BeerBaron

If you want to know for sure take those 20 'duds' to the range and get someone with a 1911 or 2011 to shoot them. Btw cci are towards the harder end of the primer hardness scale. I also think it was weak strike from the gun for whatever reason (dirt, weak spring, timing, etc).

Personally I'd go for the Lyman 1200 tumbler. It has a slotted lid so you don't need a media separator (saves some $) also it comes with media (Lyman green corncob) that will last you about a year. I messed around with walnut etc too. The Lyman media is amazing. No need to add anything to it. The lyman is $55 at cabelas but then you are sorted for: tumbler media for 12mths (or around 10-15,000 cases) media separator (just add a bucket) by the time you buy cheapo tumbler, walnut, polish, separator you'll be up more than that and the Lyman does an amazing job.

Agree with that wholeheartedly. Ammobot is in fact trying to patent their whole auto drive. Though they claim the case ejection is patented it doesn't show up in any patent search I've done (it's possible it's there as searching is a bit of a dark art). In their main patent your case extraction video is cited as potential prior art.

In an ideal world I agree. A gun for $3k should not have any issues. But as I said you have to judge this stuff by comparing to its peers. In this case that's competition 2011s. An sti DVc is basically the same price (within $50) and from what Ive personally seen many have way more serious issues than this. So do 2011s from other makers in this price range. If you go up the scale to sv it gets better but they are not immune either. I know personally of a few guys whose new sv's had to go back. I totally agree it should come ready to rock.

Never have to reload again! Think of the savings!!!

I can only back up what the others said. Get a 'conventional' 2011 open gun. Given your hand issues and lack of reloading id go for a 9mm trubor or similar and set it up to run factory 115gn minor. Winchester white box fmjs should make minor and though not really working the comp they will be soft to shoot. A 9mm 2011 open with 6lb spring should run 115gn factory no prob. Just make sure it's up around 1150fps to ensure you make minor. A's are still 5 points and misses still cost you minus 10. So while minor is a disadvantage shooting a costa or some 40 I think is worse.

Yeah you can bend stainless rackers. Its just harder. Chuck it in a vise, heat and bend.

Yeah 550 I feel is the press for the guy with 5+ caliber and just one press. But for someone loading 1-5 calibers and mainly loading big volume of 1 or 2 the 650 is ideal. The 550 for me has a few deal breakers for any volume. No auto index - I want an auto rotating shell plate. It's a safety thing and speed thing. Not desiged to be case fed. Yes they sell an add on but the press is really desiged to be hand fed. That's a big no no for me. 4 station means it's not designed to be bullet fed either as bf on 550 means seat and crimp in one which sucks. De-primer/primer system. I hate the Rube Goldberg type primer system which deprimes and primes at the same station with that little contraption that holds and the releases spent primers. So the 550 has a place but bulk loading is not its forte.

I dunno. RT is an sv man of old. Ck are great but they're not sv... fortunately they're not sv money either. I still think they fill a niche in the market pretty well. Those who want custom gun quality parts and features but don't mind it not being a one off and perhaps lacking some of the small attention to detail. Anyone can see ck hit a winning formula as they have sold tons of them. To be honest trace I'd take a good look at an atlas titan or chaos (assuming you want a 2011 for either ltd or open). I've not even shot an atlas but it seems there 'semi-custom' line is a step up again from the ck semi customs. The price is a step up too but it looks like you get a nice boost in attention to detail etc for that extra $$. I think atlas will pull quite a few guys who were looking at a ck or blinged up sti. The downside is longer wait time and more $ so there's always a trade off.

Well yeah one of the forum rules is basically no negative stories/complaints etc. I presume it's to protect the owner from litigious types... i stil think mainly your expectations were not in line with what the product offers or you just have plain buyers remorse. Ive had some small issues with both of my ck's too. Do I wish they weren't there? Yes. Do I think ck should have taken a little more care on certain aspects of qc? Hell yeah I do. But I accept the product for what it is. And it doesn't have any meaningful affect on my enjoyment of the product. I am by no means a fan boy and I can recognise the limitations of the product. But I don't judge it in a vacuum. I compare it to its peers/competitors and in that light i think it stands up pretty well. Ck will likely address your guiderod tool marks and the ejection issue. You can do that without shipping the whole gun. They can ship you a tuned ejector and polished guiderod which would be an easy option on their part. The finish issue to my mind is just a mismatched expectation on your part so there's no real fix for that. Hopefully from there you can enjoy the gun, or just sell it. You shouldn't be forced to keep a toy you don't like.

