Cuz

lol, we are worse than a bunch of chicks hanging out at the mall. “Oooh, did you see that purse? Where did she get it? I have to have one!” I can’t friggin believe how many “necessities” I’ve bought in the last couple of weeks just from these 3 threads we’ve all been hangin out in. Now that Johnny has shared that pic of his “purse”, I absolutely have to have one for each of my toolheads. Where did he say we could get them???

I don’t understand this. The shell plate rotates, so how can you align it with the machine base? I am probably missing something obvious here, sorry about that.

How many rounds should that spring be lasting? It does seem a bit on the light side. I thought I read somewhere on this board that someone replaced it with a 1911 recoil spring and it worked better. Now I need to go search for it. My press has less than 15,000 cycles on it.

thanks, I agree that when I went to 2 passes the stress level went down. I no longer worry about primers not getting ejected. I find I can crank the handle a good deal faster on the first pass and then slow down and focus a bit more on the loading pass.

Got it. Thanks.

lol, obviously you can tell that my comfort level with my 1100 isn’t quite there yet. My biggest fear is that with the ability to quickly load large quantities of ammo, I also have the ability to screw up large quantities of ammo. I keep that container of about 150 rounds I loaded without primers right by the press as a reminder to proceed cautiously and ask a lot of questions.

Please explain what you mean be dwell in your arm movement? Thanks.

Man, I just bought 2 of these. At least Trijicon is a reputable company, to deal with.

My biggest problem with this is that when I encounter a problem, before I think too deeply, I raise the handle to see what's going on. With my RL550, this was never a problem, but with the RL1100, this causes the loaded round that was just about to get crimped to advance and drop into my bin of loaded ammo. Now I have a bin of loaded rounds and one of them didn't get crimped. Unfortunately, this will keep me up at night, unless I now pull all the rounds out of the machine and individually run them all thru the crimping die. I HATE it when that happens. The ratchet prevents me from doing this, and gives me time to remove the loaded ammo bin before releasing the ratchet to raise the handle.

After I said that I got to thinking it might just be easier to remove the ratchet tab parts instead. It should have the same affect, right?

You’d get to shoot more with all the money saved by staying minor. When I switched from Limited Major to Production back around 2003, I bought a new Glock 34. I saved more than the cost of the gun after 2 years shooting 9mm. Then a few years later my kids started shooting too, and it’s been all 9mm ever since.

Hmm, I wonder what they would say if you didn’t have the glass to glue back in???

If you guys are not using the ratchet, why not just cut off the ratchet part and use the top portion as the spacer? And, this is probably a better thread to discuss some of the problems/issues I’m having with the RL1100 than the 2 pass thread, now that we’ve verified that nobody runs dirty brass they the first pass.

Why would you have to space out the cam bolt? It looks long enough to work just fine without the ratchet.

I definitely hear you guys, but I’m coming from 20+ years on a rl550 and never had auto-indexing. It kinda scares me a little, but I may have to remove it as I’m wasting too much time just getting it to work.

Are you guys using the ratchet on any of your toolheads? I don’t use it on my processing toolhead, but I’m not quite confident enough to remove it from my loading toolhead. But it’s giving me fits. I can’t seem to get the release lever mechanism to function correctly. Either it won’t get locked back at the end of the down stroke, or it doesn’t always release at the top of the up stroke. Other times it doesn’t engage the ratchet. One of the Dillon tech support guys commented that most people take it off and don’t use it, which has me wondering what you all are doing?

Seriously? I was unaware of the moratorium on ridiculous questions. Whatever the limit is, I know I'm way over it with some of the questions I ask. But, back on topic, I don't have an open gun, so the closest I could come would be my Carry Optics Glock 34. And, I take it "into battle" every time I bring it to a match. I'm battling with all the other shooters to see who comes out on top (I never do). I didn't know there was a specific "battle" the op was referring to.

Lol, I've been having the exact same problem, at about the same frequency (1 out of 3-400). I just figured it was something wrong with that piece of brass and never gave it a second thought. I'm running the press manually, so when just processing brass, that's where I focus and make sure the brass got loaded correctly before stroking the press. When I'm loading ammo, I check that a bullet got properly dropped, then check that a case got loaded before stroking the press. If someone does have a cure for this, I too want to hear it. It never even occurred to me that it may be something with the press because of the frequency that it happened, and also it only seems to happen if I'm trying to crank the handle at a pretty high rate.

Well, those kinds of friends certainly come in handy!!! thanks.

It depends on if your currently shooting 9mm minor or some other caliber. If 9mm, then you need to decide if it’s worth retooling for another caliber. New gun, possibly some gear, will you need to buy new reloading components that you don’t currently have?? mid your shooting 40 or 45, it’s pretty easy to bump up your ammo and give it a try without changing anything else. I think there “could” be more to it than just switching if you are currently shooting 9mm.

I ordered a funnel from photo express. If it works, that will be great. If not, it will go into a box with way too many other “accessories” I’ve ordered over the years that didn’t quite work out.

Hogrider, how did you address sticking at station 3, with the Dillon expander?

Thanks, That's the kind of info I was looking for. I've loaded about 7,000 rounds before it started sticking, so it may just need a good cleaning. I'm doing it by hand, never had a dremel, and probably saved a lot of money by not ruining expensive gun parts... So I'll check for 1000-1200 grit, or some 00, 000, or 000 steel wool to start with. Either way, I need a trip to Lowes or Home Depot to get what I need. That's scheduled for later this afternoon, so I'll be sure to check back here before I buy anything, or more likely, I'll end up just buying EVERYTHING so I'll be sure to have what I need.

I suppose if we polish the expanding die it will lessen the sticking. Anyone know the best way to polish it without screwing it up??? Someone previously told me to use 600 grit sandpaper to clean it off because brass particles get stuck on it and cause the sticking. I was told to use the sandpaper to clean it, then rub a very, very small amount of Dillons case lube on it. I have not yet tried to do this, but may pick up some sandpaper at Lowe’s later today.

Sigarms, I keep going back and forth about using the undersize die on my processing run. My current processing toolhead has: 1 - casefeed 2 - FW Arms popper decapper 3 - FW Arms Swage hold down. 4 - Empty 5 - Empty 6 - Lee full length sizing/decapping die 7 - Dillon carbide sizing/decapping die Then, I processed 3000 with the Lee undersized die in station 8, and then another 3000 with station 8 empty. I've only loaded about 20 of each, and what I'm finding is that the cases that were undersized are sticking big time on the Mr. Bullet Feeder expander that is in my powder measure. I need to research how to get those cases to release easier. I used Hornady one shot to lube the cases for processing, but did not lube when loading. Cuz