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You can clean/smooth the bottom of the primer slide with green scotchbrite followed by a paper towel and isopropyl alcohol. Do not use scotchbrite or any other abrasive on the bearing (the flat piece of metal) that sits between the press and the primer slide. Just clean that with a paper towel and alcohol.

I shot a friend's XD-S 45 recently, and have to say it was sweet...but the Glock 30 gives you twice as many rounds and compatibility with even larger (G21) mags. It's a much thicker package though. I've got the 30SF, but have never carried it concealed.

The only issues I have with the Rudy Rx insert is I think the two layers of polycarb gives me a slightly less clear image, and when I get really sweaty, sweat in between the Rx lens and protective lens, and once in there, it doesn't come out on its own. Other than that, I've really been happy with them. I've worn them to the theme parks numerous times (with the clear lenses...the polarized sunglass ones are too dark for any of the indoor rides). I guess at some point I may inquire again about the possibility of putting my Rx (I need prism) into the Magster lenses, so I can do away with the insert. I tried asking via the web site, and never got a response.

Even more annoying, having used one tray of the Fiocchi SPP, I see that their trays are 18 rows of 8 + 1 row of 6. I'd like to know what whoever thought that up was thinking. Definitely not metric

If you look at Accurate's online load data for 9mm Solo 1000, it doesn't look good. They list several 124/125gr jacketed loads, the fastest of which is a 124gr Rem GS with max load of 4.4gr doing 1026 fps. Next page, they even have data for plated bullets (berrys and ranier) and according to that data, you're already going beyond max load, and that data only has one load that barely makes minor. There are plenty of powders that'll make minor easily and safely with 124gr bullets. Are you married to Solo 1000? A starting load of Universal Clays most likely will make minor with your 124gr bullets...and if it doesn't, there's plenty of room to bump up the charge safely.

I do have spare tubes. I guess now I finally have a use for them. I assume each SP tube will hold a little more than 100...but whatever fits the tube will fit the magazine?

I accidentally ordered Fiocchi SPP from grafs, thinking they were Federal. Oh well...a bit of research didn't turn up anything bad about them, and the price was right...so today they arrived and I find they're in trays of 150. I've never seen primers in trays other than 100. I'm guessing 150 aren't even close to going to fit in an RL550b primer magazine...so how do you deal with these? Carefully dump out 100, load them, then dump the remaining 50 and carefully dump another 50 from another tray? Sounds like lots of fun. I just resized a few Win 9mm and seated the Fiocchi primers in them, and they seem to go in easily enough. The anvils are red! Never seen that before either. If I'm lucky, I'll get out this weekend and shoot some side by side with CCI primers and see if there's any noticeable difference.

I have to amend this. I was just loading some 9mm and decided to see what happens if I remove the failsafe rod. After it dispensed powder once, the powder bar never moved enough to dispense any powder again. So, while this is a way you could get a squib, it's kind of noticeable, and probably wouldn't dispense any powder at all.

Many powders don't burn well/completely at lower pressures. If you had a very partial charge (say 1gr instead of 5gr) of powder, the pressure when the primer sets off the powder is going to be way lower than normal...thus you end up with extra sooty brass, or maybe even some unburned powder.

That's kind of related to option a in my post above. Any time you stop on a 550 (i.e. to deal with a primer feed issue, a case where the primer stuck to the decapper and went back into the pocket, to check the powder charge weight), it's critical that you get all 4 stations back into their proper state before continuing. i.e. you don't want to deprime and reprime the same case, skip dropping powder into a case, drop a second charge of powder into a case, forget to seat a bullet, etc. I've done that last one once...and it makes a huge mess of the finished cartridges.

If the press is setup correctly, its very unlikely that it would just fail to dispense powder every so often. More likely causes: a) you mention you weigh the charge every 25 or so. Is it possible you put a case back into the press after dumping the powder out of it and forgot to replace its powder charge? you have a newer style powder measure and loaded some rounds without the failsafe rod in place, so the powder measure was not resetting. In that state, it can dispense very small amounts of powder, but not full charges. The only squibs I've had, I'm pretty sure I was guilty of b above as the cause. In mine, the bullet (230gr JHP in a Glock 21) just entered the rifling and 2 of the 3 were easily removed. One was a bit of a PITA.

That's not possible unless you do you decapping on another press.

