matteekay

So what you're saying is... I need a third hand to pull the lever while one hand keeps the first case straight and the other holds the bullet upright?

That's a great point. I'll give that a try when I have a break in a few hours (the joys of working from home!).

Here are each of the slots - no damage that I could see. This guy was freshly serviced, too, so I imagine that would have been caught while it was back at home base. I ran about 25 cases through, decapping/resizing only, and didn't have it occur a single time. This has me thinking that maybe something at one of the other stations is torquing the shellplate? Possibly related to the bullet shaving I'm seeing? On that note - I noticed that there's also shaving occurring at the base of the bullet. A lot of them are having a "fingernail clipping" of powdercoat push up and out of the top of the case mouth after seating. Normally I'd think that I should just open up the expanding die a little more, but the mouths are already flared to nearly a trumpet bell and the bullets drop in easily. It's like they're getting squeezed further down the case.

Will do. I'll take a look (and pictures) when I get home. And yes, it's using "1" locators. Is there a way for me to tell if it's short-stroking?

The shell plate bolt is all the way in. Unless there's somewhere else I can tighten it that I missed...? And it's more frequent than not. Basically, I occasionally get lucky and one goes it correctly. The rest all have to be manually aligned.

Howdy! I finally had a chance to try out the .45 ACP SDB I picked up from a member here (fresh off a servicing from Dillon). I really like it but I'm having two issues. The first is that my brass doesn't want to align with the sizer die. On about 7 of 10 pulls, the casing enters the die and binds. I can work it into the right spot by hand and complete the pull, but obviously that's not a very effective way to run the press. Attempting to do it by force has the results you'd expect... The other thing I'm running into is the seater die shaving the finish off my bullets. It's occurring in the same spot to about 1/2 or 1/3 of the rounds I run off. When it does, it looks like there's a ring-shaped indentation in the top of the bullet: I am straightening the bullet as much as possible before seating. Any thoughts on either would be hugely appreciated!

That being said - I start with uncoated lead data of the same weight when coated data is not available. Follow usual best practices - start low, work your way up, look for signs of overpressure, etc, and you'll be golden.

Quick update from the OP: I slapped a dot on my 627 before our last ICORE match and I gotta say, I'm a believer. Not because I shot well; I didn't, I shot atrociously (I was 20+ seconds faster with my iron-sighted Limited 6 gun) but I could actually see how the dot was wandering off-target on my Bravos/Charlies/Mikes. Learning this during a match is probably not the way to do it but it was only a local one, so meh. I'm convinced (right now, anyway) that the dot makes a lot of sense as a training tool. I just ordered a mount for my "trainer" .22 single stack and intend to run a dot on there. I understand what everyone is saying about how finding the dot changes your draw and initial acquisition, so my plan is to run it for live-fire and then practice draws and reloads with my 45/9mm 1911's in dry-fire. One more baby step on a long path!

I'm glad to hear it's normal. That being said... a tiny bit of sanding later and I have a smooth press. It still makes contact and moves the measure but doesn't hang up and then slam down. I'll replace that part of I see flow issues but none of my other measures have needed that much shaking. Unless it's Trail Boss. Then... slap the measure like it owes you money between strokes. Sent from my STV100-1 using Tapatalk

Yeah, I'm sure there's a reason the new style is an improvement but I don't see it. Maybe I just got spoiled by the liquid movements of my 650... I'm going to relieve a tiny bit of material from that wing to see if that does it. I might put springs on there and make sort of a hybrid old/new style measure, too.

Sorry for being slow - is that the "gold wing" in your picture? That's what all of my other measures look like. I tried loosening the wingnut - no effect. However, it looks like it would take about 20 seconds with a sanding drum on my Dremel to get enough clearance to have smooth operation. Or I can let it clunk around as a way to shake up the powder between throws, lol.

I'll give it a shot! Yeah, that's how my 650 measures are. This one doesn't appear to have a return spring other than the arm.

Howdy! I recently picked up a SDB from this board as a complement to my 650. It arrived freshly serviced by Dillon and I set it up following their instructions. I'm wondering if the powder measure is behaving correctly, though. The "arm" that gets pulled down by the rod that's connected to the press handle seems to hang up towards the end of the return sequence, and then "pops" free (causing the measure to jump). It's entirely possible that this is normal and I'm just not used to it but I figured I'd ask. My 650 only has the old, spring-driven measures. Here's the "arm" position when a casing is fully inserted at the end of the downstroke: Here's where it starts to make contact on the upstroke: And here's where it hangs up just before it pops free:

Revolver, obviously. [emoji14] Sent from my STV100-1 using Tapatalk

I don't think that applies to any of the situations discussed here: "9.4.5.3 Stacked shots (i.e. shooting more than the specified shots at a target(s) while shooting other target(s) with fewer shots than specified in the stage briefing) will incur one procedural penalty per target incorrectly engaged in the string or stage. "

Right on. To be fair, you're only going to notice the Mike in close-range classifiers, so the chance of making up an A quickly is pretty good. Of course, the better solution is still to shoot all Alphas... so I guess just do that?

Oh wow, I totally missed that No Shoots are in the ruling, lol. Talk about tunnel vision... I HAVE to think it's the latter, and the rule simply means you don't get the NS and an Extra Hit. You would get the NS penalty, though.

I don't think No Shoots were mentioned anywhere in the thread. I was only ever discussing hard cover hits.

That was the initial question in the thread. 9.4.5.2 seems to affirm this.

Would it be? On Virginia Count Courses of Fire: 9.4.5.2 Extra hits (i.e. hits on the scoring area of scoring paper targets in excess of the total number specified in the stage), will each incur one procedural penalty. Note that hits on hard cover and/or no-shoots are not treated as Extra Hits Or were you referring to a different penalty?

See? This is why I pose the question to smarter people than me. That's a great way to look at it!

Gotcha. The stage in question is CM 13-06, Too Close for Comfort (10 shots). The front headshot is only 5 yards so I'd be pretty confident in picking it up (though really shouldn't have missed it in the first place, lol).

Makes sense to me. From the shooter's perspective - is it better to take the Mike? Or the Alpha+Penalty if they can make up the shot quickly?

For the record, Option A was my camp, lol.

Howdy! I'm curious as to how this would be scored. Let's make the COF super-simple: One target that has partial black/hard cover, two rounds, Virginia count. The competitor draws, fires, and scores one in the A-zone and one in the black. The competitor then takes an extra shot and gets another A. Is it: A. Alpha-Alpha, Procedural for extra shots taken B. Alpha-Alpha, Procedurals for extra shots taken and extra hit We debated this a little last night. The Option A thinking is that extra shots are counted at the line, extra hits are counted at the target, and 9.4.5.2 states that hard cover hits are not counted. The Option B contention is that one of the initial two shots was the Mike, so we know that the second Alpha is in excess. Thoughts? Anyone run into this?