybe 40%, resulting in many minutes lost while I sorted out the unprimed cases and fiddled with the machine.

Once you get past the nightmare of case priming, the other operations go pretty smoothly, although the press still spills a little powder.

People defend this thing as if their kids made it in shop class for Mother’s Day, but it’s pretty crude. Let’s just admit it; it’s not an insult. There is no shame in making a somewhat less-than-slick product, when you’re a small company in a niche market.

I have lots of Chinese machinery which is made to much higher standards. My Northern Tool band saw is the cheesiest machine I own, and it’s considerably more reliable than the Lock-N-Load. Once the press is set up, I should be able to make fifteen cartridges a minute. I’m lucky if I can make one .38 Super round in that amount of time, although .45 is not nearly as bad.

I think I can fix it. I’m going to put a set screw in the primer feed system, the way Hornady should have. If I don’t do that, I’m going to make a better device at the top of the feed tube, to replace the cheap plastic deal Hornady put up there. One way or the other, I’m going to make that tube stay in place. I’m going to polish the primer slide groove so the slide won’t freeze when three grains of Accurate No. 7 fall behind it. I may even put Loc-Tite on the dies so they quit rotating on me. I’m also going to make a T-handle to replace the horrible ball at the top of the lever. The ball screws on, so every time you pull the lever, you have to be careful not to apply counterclockwise torque, or it starts to come off. The necessary effort can actually cause blisters. I’ve had enough of that. I should go ahead and WELD a handle on it. I’m also going to make a weighted rod to rest on top of the primers in the tube. They don’t move reliably under their own weight, and my old reliable coat-hanger segment is not doing the job.

This thing is just not engineered well. There are too many obvious flaws. I know nothing about engineering, but I am easily able to spot the weak points of the press. A good engineer would have seen these things and fixed them before putting the press on the market.

The new EZ-Ject system works great; I’ll say that. I have had no problems with it. And I think the press is a fine platform to start with, PROVIDED you have a lot of spare time and a garage full of machine tools and scrap metal.

I should make new parts and patent them. But how big is the market? Probably wouldn’t cover the cost of the patents.

I wonder if I could make my own press. I guess it’s a viable project. I have no end of scrap metal. I could not cast the frame the way Hornady does, but with all the metal I have, I ought to be able to build a rigid frame without casting anything. Then I could stick the Hornady parts in it and make it work. Maybe I could machine it from aluminum and then add steel parts in areas where wear is an issue.

I had what I think is a clever idea today. I don’t have a brass catcher, and I’m tired of losing .38 Super brass, so today I sprayed 100 bullets with Dykem. Now I should be able to spot my blue cases a mile away. I was worried that it might cause feeding issues, but then I realized, Dykem is so thin it doesn’t worry machinists, who have to worry about tiny tolerances. If it’s okay for them, it should be okay for me.

We’ll see. Worst-case scenario, I have to wipe it off with rubbing alcohol.

Some day I have to get a brass catcher.