bajadudes

I wet tumbled for a while since I am in the biz but ran into one big issue and one inconvenient hassle. First is the hassle of cement mixers, sloshing dirty water and spreading out to dry tens of thousands of cases. It takes up valuable floor space. The next is dealing with lead contaminated water. I have to have a hazmat plan in place with a paper trail showing what I do with waste. That means a contract with a hazmat disposal service. I mean down to rags and paper towel contaminated items. I cannot dump dozens of gallons of lead and metals contaminated water on a daily basis down the drain and into the public treatment facility. The regulations are strict and the fines are astronomical plus they can put you out of biz in an instant. Beware if you do this on a commercial scale. Depending on the municipality, they test regularly at the input to the facility and if they detect high levels of an industrial pollutant they can and will easily trace it back to it's source. I use corn cob now. I can keep using the same stuff till it's almost black then put it in drums and store until I have enough to get a good rate on disposal. Corn Cob when you buy it by the 100 pound bag is cheap.....like $2 or $2.50 a pound. I get it from the "Mount Pulaski Products Inc" in Mt. Pulaski IL. 62548. 1800 577 COBS. I use the #3 grade (20/40) In running a legit Ammo biz I was very wrong about who i was going to get hassling me the most in terms of regulations, it's not ATF or the local Fire Marshal, it's the EPA inspectors. They are very good at what they do and if you think you can hide something from them, that is your 1st mistake.

Chris Tilley just got in a brand spanking new 40 S&W SVI Infinity sight tracker with one mag for sale right now for $4495... No wait. Not even up on his website yet. www.goshoot.com. Saw it in the case there yesterday when I was dropping off ammo. Just saying.

Best and finest shooting guns I have ever owned. Here is to one I still have and will never sell. Here alas is the one I sold. I almost cried when I shipped it off.

WOW, not much else to say but that. Glad you did not get hurt. Soon you will look at the pictures with friends and have a good laugh. The wife must have thought it was pretty cool eh?

Jmorris, look up thread for a complete description. Short story, Roofer patching the roof and using a torch. I did take care of the Fire Dept for their Christmas Party. Now lets get back to the subject of this thread "My 1050 Mods" Thanks for the comments thus far.

Pmclaine, Since you noticed and asked. I don't want to hijack this thread but recently what could have been a very very bad day turned out very fortunate indeed. Thank god we are located right across the street from the firehouse because if we would have had to wait 20 min the place would have been gone. We had a roofer patching the area above the machines on 12/11 and he was just finishing up as I was sitting at the desk. I had been smelling smoke for a while but since the roll up door was open I just dismissed it as someone burning leaves. About 10 min later the smell became strong and as I looked up I saw smoke curling down from the corners of the drop ceiling tiles. OH OH that did not look good. I stood on the desk and lifted a tile to see what was up. As soon as I did that there was a rush of air up into the ceiling and the whole underside of the roof erupted into a wave of beautiful blue undulating flames...Crap, I grabbed the laptop and the books and ran out to yell at the roofer to get off the roof. I called 911 and ran back into the warehouse to roll out the explosives day box and the printer. I ran back in with a dolly to get the smaller powder jugs near the machines and about 10,000 primers and I threw the main power breaker. By that time the trucks were there....I swear less than 5 min at most. By that time the smoke was to thick to go back in and get the approx 20,000 rounds of ammo left in the building. The photos don't look that bad but 15 more min and it would have been a different story. I can't believe how fast the place filled with thick acrid smoke My letter to the editor of our local paper ( The Daily Record Dunn, NC ) tells the rest. Photos below that. Quote: Dear Editor, I am not sure if you have a letter to the editor section, if you do I would like you to please consider my letter. I wanted to take a moment to publicly thank the members of the Erwin Fire Department for saving my business and warehouse. Today 12/11/13 roofers working on our roof accidentally set fire to the area above our offices and manufacturing space. Being that we make ammunition this was no small deal. Upon the Fire Departments arrival and despite being told that there were thousands of rounds of ammunition in the warehouse they quickly went to work. While one crew rushed to the roof with hoses another entered through the front doors into a dark and smoke filled building. The crew that went inside took precious minutes to cover our office equipment and bullet making machines with heavy duty waterproof tarps before the roof crew began to douse the fire with water. They essentially saved not only the building but thousands of dollars worth of our equipment thanks to their prompt and professional response to our emergency. This Christmas I am very grateful to the wonderful crew of the Erwin Fire Dept. Thank you and may you and all your loved ones be blessed with a Merry Christmas and happy New Year. __________________ I'm still cleaning up and slowly recovering. The white dust is from the dry fire extinguishers.

