I managed to grind out 53 more rounds of .45 ammunition. It took me an hour and a half longer than it should have, because I was learning all about new things that can go wrong with a Hornady Lock-N-Load progressive press. I should go ahead and exhaust my supply of components while I have the press set up. I ran out of clean cases, so I stopped. But I guess I don’t really need to clean them.<\/p>\n
I’ll give a short list of the problems I had. These were not things that reflect badly on the product. Well, maybe a little. But mostly, I caused them myself.<\/p>\n
First, it turns out flying powder gums up the primer feed in at least two ways. It obstructs the movement of the slide. It will also go down inside the punch after a while. I had to use spray dry lubricant to blast it out.<\/p>\n
Second, the bent rod that guides the slide likes to adjust itself, so you really have to tighten the hex screw well, when you get the rod where you want it.<\/p>\n
Third, never ever try to install a tube full of primers when the ram is in the up position. Because it will come down, and the primers will go everywhere. I left the primers in the tube while I was fixing something, and I paid the price.<\/p>\n
The crimp problem that made my ammunition too big to like going into the chamber proved a little harder to fix than I thought. I figured the crimper wasn’t going down far enough onto the case, but it turned out the belling was too extreme. If you bell a case too much and then crimp it a little, you’ll get a swollen band at the mouth of the case, and it will be worse than not crimping at all. So I had to bell less and crimp a little more. Naturally, I figured this out after adjusting everything the wrong way.<\/p>\n
Here’s a design problem Hornady needs to fix. The press is anchored to my bench by two bolts at the rear. The front can bounce up and down a lot. That can make powder fly around. Hornady needs to work it out so you can attach two more bolts somewhere.<\/p>\n
I tried Hornady’s One Shot cleaner\/lube on my SW1911 today. It’s expensive as hell, but I give them credit. It works like a dream, and it leaves your weapon lubricated with a dry film which seems to be perfect for firearms. Frankly, I think it’s smarter to use Hoppe’s No. 9 and then spray with dry lube. There is no way I’ll pay the insanely high price for One Shot again, if I can help it. Best cleaner\/lube I’ve seen, but not worth the money.<\/p>\n
My RCBS primer tray stopped working. I can’t figure that out. It worked great the first time I used it. Now it turns over about 85% of the primers.<\/p>\n
I moved an old stereo to the garage. That really helps. I dug out my Mahalia Jackson CD’s. Suddenly I have a much better understanding of why Christians hated rock and roll in the Fifties. The similarities between her music and American-Graffiti-era rock are so obvious you can’t miss them.<\/p>\n
When I run out of .45 stuff, it will be time to conquer the mighty .38 Super.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I managed to grind out 53 more rounds of .45 ammunition. It took me an hour and a half longer than it should have, because I was learning all about new things that can go wrong with a Hornady Lock-N-Load progressive press. I should go ahead and exhaust my supply of components while I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guns-hunting-fishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}