I Know This Will Save me Money Once I Buy Enough Tools

I got my reloading press put back together yesterday. Now I need new shell plates. The new ejection system works off a projection on the lower hub, which projects up into a groove going around the bottom of the shell plate. When the plate advances, a shell’s bottom hits the projection, and it knocks the shell out of the plate. My old plates don’t have the groove into which the projection fits.

I can send the plates to Hornady and pay ten bucks each to get them machined. But where is the danger immaturity terror in that? I have a lathe and a mill. I should be able to do this.

I need to make a quarter-inch slot 0.052″ deep, around the bottom of the plate. I know of two ways to do it. First, I can use the lathe. Second, I can put the plate in my rotary table and do the job on the mill with a center-cutting end mill.

Here is the rub: the plate tests out at about 33 on the Rockwell scale, and I don’t have any small cutters in carbide. I have 8% cobalt, but I don’t know if that’s hard enough. It’s definitely harder than the plate, but I would assume the difference between the plate’s hardness and the cutter’s hardness has to exceed a certain figure in order for the cutter to work well.

I don’t think they cover this in Machinery’s Handbook. They list metal types and cutter types. I don’t think they list cutter choices paired with ranges of metal hardness. I guess I can dig it out and check.

Enco is having a nice sale on carbide cutters, so I may get a few. I can spend less than the cost of a Hornady refit and end up with some nice tooling to keep. The danger is that I’ll utterly destroy my shell plates.

I sold my .40 S&W pistol, so I have a shell plate I will never need. I may try to machine that one first.

I guess I could make my own shell plates, if I had any idea how to make a ball-bearing detent.

The lathe would be good, but how do you make a rectangular slot in the face of a disk, with an interrupted cut? I can’t even guess what kind of tool I’d use. I suppose I could make a rectangular tool from cobalt steel and push it directly into the disk, but I have never seen that done in a video.

I may go ahead and fire up the mill with a cobalt cutter and see what happens. A total disaster will cost me about two bucks.

Mounting the rotary table on the mill reminded me that I need a second rotary table. Mine weighs something like 120 pounds with the chuck installed, so in order to get it on and off the mill without risk of dropping it or chipping the mill, I take the chuck off every time. This means a tedious procedure of dialing in the chuck, whenever I want to use the rotab. I have been planning to get a 4″ rotab and mount it in my vise when I need it. This should kill about 95% of the 10″-table moves.

Finding the right rotab is not easy. Little Machine Shop sells a nice one with dividing plates and a chuck and a tailstock for $300. I can get a Vertex with nothing on it for $139. Then there is Lathemaster. But I don’t know what the specs on the Lathemaster product are.

It looks like Phase II has the best specs in the Chaiwanese market.

Some of these things are hard to mount, because you can’t just use your usual studs and nuts. That’s a consideration. I am planning to put the table on a piece of aluminum and put it in my vise, but sometimes (probably), I’ll want it on the mill table surface.

I guess I’ll figure it out.

Someone asked for a link to a Youtube about upgrading the Hornady Lock-N-Load press to the EZ-Ject system. Here you go.