Half of Success is Being Willing to Do Other People’s Jobs

I think I’m going to go out in the garage and start fixing the problems with my Hornady Lock-N-Load press. Stabilizing the primer feed tube should be pretty easy; Hornady supplied a very flimsy piece of plastic–about as sturdy as those tiny tables that hold pizza boxes off the cheese–to do the job, but I should be able to produce a more realistic part on the lathe or my rotab. I may open up the slot the primer slide rides in. It’s so tight, a few tiny grains of No. 7 can shut it down, causing even more powder to spill.

The press comes with one primer-feed assembly with two interchangeable feed tubes in different sizes. I think it would have been smarter to make two separate assemblies. They would have been more rigid, and there would be no flimsy plastic involved.

It’s too bad there is no easy way to determine whether a case is primed before sending it to be filled with powder. You can stop the press, lift the case, examine it, and put it back, but that takes a long time, and if you’re making 200 rounds, it takes 200 times a long time.

I am wondering if I should remove the wood I used to shore up the bench under the press and replace it with 5/16″ angle iron. Anything that reduces flex will help. And it would be great to have a lever handle that works, so I can take the existing plastic ball to the gun range and punish it for making me suffer. Some guy makes an ergonomic handle, but I think I can manage to make one for myself.

I don’t know why the dies spin in their sockets. I’m going to look the press over. I hope I didn’t misplace an O-ring or some other part that stabilizes the dies. The set screws are tight, so they’re not the problem. It’s not that the dies turn on their threads. The whole mess turns in the press.

It’s strange that .38 Super causes so many problems, while .45 ACP works pretty well. One problem is that the powder is much finer. I use Unique for .45, and the grains are so big, they take longer to get into the works and cause jams. And the shape of the cases and the level of the powder are such that powder is harder to spill. I use fine-grained No. 7 for .38 Super, and the cases are tall, and the powder fills them pretty far, so spills are much more likely.

Maybe I should start using case lube. It’s supposed to be unnecessary with carbide dies, but “supposed to be” isn’t “is.” I wanted to be able to dye my .38 Super brass, and case lube will make that hard to do, but I should be using a brass catcher instead of relying on paint.

It would be nice to have a steel hub in the press to replace the existing hub, which appears to be pot metal. I’m not positive it’s pot metal, but whatever it is, it’s weak. My first hub broke like cheese, the same way pot metal does. I think the hub will be okay, though. The loss of the first one appears to have been a fluke. I don’t remember what caused it. Maybe a round caught on the old ejection wire and stopped the plate.

The way the plates attach to the press is very primitive. There is a screw which goes down through the plate into the hub, and the plate rests directly on the press table. The amount of pressure between the table and plate depends solely on the torque you put on the screw, and users are advised not to tighten the screw too much, because when the pressure is high, the plate and bed will act like a disk brake. If the screw isn’t tight enough, it can back out. There is nothing to prevent it. There are better ways to do this. In fact, the way Hornady did it is the crudest way possible, apart from relying on gravity and happy thoughts to hold the plate down. It would be nice to have a bearing under the plate and some sort of attachment which can’t be tightened or loosened by the action of the press.

I don’t know if the retainer spring is as good as it should be. They tend to snap after a few hundred rounds, unless you get lucky and get a press that doesn’t pinch the spring too much. I’m wondering why a nitrile O-ring wasn’t used. Maybe they break even more easily. But the existing spring is maybe five thousandths of an inch in diameter (across the wire, not the coil), so there isn’t much metal there to resist wear.

I’m going to look at the press as a fixer-upper, not a failed purchase. I don’t think the problems are fatal. It’s like buying a Harbor Freight lathe; you don’t expect it to work right out of the box. You take it apart, replace the bad stuff, put it back together, adjust it, and THEN it works.

You know what? Grizzly needs to start making ammo presses. Shiraz Balolia is a match shooter, and he developed their gunsmith lathes. I’ll bet they could come up with a superior product for a lot less than what the US makers charge. I’ll bet he already considered it and decided there was no money in it.

I know of no way to fix the wear under the primer-insertion piston. It’s in a location a drill won’t reach, without some sort of exotic 90° adapter. Maybe I can mount the press sideways in my mill and use a Woodruff cutter to gouge out a hole so I can put a sacrificial shim in there. I have to wonder what Hornady’s plan was. I guess you just throw out the press once the hole gets too deep. It’s not a problem yet, but someday it will be.