kmc

Thank you! I will give that a try.

I love my PAL filler. I've tried several solutions and It is the best I've seen for filling primer tubes with all brands of primers. I have used it to fill many tens of thousands of primers over the last several years. Yes, it costs more but is totally worth it. Now that I've said all that, I've recently had an issue with Federal small primers where they occasionally get hung up after going into the top of the hole and won't go down without a poke. I'm not sure if its due to the primer tube, PAL or what. At first, I decided it just needed a good cleaning. However, after a deep cleaning, it still does the same thing. I have not seen the impact on CCI and no Win primers in my shrinking stash to test them--afaik, just with Federal. Has anyone else seen these issues or have a suggested solution?

Sorry, wrong place to post

I purchased an automated Case-Pro 100 used and have used it to rollsize thousands of .40 brass without much issue. I switched to the .45 die (and the green case feeder "adapter") to rollsize .45 acp cases. It works fine for awhile but then binds and breaks off the screw head. It won't go more than ~20 brass before this happens. Upon closer examination, it appears what happens is the .45 case begins to drop but before it completely drops, the moving die has moved out of position. The brass has started to drop enough that the case base is caught preventing the "transfer bar" from retracting under the case feeder tube. It briefly binds and then snaps off the screw head. It seems like the case is not aligned properly with the die to drop cleanly, though it works much of the time. I tried lengthening and shortening the drive arm from the motor which should move the case location (relative to the die) back/forth a bit but I haven't found the magic position yet. Is there some trick to aligning this properly when switching calibers? btw, I did notice that the plastic transfer bar has some damage on the corner of the angled slot in which the screw head rides, which my prevent the plastic screw from causing a full extension. I did try to temporarily repair it to make sure I was getting a full extension but no success so far. My current attempt is to order a new transfer bar, hoping that will fix it but it seems like I need a way to verify proper alignment. Ideas?

+1

They broke Revolver and Single Stack when they tried to collapse it with the rest of the divisions into a single Nationals. When they had their own standalone Nats in PASA, the match was very well attended with lots of people shooting both divisions, and no one had to choose them over Production, L10, etc. My answer is the rules aren't the limiting problem, the format is the problem.

Did you couple this with any of the other ideas (raising the tip up, creating a "lid" for the brass, etc) or just do the scoring? Any theory on why scoring this treatment would splash less?

I figured I need to post out here again. Because of the entire thread above, I had previously abandoned this powder check and the seat/crimp combo die...maybe 10,000ish rounds ago. Then it happened. Through a stupid mistake I managed to run 35ish low-/no- powder rounds into a bin of ~150 completed rounds before I realized what I was doing. The problem is of course I had no idea which 35 were the potentially bad rounds. With the primer situation, I ended up disassembling/redoing ~80 rounds and and using the other 100 for practice. This caused me to reconsider and dig my powder check and die back out again. I had originally abandoned this approach when loading 40 for two reasons: 1) powder splash was driving me nuts (despite the thread above) and 2) using a combo seat/crimp die with range brass seemed to results in inconsistent crimping. Subsequent to my posts above, I finally went back to the "watch carefully" powder check method. So here I am for attempt #2 and I'm determined to make a better run at it this time. On #1) I've researched the combo die more and while others seem to be having issues, another set of people seem satisfied. I decided to spend more time setting it up, following the instructions precisely, and continue tweaking until I was completely satisfied with seat and crimp. After far more tweaking than the first time, I have now loaded about 50 rounds successfully and the ones I tore apart to examine crimp looked good. I'll make up a few hundred and see what I find with consistency. It sure would be easier if Dillon had just added another station or two to 650/750/1050... On #2) I'm still using my ziptie method described above though I also like the straw idea. This has made spillage on my 40 rounds more tolerable. When I switch over to run 9 major, I'm afraid this is going to be a much bigger problem. As a result, I'm also considering implementing a "splash guard" of sorts to see if that will further improve the situation. The idea would be to have a washer of appropriate size ride on the rod, just above the shoe. When the shell comes up and the shoe enters the brass, the washer might "seal" the top of the shell and prevent some of the spillage. I might given this a try, especially after I switch my focus to 9 major, where the shells are much more full...

If you're talking about splashing problem, it has nothing to do with sensitivity setting. I did get this to work and improved over the initial "factory" installation but ultimately abandoned it for two reasons: the powder splash was driving me crazy and using range brass with the combo seater/crimper die was not giving me consistent crimps.

Agree, that's been my experience across 550 and 650 (and now using 1050). I always hand seat all rounds before I moon them going to a big match. If I didn't, I learned I *might* see a couple not fully seated over 350 rounds (<<1%). In other words, hand priming was mostly a waste of time but I viewed it as insurance.

If you have a good trigger on your wheelgun (but not too good), the answer is simple--Federal primers + handseating each primer (following loading) = 100% ignition.

I'm preparing to add some automation to my 1050 and I stumbled across a set of videos ( https://thejudgedie.com/ ) on The Judge die by Mojo Precision. I certainly looks like the ticket. However, the links to purchase the die appear broken. Questions have (so far) gone unanswered. What happened to this die and is it or an equivalent still available? Does anyone have experience with this die?