Read the manual before you try to get started. Always tighten dies/lockrings with the ram up and a case in that die.

Had to google it, but that sounds exactly like Dillon's powder die and funnel setup.

Its good for cast/moly coated bullets because it doesn't smoke horribly with them. According to Hodgdon, it's bad for 9mm because the pressure curve for it in small high pressure cartridges is unpredictable. If you contact them about it, they'll tell you it's not safe to load 9mm with it. If you do a bunch of googling, you'll find lots of shared load data and one old published set of load data. Bottom line...it's probably ok for low end 9mm minor and sub-minor, but the manufacturer says don't try it. I've loaded 124gr jacketed, 147gr plated and jacketed, and 130gr moly with it. For all but the moly, I prefer Universal Clays. The Universal / moly combination produced really noxious smoke IMO. If you do any .45acp reloading, WST is really good there (and there's modern published data).

Universal Clays does poorly in low pressure rounds (like .45acp), but isn't terribly dirty in 9mm. It was my powder of choice when I got started because I'd read it would burn reasonably cleanly and because it's a low density powder it's impossible to double charge a 9mm 115/124gr cartridge with it. i.e. 8-9gr or more will have powder overflowing onto the shell plate when the powder funnel separates from the case. I've shot thousands of rounds of 124gr 9mm with Universal.

I thought it was just the non-toxic primers where SPP were being using in .45acp, but I was just prepping some brass for tumbling, and as I was dumping a box of Federal into the bucket, I noticed just too late that these were Federal, SP, but not marked NT. A friend who doesn't reload gives me his brass, and these came from him. I guess some of the regular Federal ammo at Wal-Mart is SP now. And here I thought I was going to keep SP and LP .45acp brass separate and avoid sorting it post tumbling. Guess not.

Short. Try around 1.110". I didn't get very good accuracy when I started out loading them longer. Oops...I misread the topic. The above goes for MG 124gr JHP. The PDs are pretty similar though, so I load them similarly on the short end.

No dammit I'm getting out the sawzall!! Wimps. Real men use their 1911s to take out .45 diameter chunks one at a time! That reminds me of a little range construction incident. Relatively new outdoor range, there was a PVC drainage pipe sticking up at the back of the rifle range that the owner wanted removed. IIRC, we didn't have a suitable hacksaw, and it was slow going...and I finally suggested "why don't we just shoot it?" Range owner asked the range caretaker for the Glock 19 he was carrying and proceeded to shoot several holes in said pipe. We still ended up having to cut the rest of the way through

I've seen that data before. When I was contemplating trying WST in 9mm, I spent days searching the internet and collected quite a bit of WST load data for 9mm 115-147gr bullets...mostly anecdotal, but also one or two published sources. I think the data in that image is kind of on the high side, and I really question any load data that gives the same charge data for jacketed and LRN. I found that with 124gr jacketed bullets, 4.5gr WST was enough to get velocity about equal to 4.3gr Universal. I wouldn't try 5+gr with 124gr LRN. In fact, if I were to load 124gr LRN with WST, I'd be tempted to load a few starting at 4gr and carefully work up from there.

.. Doesn't Hodgdon produce Winchester powders? I wrote Hodgdon about this a couple of years ago. Their response: I've done some 9mm WST loads, particularly for moly coated lead, where Universal is just way too smoky. I haven't blown up any guns, but I'm not looking for anything more than just minor PF. For jacketed, Universal does just fine for me and is a much more accepted powder for the caliber.

Something else you can do, but it's slow...is if you have a chamfer/debur tool, you can use the pointy end in the primer pocket to cut the edge off it. It works...but probably not highly recommended nor practical if you have a bunch of brass.

Wolff makes a 2 piece / 2 spring non-captured guide rod for the baby Glocks and sells a variety of spring weights.

Swaging can still help by rounding the lip of the primer pocket. I bought my Super Swage for 5.56mm brass, but have ended up using it on Aguila .30 carbine, which was not crimped, but was very hard to seat primers in.

Win used to be my favorite 9mm brass, and I have a ton of it saved from when I used to buy the Winchester 100 packs before I got into reloading. I've heard their newer brass is not as desireable, and FC is the new "premium" once fired brass. A super swage 600 will fix them, and come in handy if you ever get into any .mil caliber rifle reloading.