Humorous Errors Logged for Posterity

I managed to use up the last of my Laser-Cast .45 bullets today. By that I mean I managed to make them into ammunition. I must have had every conceivable type of ammunition press malfunction by now. And not all are inevitable problems caused by the nature of the press. I made up a good number of completely new and unnecessary glitches.

The first die a casing hits in a Hornady Lock-N-Load AP has a pin in it that pushes the old primer out. The primer falls into a tube and goes out of the press. If the pin doesn’t push it far enough, it sticks halfway out. This locks up the press. It can’t turn because the primer obstructs it. Lots of fun.

The safeguard is to adjust the pin correctly and tighten it so it can’t slip back into the die. I do this, but you really have to crank down on it, and I’m reluctant to put too much pressure on the parts. So once in a while, the pin manages to work its way into the die, and a casing gets stuck.

My genius response? No, I didn’t throw away a two-cent .45 casing, of which I have piles. I put the casing on top of the shell plate and ran it up into the die, figuring the pin would poke the primer out. Here’s the problem with this idea. The same die has a sizing part in it that squeezes the casing back into shape, and when a casing goes into it, it gets wedged in very tightly. What pulls it out? The shell plate. IF the casing is situated so the rim is under the plate. If you do what I did, the plate pushes the casing in, but it can’t pull it out. So you have to find a way to pull the casing out, and then you have to readjust the pin. In case you’re wondering, Vise Grips don’t work too well, but a flat screwdriver does.

I also ran several rounds through the machine, with the part that loads primers sitting on the bench beside it. One of the irritating things about this press is that it’s easy to screw up the primer apparatus; there are several things that can keep primers from seating. When I started getting rounds with no primers, I figured it was time to diagnose a problem and fix it. In a sense, that was true. I looked at the part sitting on the bench next to the press, and I instantly diagnosed the problem: epic operator FAIL.

At one point I managed to do something really original. I somehow got a bullet stuck in the die that seats bullets in cases. I found this out when the stuck bullet mashed the next round halfway into a casing. I had to take the die out, put it in a vise, and drill out the stuck bullet. This may have been caused by an indexing problem. When the indexing gets messed up, you can have a situation where you can only push casings partially into the dies. In a situation like that, you could easily push a bullet halfway into a casing and then pull it back off, leaving it stuck in the seating die. If you didn’t catch it, you’d end up with the problem I had.

Other than my own interesting screwups, the press works as well as it ever did. The pawls were easy to adjust, but they crept out of adjustment while I made ammunition, ruining two primed cases and necessitating use of a hex wrench. I think this thing could use some Loctite to keep the pawl screws from creeping in and out. The little slide that moves fresh primers into the press got stuck once. As far as I know, this is normal. It has happened ever since I got the press. You can clean it and dry-lube it all you want. It’s going to happen once in a while. If powder spills on it and you don’t clean up every trace, it happens a LOT. Finally, the ejection wire caught one round, obstructing the press. Ho hum. I can deal with that. You just pull the round out.

On the whole, it’s a good thing. Five-dollar boxes are better than fifteen-dollar boxes, and it’s nice to know a little bit about ammunition, instead of just going to the store and pointing at the box I want.

I still have 1400 rounds of Hornady hollow points that I got as part of a sales promotion. I guess I should look up a recipe and start using them. I have read that they’re not optimal for self-defense, because they don’t always open up. I don’t know whether it’s true, but they’re fine for the range. Even if they’re not the best, this caliber does the job pretty well even with ordinary ammunition, so it would be comforting to have a few hundred rounds of hollow points in the closet.

With any luck, I’ll be shooting the Vz 58 at the range on Thursday. I bought .38 Super brass, so maybe I’ll take both 1911s and have a real session.