Tripod, the mods works nice on manual set ups also, just like the roller bearing mod and spent primer mod. They sort of tame the snappy plate issue. Pat, thanks. the trick is to not get an O-ring that is too thick and to groove the pin enough that the O ring rubs the shell plate but does not protrude too far into the case holder notch when it comes around. When it's just right it naturally comes to rest inside the extractor groove on the shell casing without tipping it. Just snugging it up. Sometimes I will wrap the locator pins shank with 3 turns of teflon tape clockwise as you look down on the shank. You want to wrap in the same direction of the natural rotation of the pin. It makes it a bit firmer and lasts a surprisingly long time.

Right...That's the point I was making...sorry if it didn't come across that way...Just trying to share a tip to cut down on expenses for those that wanted to. $6 is almost a whole six-pack of beer. you could drink that six-pack and make up enough lube to last you 25 years. Just saying.

No hobby for me.....While keeping it high quality, I try and get my ammo down to a price as low as possible to make it affordable for the common man to shoot. At 4-8 thousand rounds a day every little thing adds up and it adds up quickly. It takes so little effort to make up almost a gallon and 1/4 the price of buying it commercially.

The site is loading OK for me. I will be there tomorrow to pick up an order if you want me to relay anything.

There is a recent thread about the Hornady LnL vs the dillon 650 and in it are discussed various adaptations people do to their machines. I thought I would share some of mine that I don't think I have seen posted yet. the 1st is simple I take a Damascus wheel and cut a groove around my locator pins and then put a rubber O ring on them. This rolls along the the shell late nicely and dampens the snappiness and helps keep it smooth. I don't do this at the #1 de-capping station because it has a tendency to slightly tip the case making it get bit by the edge of the sizing die, especially true if you use a Redding competition sizing de-capping die. I also don't do it at the seating and powder drop station for similar reasons. If you are going to do this one I strongly suggest getting some spares before mucking with the ones you got. If you have a steady hand and a good Dremel or Foredom tool it's easy. I don't have an o-ring package but the ID is about .300 X .044 OD and it's about .067 thick I get them at lowes. It is NOT the #78 o-ring which is 7/16 OD X 1/4 ID X 3/32 thick This one my 7 year old calls springamajiggy Its the old thin long spring that Dillon used to use on the powder bar to pull it back. I think they still sell them. Any long tightly coiled thin spring should work. it's held in place by an alligator clip and #6 copper wire. Yes I know, if the bell is right and the bullet feeder is set right then the bullet should not tip over when the shell plate indexes but we all know that some times it does anyway. I set the spring to stay about a tiny bit above the Ogee and backed off so it's not touching...maybe a distance of 20 thousandths or so. If you click on this picture it should start a video, forgive the quality. Still pictures are below. and finally in another attempt to dampen a snappy plate I take a small section of rubber tubing and slip it over the ejection deflector at station 7. When I tighten the deflector I push down on it hard while tightening so it's rubbing on the shell plate That's it....nothing complicated but i do it to all my machines and have found that it helps tame the 1050. Of course i also do the roller bearing thing and spent primer tube to a bucket thing already covered elswhere on this great forum

My apologies. That price is for one bottle not three, I just looked at my last receipt. One bottle makes a little more than 3 liters

Ah sweet, nice plug.....But mag 17 is right, once you get it down you will realize that a lot of the fun is playing with custom loads you develop yourself for your guns. Some truly don't like reloading and are content to let someone else do it, no problem with that, it's what keeps me in biz. Me I really enjoy loading and playing around with the various variables, more so than shooting. The nice thing about this forum is that when you do decide to start going that route you will get a lot of good solid advice and direction. Remember, the important thing is to have fun and enjoy the aspects of it that YOU like.

Well if your equipment is very new you can get away with it but as the equipment gets older it works much better with lube.

