mellow13

Midway USA has Ramshot Competition but it is expensive. Is that considered expensive? I always look to Powder valley to check for reasonable prices and midwayusa's 8lbers are only $5 more. .....And they're in stock.

Thanks for the review repins. I'm curious about the look of their tactical frames. I don't see any pics on their website. Would you mind posting a pic. Thanks.

Yes, deprime with a universal decapping die first. Leaked it easier to have a separate toolhead with just the decapping die. Don't resize the dirty brass. You'll foul up your sizing ring which will scratch up all of the subsequent brass. Load up the cases on the 2nd run, replacing the decapping die with your sizing die.

Ohhh please tell me you guys have some LOTR themed stages!!! Yeah, I'm a nerd too.

Make sure you dry it thoroughly and quickly when you take it out to minimize tarnish. I rinse mine with hot water then pop it in the convection oven at 175 for 20-30 mins, then bag it with a desiccant (silica gel packs). Stays looking new. Oven isn't needed, and with an absent mind can ruin all your cases if the temp is too high. I dry on a beach blanket in the basement next to the dehumidifier with a fan blowing over the brass. Basement stays at 40-45% humidity. Cases dry externally to the touch in about 4 hours. I wait 24 hours before doing anything with them to make sure the insides are dry. My reloading area is an unheated space in my basement. Takes overnight to dry even after a towel dry.I agree the oven isn't necessary, but brass doesn't start to anneal until the temp is well over 400 F, so even leaving them at 200 overnight won't hurt anything (although the wife did preheat the oven for pizza once and could well have spoiled a batch). We also have very hard water and the oven dry is the only way my brass stays shiny long term. I'm kinda in the same situation. I process my brass I the garage/driveway, at the moment, in cold ass illinois. I tried air drying the first batch after a towel dry. Took forever and I got a lot of spotting even with lemi shine. Don't know, maybe I should have given it an extra dose of lemi shine. I ended up picking up a food dehydrator because I didn't want to use our oven. I love the thing. It perfectly fits a load from the tumbler. It's very compact; no need to lay out the beach towel and a fan (Helps when u have a stuffed garage like mine). The brass comes out hot and super shiny. And it does this all before the next tumbled batch is finished; for those days you feel like doing a couple loads. Overkill for some, a huge convenience for me.

Did you get a forcht 1050? I had the same question a few months ago. This part came back with the forcht conversion. I must have flipped through the manual a dozen times to find out if it's supposed to be on or off. I gave up and just left it off. The press has been working, so I guessed right? Jmorris, you have a forcht driven 1050, right? Does this piece stay off?

Beautiful and hypnotizing. If you made an hour long video of any one of your brass prepping machines, I swear I could watch it from beginning to end with no awareness of the time passing.

This is a different application. It it would work well for yours. To get a stable platform for my elliptical trainer on high pile carpet, I had Home Depot cut a 3/4 inch section of some cheap ply. I overlaid it with one of those thin rubber mats made to go under treadmills and ellipticals, cut to length with just a little overhang to hide the board. After two years, there's no discoloration to the carpet. Despite the thick carpet, the elliptical doesn't move when used. I like the idea of the poster above of anchoring down with some long countersunk screws. Here's a link to something similar. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005SUIX4W/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?qid=1416944919&sr=8-8π=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70

Yes, the powder kind. But watch out for some of the prices online. You can get a 12oz container at target for $4. On amazon, it's over $8. You don't need a lot. I never did use the solution the tumbler came with, but I use about a 5 sec pour of blue down, 3/4 of a 9mm case of lemi shine. 3 hr tumble and the brass is beautiful. I just did a batch of 9mm that was dirty as hell. The guy I bought it from stored them in barrels outside exposed to water and elements. I'm talkin caked on crud. I was expecting 'usable' cases. What I got couldn't be distinguished from similarly cleaned brass from an indoor range.