Broski I know money is tight but loading 9 major it's nice to be able to use things like the lee u-die. You can't do that with the square deal. If you can stretch to $609 I'd go that way and get the 650. All youll need to add are 9mm dies which are $40 for a set of lee dies. It comes with everything else ready to go. The 650 has many advantages over the sdb and over the 550 it has a couple of important benefits too. 5th station. This is a biggie and is not something you can later add to a 550 or sdb. It allows flexibility to do things like: progressively size with regular sizer then u die in station 2. Run a powder check. Run a bullet feeder. Seat and crimp separately with other combos of powder check etc. Much more flexible with the 5th station. You dont need the strong mount (in fact I prefer it better without). As you go you can add things like roller handle, case collator etc as funds permit. But the base model 650 with a set of lee dies will get you going for little money. The press doesn't come come with the brass collator but it does come with the case feed parts so you can just drop brass into the tube which is already faster than having to feed them into the shell plate. Some people rig up extra tubes so they can prefil them before loading even. I think it's worth spending the extra if you can.

Btw a ck thunder at ssi or sc is $2850. An sti DVC limited is $2799 (on special). With some of the crazy stuff I've seen on dvc's the $50 premium seems pretty reasonable.

Yes theoretically if you buy the new style sti mags you won't need a spacer. However these are brand new and not really 'field tested' for reliability yet. The grams kit to use would be the fks-11 with the 140 tubes. The kit you linked is for 170mm tubes.

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt but you've lost me now with the guide rod stuff. 1: finish that is what pvd looks like. People who choose black do it for the 'stealth' look. It's high performance but not exactly bling. If you wanted a nice looking finish you should have gone the stainless look pvd. It looks amazing. Like hard chrome but with a small color shift. You can hardly blame them for that. 2. Ejection do you know different oal, different mag springs, different pf anmo will all affect ejection? Either send it back for them to tune or spend 10min on the ejector tip yourself. 3. Accuracy. Have you ever shot a group better than 3 1/2 inch with any gun? That was the same size group your sti shot. Gun accuracy in that test is heavily dependent on the load and the shooter. I have had a gun that shot no kidding a 10inch group at 15 yards off hand with one load (I thought the gun was broken) then 2 min later 2 inch group with a different load. If you want to figure out how accurate it is ideally you need a fixture (i.e. Ransom rest) and a bunch of loads to try. 4. Guiderod. Seriously? You do know plenty of people prefer a standard guiderod. The toilets ones can fail (I've seen one go) and they do have pins walk out from time to time. I'm sure ck chose std as a cost saving neasure and because it does the job. My mega $$ svi also came with std guiderod and being an imm gun with full dustcover it's much harder to get in there. 5. 'Overpriced' it sounds to me like this is the crux of the issue. You have buyers remorse. YOU chose a finish you don't like and as a result your enjoyment of the gun is diminished so you start picking holes in it. All of your issues bar the colour could be easily addressed. But you prefer to complain loudly. I get it.

I think we all agree that JHP in either 115,121 or 124-5gn are THE ideal projie. Coated lead will give very near jhp accuracy providing the load works and the projies are sized correctly to your barrel. They are definitely the cheapest but also the dirtiest to load and shoot. Plated rn Cmj feed the best. Are super clean to load and shoot and price out between coated and jhp. However accuracy with plated varies massively from near as good as jhp (for good ones in a suitable load that works in your gun) to the worst of the bunch for some of them. So plated can be a lottery accuracy wise. Even at their best they are not as good as a jhp. I think plated are good for practice (as long as there's a cost saving) and jhp for matches is a no brainer.

Once you get this sorted I think you'll be happy with the zeros. I don't know if you ever mic'd the xtremes but they are notorious for being undersized. Wouldn't surprise me if they were 355 or even 3545.

What projectile are you using?

I also think in this case velocity through the chrono is not an indicator of pressure. At some point in loads you can find pressure goes up but velocity does not. That is why even though you're at 170pf you are getting nasty pressure signs. My personal view is I would not keep shooting that load. I would not even have shot the complete 100 rounds. After the first pierced primer I would have stopped and pulled the rest. Those pierced primers are venting seriously hot, high pressure gas onto your breech. No wonder the magazine was blown out of the gun 4 times!!

