Suwannee Tim

Over the years I've seen lots of machine misalignment problems addressed with machine elements that "float". It usually doesn't work very well. The only way to know is to try. Good luck.

I wear eye protection if there is any question whether it might be needed. Reloading is obvious, bicycling though? I wear them, ride through a cloud of gnats at 18 MPH and see if you are glad you had them on. I am not afraid of a primer explosion. One thing that spooks me is a fire with powder involved. I keep the amount of powder in my house to a minimum.

I'm not impressed. The mechanical part is straightforward machine design. The real problem to running a progressive reloading machine is watching, listening and feeling for problems. This machine will not do that. I'll bet when it jams it is a heck of a mess. I'll stick with manual.

Here is my solution to the spent primers flying all over the room: Get a 300 Win Mag case, others will certainly work, 300 short mags maybe, poke out the primer and drill out the case head with a 13/32 drill, chamfer the heck out of the hole with a case mouth reamer. Remove the primer catcher cup and bracket. Open up the slot in the bracket with a file until the extractor groove of the 300 Mag can be pushed into the slot. With the case so installed, reinstall the bracket using 8-32 X 1/4 screws or longer screws with washers. You can now press a piece of 3/8 or 7/16 or maybe 1/2 ID hose on the 300 Mag case. I have been having a lot of problems with primer drawback. I set the hose to drop the primer in a coffee can which goes "ding" when the primer hits it. When it does not go "ding" I know the primer did not fall free and I am having a drawback issue.

I was weighing charges on my Scientech scale and decided to weigh a charge then tare the scale. When I weighed subsequent charges the scale would read -xx.xxx and I would add powder until I reached 00.000 and then I would have my charge. This way I would not need to remember the charge weight as I worked, all I would need to remember would be 00.000. I noticed some thing which surprised me. As I approached zero on the scale the display would suddenly jump say from 00.051 to 00.000. I asked an engineer at Scientech about it and he said the scale, like most electronic scales is programmed to chase zero. That is to say as the scale drifts off zero it will automatically re-tare itself to zero. The problem is that your scale is drifting and you don't know it. You turn your scale on and it reads dead zero and an hour later it still reads dead zero and this leads you to believe you have a heck of a scale. If you really want to know how stable your scale is, put a weight on it and note how much that weight changes over time. Most cheap electronic scales and probably all electronic reloading scales use stain gage technology. With this method a small current is passed through a resistance and the voltage measured. The problem is this small current heats the load cell and makes it drift. This is why you want your scale to warm up for an hour or more before use.

In the last couple of years I have purchased two Scientech SA510 scales on eBay, one worked fine, the other was broken. I sent both back to Scientech for repair and/or reprogramming to display grains weight. I wound up with about $600+ in each scale, a lot for a scale you say, these scales cost $3500 to $5000 new. They resolve 1/10 milligram or 0.0001 gram, programed for grains they will resolve 1/1000 grain. Your typical reloading scale resolves 1/10 grain and you are trying to weigh to the nearest tenth. I like measuring instrument which will resolve a 1/5 or 1/10 of what I am trying to read and with accuracy 1/5 or 1/10 of the same. This is in the range of 1/100 of a grain. You can learn some very interesting things with a high quality scale, how consistent or inconsistent your powder measure is (you might be shocked and not pleasantly), how consistent brand X bullets are versus brand Y. This is especially true if your scale can communicate with a computer and do statistics on the data. This is not the kind of thing your average reloader will need but it is useful for the serious experimenter. You don't see Scientech SA510 scales on eBay every week but there are other good brands, Sartorius for example. If you are going to try to buy one off eBay, you will need to do some homework, there are a lot of obsolete scales for sale and you will need a scale that can either reads grains or can be reprogrammed for grains. It is a real hassle to try to work with a scale that displays grams and have to convert every measurement to grains, I tried it, I didn't like it. There is a Scientech SA120 on eBay now, 280317577150 which I would be highly interested in except I just don't need it. If you do try to buy a precision scale one thing you want to do is find out how to lock the suspension and highly encourage the seller to do so before they box the scale. Remember to do your homework, I have passed up several seemingly good scales because they were obsolete and no longer supported and could not be reprogrammed.

I was shooting some 180 grain 40s the other day and the light was such that I could see every one. One thing that really impressed me was they are damned fast! Of course I already knew they were fast but to know it in a numerical sense is one thing, to see it in a physical sense is another.

Here is my solution to the spent primers flying all over the room: Get a 300 Win Mag case, others will certainly work, 300 short mags maybe, poke out the primer and drill out the case head with a 13/32 drill, chamfer the heck out of the hole with a case mouth reamer. Remove the primer catcher cup and bracket. Open up the slot in the bracket with a file until the extractor groove of the 300 Mag can be pushed into the slot. With the case so installed, reinstall the bracket using 8-32 X 1/4 screws or longer screws with washers. You can now press a piece of 3/8 or 7/16 or maybe 1/2 ID hose on the 300 Mag case. I have been having a lot of problems with primer drawback. I set the hose to drop the primer in a coffee can which goes "ding" when the primer hits it. When it does not go "ding" I know the primer did not fall free and I am having a drawback issue.