Add me to the list of those who have successfully used the new vibraprime. At first, a primer would get stuck in the feedhole every 20 or so primers. Massaged the hole for about 2 min with a fine white stone on a dremel. It's fed at least 1000 primers since then with no issue. I also pulled the supplied tube out of the locknut so I could stick a dillon tube in its place. The locking nut stays in to keep the tray in place. Stick/hold the dillon tube in the nut and vibrate away.

pointplanktx is correct. Only dies specifically made by Dillon for the SDB will work on the SDB. Standard dies like the competition seating die won't work. I guess that's the big con. That, and the price. I don't have any experience with any other seating die yet, but the competition seating die worked flawlessly for me with a 650 in both .40 and .45 in flat point, swc, and round nose profiles, both coated and jacketed. It's real easy to change seating depths for fine tuning and if you're jumping between say a long .40 and a factory length. Very repeatable with the settings as well; just jot down your settings and you can flip flop with ease. I might be making this one up, but I thought I remembered hearing long ago that the seating mechanism helps 'right' the projectile before seating. Alls I know is that I could be sloppy with the projectile placement and it would still seat perfectly without shaving the coating off. Now you have a good excuse to buy a 550 or above!!

Here's my experience with one of their plates. http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=202001 After opening up a case on ebay, he let me return the plate. He said that someone changed the settings on the cutter and a few batches were out of spec. I liked the build quality of the plates. Maybe I'll give them another go if the Dillon plates ever crap out on me. Glad to hear your experience is going well.

Hey Doug. I did check the rim of each ejected case. All I could find, other than the damage done as a result of jam, was that they were all winchester brass with a rim just a hair taller than the other headstamps. I've never seen a rolled case up close before, but I don't think these were roll sized. They were purchased from a member of this forum advertised as once-fired and unprocessed. Alright, mine looks different, right? Obviously there was a mod made to work with the forcht drive, but the contours of the cam are also different. Was the redesign made to address casefeed jams? I don't want to make too many changes at one time, but after watching SPRskips's video, I'm interested in ordering a new casefeed cam. I'm not even sure if the autodrive is going fast enough to necessitate a change though.

Thanks for the input themule. The next time it happens, I'd be interested to know what the headstamp is.

Sorry, I meant height of rim.

RonofVA and jmorris, I tool off the cover plate and spring and was able to reproduce the click. There is a raised 'burr' on that corner as circled in original post. I'll work on getting rid of that with a Dremel and some stones. I'll update what happens after. SD1, it's a medium case plunger. I did some measurements of the rim height of some of the winchester brass that got ejected and also on some that passed through. They measure just shy of .054" where all the other head stamps measure .050". I winchester brass also seem to have barely any play when in one of the shellplate slots; when compared to the other head stamps, they have very little movement when wiggled side to side. The other headstamps also seem to rotate more freely in the slots. So I feel the culprit is the gs custom shellplate. This explains why it was just winchester brass ejecting. I felt the corner burr was made from the stuck cases. I'm still going to get rid of the click but I feel the gs custom shellplate just can't reliably accept winchester brass. I'm hoping the dillon shellplate will be more forgiving. I will post here with more updates. While I'm waiting, would anyone be willing to do a quick measurement of a winchester rim on a 40s&w to verify my measurements? Thanks! And thanks you all for your help so far.

Thanks for the input freekshow. Unfortunately I don't know anyone else with a plate. Most of the people I know give me a funny reaction when I tell them I reload. I hear what you're saying about trying the plate out first, but I'm thinking bout getting rid of the click first. My worry is that if the click is the problem and it still hangs up when trying a dillon plate, it may deform the lips/plate. I keep reading about dillon shellplates being made of softer metal. I'm not sure how true this is but I do remember when I had a 650, buldges were forming on the bottom surface of the plate. This is what turned me to the gs custom plates in the first place.

Hi jmorris. I checked inside all the slots multiple times pre and post ejections. I also checked the slot immediately after an ejection and couldn't find anything. I repeatedly brushed out all the slots with a nylon brush nonetheless. I marked the slot after each ejection but there was no consistency with that; the marked slot would feed fine and other slots that previously accepted brass, ejected them later. I also tried 'jogging' the autodrive to slowly feed the brass until it made a full circle around the shellplate. On several instances, I had no jams, on one cycle, I did. Again, on a slot that previously fed fine. I did notice that some brass were 'tight' in their slots. When manually clearing the shellplate of brass, I had a harder time removing some brass from their slots or the brass wouldn't rotate in their slots as easily. Maybe the tolerances of the shellplate are too tight to accommodate slight variations in the brass? Hopefully my dillon plate comes in this week so I can compare. To address your last question though, check this out... Is it suppose to do that? Seems to coincide with that area I circled in the original post. I couldn't really feel any raised area that would get in the way of the casefeed plunger. I suppose I could try stoning that area to see if it helps.