The first picture below shows 2 140mm and 1 171.25mm 2011 9mm MBX mags along with styles of followers. All mags were purchased used so I don't know heritage though they don't appear to have seen a lot of use. The question is what follower do I use in the 170mm mag? I've had some mag feeding failures with the follower that was in the big mag (the flat green one pictured on the left), which I don't believe is an MBX-designed follower. Though it's hard to tell on the MBXExtreme video, I believe these are Gen1 tubes. In the picture below, the 3 followers are left-to-right: unknown brand flat green follower with no markings, green MBX follower marked with what appears to be an inverted "9" or maybe a "G", and a black MBX follower marked with what appears to be a "G1". Only the follower on the left fits easily in the big mag and it usually works but not 100%. Note that the flat follower is also in the left 140mm mag and the G1 follower is in the right 140mm mag. Both of these followers fit in the 140mm mags and seem to work fine but they never get the use that the 171.25mm gets, so I cannot say with certainty they're 100%. If I put in the G1 follower in the big mag (which I believe should be correct), it binds near the top of the mag (see 2nd pic). Although I can certainly get out the file and fit the follower, I had expected it to easily fit the tube. The "9" follower also doesn't fit but it's definitely further off than the "G1". Is it normal to have to tune an MBX follower to fit the MBX tube? I suppose the tube could be deformed, causing the follower to bind. In that case, maybe the tube requires some work. Suggestions?

So here's an update: I'll give Mighty Armory credit--Wayne responded to my (website entered) complaint over Memorial Day weekend and spent >1 hour on the phone with me on Sunday while I measured things real-time at the press. Apparently, some Dillon plates are cut such that his die doesn't fit all the way down--in which case he's apparently added a chamfer to the die. However, that wasn't my problem. He had me reduce the bell I was adding in station 2 with my MBF funnel. His view was the die was correctly sizing the brass but my bell was taking some of that back out and given the Dillon crimp die (which he refers to as a "straightening die"--not even a real tape crimp), it would not compress enough to hold an undersized bullet---recall that my Blue Bullets were coming in at .399 or .3995. He told me you want .005-.006 of grip to hold the bullet and based on my measurements, I was getting .001-.002. Although I definitely didn't consider my belling excessive (I've seen MUCH worse), what he said did make some sense. After reducing my bell, I found that I had a much tighter fit on the bullets--even given my slightly undersized bullets. I've since loaded 600 rounds with MA since this adjustment with no fallout due to setback and I have an order in for .401 bullets. With all that said, before he called I was running my test with Dillon sizing die and I loaded 1,000 rounds with zero setback issues. This was before he called and therefore was using the settings exactly the same as with the Mighty Armory sizing die which was seeing 2% setback fallout. So why did I see none with my Dillon dies? Wayne stated that Dillon and most of the handgun reloading dies are undersizing rounds. This undersizing gave me more margin of error and allowed me to get away with undersized bullets, too much bell, etc. His die is sizing to exact SAAMI specifications which doesn't allow a margin of error on the subsequent processing. Whether you buy into this explanation or not is your choice. I believe what he said makes sense but I'm not convinced that I care. I'm not about making precise SAAMI spec rounds, I just want to shoot lots of USPSA rounds and the Dillon-bred rounds seem to work fine for that with less hassle and certainly a less expensive sizing die. Just the same--it's set up now so I'll keep loading this way using the MA for now.

Is there a way to distinguish which version I have?

Uh, did you read my original post and the problem I now have? One of the two changes I made was moving to a MA sizing die.

I’ll make a few hundred rounds with the Dillon sizer and Redding seater. If I get more of the same, next swap out will be Redding die.

Always has been mixed.

Can you tell me more? It came highly recommended from a guy running an automated setup (in 9).

These arguments do make sense but what doesn’t jive I have is I’ve loaded well north of 10k with this bullet and range brass the last two years. I don’t recall having setback issues at any point during this time until now. I’ve now seen ~9 over the last 600 rounds. Seems like there must be another factor too. I’ll use my Dillon die for a few hundred more rounds and see what I find. I think I’ve got a U-die around here somewhere and can try that too.

I recently have been experiencing an "overseating" of bullets into .40 brass. I've reloaded 10s of thousands of rounds but never seen this prior--I'm hoping someone will have an idea. I'm using range brass, Hornady One Shot, 180gr Blue Bullets and reloading on a 650--have been using this combination without change the past two seasons. For reasons I won't get into here, I recently changed out my sizing die (for a Mighty Armory) and my seating die (for a Redding Competition seating die). Prior to that time, I was using all Dillon dies, though I've been known to occasionally use Lee dies. Everything seemed fine after the change and I cranked out 600 rounds without issue. This week, I found 2 rounds out of a 100 where the bullet had seated much deeper than it should. One of the cases was cracked and I blamed the overseating on that and continued. However, in the next hundred I again found two rounds that were overseated. It almost seemed as if there wasn't enough case tension to hold the bullet properly. The powder funnel is not excessively belling the case and the bullet is only overseated after the seating station is complete. I removed and reinstalled the sizing, seating, and crimping dies but didn't notice anything unusual about them. Continuing, I again had bullets seated too deep in two rounds and I tried running each back through the press again using different bullets and both ended up overseating again! I finally got out the micrometer and learned that most brass was .423ish prior to sizing, .417ish after sizing, and .421ish with a finished load. The bullets were consistently 0.399. On one of the brass that loaded overseated, I noticed it was 0.424 AFTER sizing. For now, I removed my fancy Mighty Armory sizing die and switched back to the Dillon. Nothing wrong so far in the first 200... Thoughts on what might be going on? First picture shows two overly seated rounds in front with correct one in rear. Second picture shows correctly seated round in crimping station and bullet seated too deeply in the seating station (after seating and crimping.).

Mine finally gave up the ghost last night but it's probably got 12K rounds down, so I consider the $10 investment ok.

The need is real. I choose one of my 5" 625s over my JM every time...