1: reloading is actually pretty simple. Once you have a load, stick to that. A 550 is a hit if a pain since you need 5 hands to feed it brass, bullet, turn shell plate, pull handle. Normal machines with feeders (650, 1050) you just pull the handle. That's it. 2: unless you're planning to shoot your 'coolfire' at matches, practice and perhaps in self defence it's not replacing reloading. It's replacing dry fire which currently costs 0.00 per 'shot'. 3. I don't know where all these self immolating reloaders are but even in practice I see people shoot 5,000 reloads in a few hours and none has lit up like a suicide bomber just yet. Also you're still going to need ammo for matches (unless you're going to bring your laser). Sure you can buy factory which will basically wipe out those savings you made by not practicing and provide a sub optimal load for your gun/division. 4: it takes me 20min from start to finish to load 200 rounds for a weekly practice session. Wow. I'll get 20min back but I'll loose valuable live fire practice. If your reloading takes longer invest in a better machine. That's where the gains are. If if you think you can achieve in the sport with just a laser gun and no live practice I'd suggest think again. Even dry fire legends like Ben Stoeger still shoot upwards of 50,000 live rounds a year. Many shoot 1000,000. Dry fire is great for gun handling (draws, reloads etc). And transitions. This device will add in a 'real' trigger pull so trigger control can be practiced at speed but don't think it gives real recoil. The co2 barrel just cycles the slide/trigger. It's not comparable to live fire. Its also crazy expensive and you get about 10-12 shots between refills. The. When you're main tank is done you get to schlep out to a depot somewhere to buy more c02. Yay. There goes all that time saving you were going to spend on dry fire. Dry fire is great. But you need the real thing too. Once a month is not enough if you want to get good.

This surely has to be a troll...

The simple answer is they can't. They may get lucky sometimes but cheap shit digital calipers don't have the accuracy or resolution to measure what they are measuring. Just as bad is half the people with a micrometer don't know how to read it properly. I really enjoy people measuring bullet diameter with cheap calipers. When the difference between say 0.354 and 0.355 has a massive effect on performance they are using a device that in reality can probably only hold to around 0.002 or worse. Even better they go to 4 digits and tell me their caliper says their bullet is 0.3555. Lol. So accurate.

You will need standard. Or you can change to slim bushings and screws then you can use thin.

You can switch to a sv trigger if you like but you have to open up the channel in the grip a little. It's pretty common to have to do this but personally I wish they offered a 'sv trigger' version. With the magwell if you have their steel grip you are locked in to their magwells. Fortunately they have 3 versions. 1 is basically the same as Dawson ice. 1 is basically the same as Dawson ice big hands The third one is smaller like a standard sti magwell (no ice insert) which makes it suitable for idpa and ipsc standard division. So they have most bases covered but I can't see why not make the fit the same as all the double stack sti type magwells. fortunately I'm happy with their magwells, but if I had say a really expensive cape magwell that I wanted to keep using it would rule out the steel grip. I could still buy a ck with plastic grip though.

Basically I'm happy with my ck's. For not much more than an sti you get top shelf fire control parts and small parts (safety, slide stop etc). Their steel grip is nice. I really like the texture but I do prefer the deeper rear on the pt evo or sv signature. The guns seem to be fitted well. Much better than many recent sti's Ive played with. One of mine was especially tight to the point where I question it was too tight perhaps. i really like the finishes on them. Pvd is awesome though both of mine had some very small blemishes (one had pinprick spot on the grip, the other had 2 small blemishes on the barrel). I like the balance of the gun with steel grip and titanium comp. the gun shoots nicely and very flat but also not harsh (some flat shooting guns are very hard in the hand). Mine are 38 super and I run 3n38 which I'm sure contributes. I do wish the triggers were nicer out of the box. All the parts for a great trigger are there but they clearly didn't take the time to 'set' each trigger. One of mine was quite long in both pre and overtravel and pulled about 2lb 8-10oz (from memory), it's also not perfectly 'crisp' so I think it needs some sear work on top of adjusting the travel and the sear spring. The other was also 2lb8oz but was nice and short and very crisp/clean breaking so that one can likely be set to 2lb with just some adjustment of the sear spring. I think for the money and considering they're using top shelf bits a proper, nice 2lb trigger is a fair ask. Yes that likely means some time cutting the sear face and 30min adjusting and checking each gun but triggers are the tactile part of the gun and something people remember about 'nice' guns. I also think a pinned grip safety would be nice on a competition marketed 'semi-custom'. But it's an easy fix. I also wish their steel grip would accept regular 2011 magwells (no idea why they made it different). Same with mag catch though I 'think' normal 2011 catch will work you'd just need to shape the right side to match the grip contour there. I also think they should have done the steel grip to accept sv triggers or have it as an option. Changing trigger shoes is a nice way to tune the gun to the user. So overall pretty happy. All the parts are high quality. The fit on important stuff is nice and a level above the average sti. Finish is excellent. The gun feels nice to shoot and so far has been very reliable with just a couple teething issues. I think they do an excellent job of filling a gap in the market between say a $3k sti turbor and a $7k infinity custom. I think most people would feel they are good value.

Yeah what is ziira7? Never heard of it. Those pierced primers are scary!