mikeinctown

I'm glad you asked the question as I'm looking at picking up a used shadow with a decent amount of rounds through it. Seems I should be good doing the maintenance I had planned on doing anyway.

Black barrel on my SP-01 from 1-2 years ago. Except it isn't a good black like Sig puts on theirs. It rubs off easily. took less than 20 minutes on my lathe with a buffing wheel to remove every bit of black from the barrel. It just looked like crap as the black was rubbing off all over so I helped it along and polished it up nice.

Since you own our own company, perhaps you can tell us what would happen to your company if you stole a designor idea that someone not within your company came up with.

LOL, I was all set to stop and get powder and primers after work yesterday, but it was not needed. Hopefully we'll see prices continue to slide. Some powders local are $130/8lbs. Primers are still $30/k- $35/k though. I still have SP CCI primers from a sale last year where they were $22/k.

My condolences. As a happy owner of a blue press, I thank him, the family, and company for their dedication and hard work through the years. Countless lives have been changed due to his work. RIP

I'm a bit confused as to how you can justify adding on costs for some things a gun needs. The spring costs the same regardless if it is 13# spring, or a 15# spring. So the fact that they included one ready for competition means nothing. What are they going to do, sell you a gun without springs? Same could be said for the other stuff. They already have to mill the slide and put in sights. So in reality, we should only be looking at the difference in cost for the mfg to put one sight on rather than a different one. if the gun is $1,300 but only needs $200 worth of work to make it the same as a Shadow 1 at the same $1,500 total price point then all you are doing is taking some of the cost from the custom shop and adding it to the factory price. But if the gun is $1,300 and it still requires the $400 or more work, then I can't see much of a benefit. JMO.

Oh hell, that place is 15 minutes down the road from where I work. I called and was told $200 a gun and that it would need to be completely disassembled. Completion takes about a week. They offer quantity discounts, but the number would be high enough that you would pretty much need to be a manufacturer. What I forgot to ask was if they remove the old finish with some type of chemical or powder blasting prior to doing the work.

Your analogy is off. The muzzle velocity may be higher, but we are also taking into account the force applied upon a sudden stop. To use a different analogy, a a car and a truck go speeding at a brick wall. The car, while it can accelerate quicker, will also stop easier. the truck, while taking longer to speed up, will not decelerate as quickly and will go through the wall. Or you can apply the same logic to a baseball and bat. A lighter bat will allow the hitter to swing slightly faster, but when the bat hits the bal, it will decelerate quicker than will a heavier bat hitting that same ball. Also, there is a point at which the two objects will reach nearly the same speed. So just because one hammer is lighter and gets going faster, the heavier hammer may very wel reach the same speed by the time it strikes the firing pin. In which case the heavier hammer will have more force behind it. Personally, I'm of the opinion that when parts such as this become smaller it is because of economics. A thinner sheet of material will cost less, resulting in less cost to produce. As long as the desired results are achieved, then the re-engineering of the part has saved the company $$, resulting in profit.

As I'm trying to teach my son the press, I can say that the ONLY way I've had any come down the chute is when you don't push forward on the handle and seat the next case full into the shellplate at station #1. Then when you go up, the brass hits the die and jams everything up. Instead of lowering just enough to push the case into place fully, it is lowered a good amount and then raised again enough to advance the primer to the next station. Other than that, I've never had a primer come down the chute. So basically, user error.

Meh, my press was set up perfect for .45 right out of the box. I added dies and made the adjustments, added powder and made ammo. Loaded 400 rounds last week and had a half dozen spent primers pop out and land either right under the press or on the floor. I have also had no issues with the live primer chute. Perhaps the large primers make things work better?

Another vote for the Wilson Combat magazines. I have the ETM #500. I can't see paying the extra for the +P versions. I love the followers in the Wilson magazine as it is the same as any double stack 9 and 40 that I have. I have a shooting star mag but hatet the follower. It is crappier than the magazines I got with my Sig 1911. FWIW the spring, follower, and basepad from a Wilson ETM magazine fits whatever brand originally came with my Sig tactical. (checkmate?) I frankensteined them together when I cleaned my gun last week to see if it would be worth it ordering the kits from Wilson. Everything seemed to slide as it should, but I haven't been to the range with that setup to check. oh, and if you hit the right vendors at the shows you can save yourself around $10 a magazine. I think the #500 is supposed to be retail of about $40, but I paid around $30 a pop for mine.

