New Bullets!

So far, Oregon Trail has really impressed me. I get great accuracy with their bullets, I have not had leading problems, the price is cheap, and they get stuff to you fast. I ordered some .357 bullets on Thursday, and they’re here. They were having a sale. I suppose some day I’ll go completely insane, as contrasted with my current state of partial sanity, and get into casting bullets. But for now, it’s hard to beat Oregon Trail.

If you know guns, you may be wondering why I’m buying “.357 bullets” when I already have .38 Super bullets, which are nearly the same thing. While I was researching, I got the impression–right or wrong–that bullets should fit a barrel fairly snugly. The .38 Super is supposed to be .356″ in practice. The .357/.38 Special bullet is supposed to be .358″. So I got the bigger bullets. Will it make a difference? Search me.

I chose 125-grain bullets, to mimic defensive loads.

I’m trying to decide what to do to keep the Hornady Lock-N-Load AP from rocking. Tightening the existing bolts won’t do it, and I am fairly sure the bench is not the problem. It may be that bigger-diameter bolts would help; perhaps the flexing is taking place in the bolts themselves.

There’s a place where I could put a plain old C-clamp, holding the front of the press down on the bench. This would almost surely work. But it’s kind of a Jethro Bodine solution. And it would mar up the press. Another answer is to drill a third bolt hole in the base of the press.

Chris Byrne says the Lock-N-Load rocks too much. A knowledgeable reader says the primer feed system on the Lock-N-Load is very vulnerable to spilled powder. That’s a bad combination. If the press rocks, some powder will be spilled from time to time, and guess where it will land? In a place where it will obstruct the doodad that loads the primer into the press. And if you spill enough powder from a cartridge, you could conceivably screw up a load.

Another problem with the rocking is that it will eventually ruin the existing 2-bolt mount. Sooner or later, the lag shields or the bolts or the wood will fatigue, and the press will pop out of the bench, and it will be time to find a new place to mount it.

I’m inclined to go ahead and drill that third hole, although I know I won’t do a pretty job, and I’ll have to take the press apart to do it. I suppose I should try bigger bolts first.

Someone suggested welding up some kind of metal base. But that won’t change anything unless the connection to that base is different from the existing connection to the bench. The press has no anchor at the front end, and a metal base wouldn’t change that.

Apart from the mounting problem, everything seems to work pretty much as advertised. The shell retainer springs fall apart in a hurry, so you need to buy extras, but that’s to be expected. And the decapping pin has a funny way of creeping downward in the sizing die. But the press works. It’s just slow, because of the problems I have to manage while I use it. I have to watch the primers carefully, and every so often, I have to take the press apart and get the excess powder out of it, and I often find myself taking apart rounds that have no primers. Also, I am fairly sure that it’s impossible to get the sizing die to index perfectly every time. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like the die sometimes hits a case incorrectly even when the shell plate is lined up. So I have to use the press very tentatively in order to catch it every time it does that. Otherwise, I would mash maybe ten percent of my brass.

I think Hornady may have erred by not putting a ring-shaped primer recess around the bottom of the press, at least as far as the sizing die. The way it is now, the shells sit on a flat surface. If a primer isn’t perfectly flush with a case, the shell leans over. This may be what causes the sizing die to hit the sides of some cases. Unless I am badly deceived, even once-fired factor brass sometimes has bulgy primers. I suppose that’s inevitable, since it’s all used. A Band-Aid solution would be to have separate dies for decapping and sizing, or to decap the shells by hand.

I look forward to reloading for the .357. I would guess that revolvers are less problematic, since they don’t have feeding problems and they can’t lock up. I continue to drool over the Smith & Wesson Model 627. I have a queasy suspicion that the free .357 brass I picked up a while back is actually .38 Special brass. Hope I’m wrong.

Suggestions welcomed.