Thanks for all the input. Here's a video of one of the ejections. The first 15 sec or so is real time. As you can see, the pace isn't too fast. Around the 12 sec mark is when the brass pops out. The last 15 sec show the ejection in slow mo. The brass didn't quite make it in. I need to examine the brass, shell plate, and feeder assembly a little more to find the culprit. The first picture shows the ejected brass. Notice the groove made on the rim from the corner circled in the pic on the original post. The second picture shows a more extreme example. Both brass are Winchester. I ordered some Dillon shell plates and will update when I have more info. Additional insight is welcome. Thanks!

woah, Nelly!! Mine is certainly not going that fast. I'm working on getting up a video to show speed and one of the hang ups.

Got it, thanks! I'm putting in an order for an OEM shell plate today. btw, the plunger is a medium.

I finally got my super 1050 converted for use with .40S&W. Right now I'm just running mixed headstamp brass through to decap with a Lee universal decapper to prep for wet tumbling. I'm using on of those G.S Custom shell plates seen on ebay. The press is running on a Forcht drive. Every 15th or so piece of brass will hang up leaving station 1. The plunger get the brass onto station 1 but seems to hang up on the corner on the way to station 2. Circles the corner in the pic below. There's a loud pop and the brass goes flying away. The ejected case would have a deep gouge on the rim making it unsuitable for reloading. There doesn't seem to be any other defect that I could find on the brass. Every single piece of brass that has flown off has a Winchester stamp. That being said, some Winchester brass does make it through smoothly. I've taken apart the feeder assembly, cleaned and lubed it. Made sure there was no debris along the feed channels or in the shell plate. I made sure to tighten down the shell plate as that seems to be the number one recommendation for flying brass (tightened it down all the way, then backed off only 1/8th turn). The shell plate otherwise indexes smoothly. I've tried marking the slots on the shell plate to see if there was one bad slot, but there was no consistency in that respect. I've also check if there was any distortion to the shell plate. My next step was to get a hold of a dillon shell plate to see if it worked any better. I figured if I called them, that would be the first prerequisite. I can get more pics and maybe even video if it helps diagnose the problem. I appreciate any input. Thanks guys!!

Got it loose!! Thanks all for the suggestions. I let the liquid wrench soak overnight. Not sure if that did it or if it was just the extra lean I put into the breaker bar. Boy, I sure cussed out that bolt once I got it off!

Alright, this thing is STUCK! I called up dillon and they said the bolt is torqued down to 40 ft lbs and that I shouldn't use a breaker bar. They advised me to use some penetrating oil instead. I picked up some liquid wrench, sprayed it liberally around the bolt and washer, let it soak for about 45 min and it still won't budge. Against dillon advice, I even tried a breaker bar with a socket attachment. Now admittedly, I'm no schwarzenegger. I'm more like an Eddie Furlong, but it shouldn't be this hard. I suppose I could really lean into it row boat style, but I'd worry about putting too much stress on the press. I'll let the liquid wrench soak more. What do ya'll think about Kroil? Would it be that much more effective to place an order on their website? I guess while I wait for it in the mail, I can do more dumbbell curls and pull-ups.

Hey guys. I need to do a caliber change on my Super 1050. I can't seem to get the toolhead bolt loose. I even tried to give my crescent wrench a few whacks with a hammer with no luck. I was about to get a steel pipe to get a longer lever arm on the wrench but thought I'd ask you knowledgeable folks for any better ideas before I go making a bigger mess of things. It's a year old machine and the bolt has never previously been removed. I'm going to give Dillon a call first thing tomorrow but I was hoping to get some work done tonight. Thanks!