Double post

The guy you had originally replied to was talking about the difference between running a 145 vs 147gn bullet, not 2 grains of powder. Personally, unless I was already loading for a major power factor I would have just used the same charge, and then loaded some .2 grains lower to see how that worked out. No need to reinvent the wheel when you already have data available.

Do yourself a favor and go to the Hodgdon website and go through their loading charts. They have a lot more data than the Lyman book does for every powder. compare the two and use reasonable judgement . Lyman has a ton of test data but most is for stuff I'll never touch nor have heard of.

Everyone around me is out of Federal SP and I haven't seen them in ages. Everyone has Federal Small pistol magnum primers. Everyone has CCI, Winchester, and even Remington SP primers at some places. In LP, lots of primers from every company, including some of the Federal Gold match primers. (Just bought 2k over the weekend as the limit is 1K of any one type per day, or 4,000 mixed)

I always keep a round of factory ammo sitting in a tray along with various reload samples to check this. I can measure COL and case diameter so that I know that the measurements I am finding in the books and on line is accurate, to get a baseline of how snug a round is in the barrel if factory, and to compare my recently loaded dimensions. Also, in the handbook for your 650, it not only shows the belling procedure, but also he method in which to use to determine when you have taken the bell out. (crimp) You add the bullet diameter to case wall thickness x2 and that should be your diameter of the finished cartridge when measured at the lip of the brass. You don't want it pushed in or still belled. I currently only load for my 1911, and don't even own a case gauge. I test by sliding in factory ammo to see how loose or tight things can be. From there I slowly take out the bell using the barrel and my calipers using the method outlined in the manual. Once I found the sweet spot I simply removed the bullet to make sure I wasn't biting into the coating. My method for testing the COL involved measuring the factory round then going slightly longer. I made up 4 or 5 dummy rounds minus primer and powder. Put the dummy rounds into the magazine and tested to see how well each round chambered. If the round didn't chamber easily from the magazine then I would put each round on the press and adjust about .005 shorter and would keep doing this as necessary. If everything seemed to feed and eject properly then I would stop shortening the cartridge and would then make some live rounds to test at the range. Using this method I haven't had an issue with any rounds in test loads not feeding properly, whether they are blue bullets, zero bullets, and other local hytek coated bullets. As I am gearing up to load 9mm now, I plan on using this method for my CZ and other 9mm guns.

The Hornady Cam lock is what I had seen recommended but they were all out locally and on amazon when I looked. I bought an RCBS puller which uses different collets. You may need to crank down on it pretty good to remove a bullet depending on the coating and profile. When I use it on blue bullets I get a nice ring from the collet and the bullet is pretty much wasted, but it is only needed when initially setting the Lee FCD for me.

Not sure what press you are using, but I set my expander to the specs Dillon listed in their 650 manual and I get no shaving with coated lead. There is just enough bell to not allow the bullet to fall over when you set it on there. I can basically only feel the bell but it is really had to see the bell. Don't make it harder than it needs to be, and you will be fine.

BTW, the Op is asking about an XL650 which auto indexes and it is nearly impossible to do a double charge because of this. By the time you lower the handle enough to move the powder bar into position to refill with powder, the indexing already starts moving. You can point to whatever saying you want, but in the post you referenced, there is ZERO evidence that the failure was a double charge that would have been prevented by a powder check. (and the guy wasn't using a 650)

CZ must have started building all their guns in that new color. My local dealer has an SP-01 in that color yesterday.

Except from what I read there you can't connect that to a double charge. He says he looks in every case. The case separated apart, which could be a problem with a case that was reloaded too many times. There is zero actual proof that this was a double charge that would have been prevented by using a powder check. (in fact he evidence shows that it could more likely be bad brass in a Glock) Guess you need to go back further than 3 years to find one.

I've never read a thread like that where someone was looking at the cases, either. It has always been because they weren't paying attention.

You'll need the proper caliber conversion and dies plus the case feed plate if the 38 requires the small. 45 is a very popular cartridge and should be easy enough to sell both the conversion kit and dies.

I must be too much of a noob to understand the reasoning behind not reaming due to accuracy. The barrel is over 4" long on these guns and you are going to ream like 1/10 of an inch. I would think that the barrel after 5,000 rounds would have degraded enough to affect accuracy more than that 1/10th of an inch.

Just wondering if anyone has been able to test fire or own a Colt competition. I've been thinking of picking one up, but am unsure if I would want a 45 or 9mm. I already have a 45 in a Sig tacops, but was thinking of grabbing something different. (I'd rather just leave the night sights on my Sig and leave it factory) Plus I don't yet own a Colt 1911 and want one.