Very Very good point and I have seen it happen, Chris Tilley jammed up his SVI nice and tight once for that very reason. I should have mentioned that we have had better success in that regard by using only untreated corn cob media...no wax no nothing for that step. When we empty it into the media separator we spin it at least 30 times to help keep the hollow point clear. I know it sounds scary but again after hundreds of thousands of rounds I have never had one go off. We don't spin it like a mad man just a slow steady roll.

Here is what i use and ordered from Amazon: Liquid Lanolin 100% pure http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00028MLKC/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 that $7.71 price is for 3 bottles. It's not clear in the ad. 99.99% isopropyl alcohol http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DNQX3C/ref=oh_details_o01_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 put a spray bottle on a scale ( your empty Dillon spray lube is perfect ) and set to grams pour in 135 grams of alcohol pour in an additional 15 grams of the liquid lanolin Shake it up. That gives you a 90/10 mix. Adjust to preference some like 85/15 This is easy and involves no heating and is super cheap. If you buy a tub of lanolin paste you must be sure it's 100% pure and does not have any petroleum additives. That will work as Nimitz says but I have found the liquid to be easier and less expensive.

My wife just reminded me of the time I went to an IDPA match and on the buzzer I drew my Beretta 92 with the paddle holster still attached. She still gets a kick out of that story. I got me a good gun belt after that one.

When you go to your 1st match don't go all serious, go with the intention of having fun, safe but fun. Go slow and don't be intimidated by others and how they run their courses. My 1st matches were monumental screw ups but I never got DQ and had a lot of laughs. Often forgetting to rack the slide on reload, fumbling and dropping the magazine while trying to reload, forgetting the safety, forgetting targets ect ect. I was accurate but slow as molasses in a polar vortex. As long as I am standing still I am all about A shots 100%......once I start moving I rapidly spiral down the toilet.....LOL. I haven't gotten much better but I still have a lot of fun during the infrequent times I do go. Really for your 1st match all you really really need to be 100% aware of is the 180 rule especially when reloading, keep your finger out of the trigger guard when not engaging a target, starting holstered with safety on and safely showing cleared at the end of a run. Let the RO know it's your 1st time, they will appreciate it and offer good advice. Go slow and have fun.

I doubt bajadudes is the only mfgr doing it. Lots of Internet scare tactics on this subject, but if you dig a bit, you'll find someone doing a reasonably good study w/microscope before/after tumbling rounds, and no ill effects/changes to be seen. It's highly unlikely for anyone to manage setting a round off in a dry tumbler. I've done it for .223 on occasion, but use One Shot on my 9mm, which I generally don't remove. As a test we took 21 rounds right off the press vs 21 rounds that we tumbled for 1.5 hours. There was no change whatsoever in fps and when we pulled the bullets we could not see any difference even with a magnifying glass. We often tumble 1300 rounds in a plastic tub cement mixer and have never had a round go off. Tumbling loaded rounds is an effective safe way to get the lube off and spiff them up.

That's what we do..20 to 30 mins at the most. One competitive shooter we supply asks us to leave the very slight amount of lube on the rounds.

I also find that all things being equal that lubing 9mm pistol brass prior to sizing results in a lower reject count due to base bulging for us when gauging. YMMV

Well it's easier to find 40 loaded to major than 9 in case you ever wanted to shoot major. I shoot an SVI in 40 with 180 grain MG JHP rounds loaded to 169 PF and find them to be more pleasant to shoot than any major 9mm round. And I am more accurate with it. I have never shot an XD in 40 so I don't know how it would compare to the 9 The ammo however is more expensive, that is true but if it's not an issue I would go 40. I know that I am comfortable loading to major in 40 with reconditioned brass and selling it to the public but I won't sell 9 major in used brass. There a forum member that has powder and new brass shipped to me and I load 9 major for him that way. If I were reloading for myself then I would be OK loading 9 major with used brass. I think if there is the possibility that you will want to shoot major then 40 will be a good choice.

I load thousands of rounds every day with carbide sizing dies and I always lube. I make my own lube 10% liquid lanolin and 90% of 96% isopropyl alcohol. Get it on Amazon, cheap. I tumble in corn cob media for about 30 min to get it all off and bring them to a nice marketable high polish. I run progressive Dillon 1050's with mixed HS brass and nickel and my OAL variance at most is +/- .004 Lube it...you will never go back to not using lube