Phlier

And there ain't nothing wrong with that! Shoot what works for you.

I apologize if this advice has already been posted, as I didn't take the time to read the whole thread. I also use the Frankford Arsenal Rotary Tumbler. My case peening problem was solved by filling the tumbler up with more water. Gradually increase the amount of water in each batch, until you finally reach the point that the cases are no longer getting peened. I also don't see the need to run the thing any longer than 1.5 hours.

One thing you need to consider is the length of the actual bullet itself. If the new bullet is shorter than the one you're replacing, then having a shorter OAL doesn't necessarily mean that you're reducing the case's internal volume when compared to the old bullet. Measure how far from the case mouth you're seating both the old and new bullets. That'll give you a much better idea of whether or not you're reducing the internal case volume much better than just the OAL.

IMO (and it's just that, an opinion as I have no proof) it seems logical that, if you're shooting very large volumes of ammo, a polymer coated bullet is going to cause less barrel wear than a copper jacket. Now I have no proof of that, but I *can* tell you that I've put around twenty thousand rounds through my current barrel (all but around 4k were powder coated or lubricated lead), and my barrel shows little wear. Far less than what I would expect to see had I put 20k jacketed bullets through it. But since I don't have another identical barrel that I shot the same amount of copper plated/jacketed bullets to compare it to, it certainly isn't proof. Since my son and I shoot *a lot* of ammo every week, expense is another thing to consider. I can cast and powder coat my own bullets for far, far, FAR less money than buying copper plated or jacketed. Since my lead source is free, my tin source is cheap, and my antimony cost is relatively cheap, it's a no-brainer for us to shoot coated bullets. It was quite a bit of work to work up a load for coated bullets that was as accurate as my previous load for FMJ/plated bullets, but we finally got it dialed in to where the coated bullets are every bit as accurate. If I had the budget, sure... I'd shoot plated/fmj over coated, but unfortunately I don't have an unlimited budget.

There are soooo many good to excellent powders available, that I'm not surprised you got a ton of responses and recommendations. So I might as well add another one to consider: CFE-Pistol. IMO, it performs as well as the more expensive powders, but at a lower price point. It is also very consistent through your powder measure. When I sit down to start a reloading session, I throw five charges that go right back into the hopper. I then throw ten more, measuring each one. With CFE, I'll usually get five charges that are right on, three charges that are less than .1gr off, and two charges that are right at .1 gr off. Pretty darn consistent. If you happen to be shooting jacketed bullets, the CFE part of the name really is effective. I thought it was a marketing gimmick, but it really does help reduce/eliminate copper fouling. I don't shoot copper jacketed bullets anymore, but I still use CFE, as it really is a fantastic powder. Just another option to consider.

It is possible that the dust from dry tumbling was giving you enough lube to prevent the coating from being removed, but there are other possibilities to explore. I cast and powder coat a minimum of 1k per week of 9mm. Since I have my dies all dialed in, if I see powder coating getting removed during bullet seating, I know that it’s due to the PC not being properly cured. But this assumes that there isn’t an issue with how the dies are setup. I load a .358 124gr bullet in 9mm, and use a slightly larger expander die: NOE’s .360/.356. This larger expander helps to prevent the brass from swaging down the bullet to too small of a diameter, and also helps to keep the PC from getting overly thinned out, or at the extreme, getting peeled off of the bullet. To determine if the coating is properly cured, take a sledge hammer to one. Pound it standing up, and then laying down. No matter how much you deform the bullet, a properly cured coating will survive this completely intact... no flaking or peeling. If the bullet coating passes this test, then you need to examine/rethink your expanding setup, both the size of the expander and how deep you run it. If you do end up making any changes to your expander, make sure you check for proper neck tension.

Same. A lot of guys don't like One Shot, but just a very small amount of it will make small pistol brass run like butter, without the mess of lanolin. A one-half second spray into a zip lock with 200 9mm cases in it is plenty. Shake it up, pour the brass into your feed hopper, and let it dry thoroughly before loading. When one shot dries (as long as you used *very* little) it won't leave the cases feeling greasy, and it won't rub any lube off on to anything else... case feeder, etc.

That's been my experience, too. I don't have a large stable of powder measures, just an RCBS Uniflow, Dillon, and a Lee Auto Drum, and the Lee really does work well compared to the others. Buying the inserts for them is very convenient, too. I have inserts for all my favorite powders/loads for each caliber. Less than a minute to change out the insert and you're ready to go.

Deleted. I've been reading up on the CZ forums, which pretty much answered my question.

Yup, we sure do. So how about, "Be careful working up a load when loading to that short of an OAL, as even very small changes in powder charge will have a much more pronounced change in pressures than at longer OAL's."

Be careful loading to that short of an OAL. So far, my son's CZ SP-01 hasn't had any problems out to 1.130 OAL with various bullets. With some bullets, my 1050 will keep OAL variance down to .002. Others .08. I did have one batch of plated that had large ogive variations cause .15 OAL variations.

Good points as always, Sarge.

I think the part in bold is what's causing the confusion... reached up to turn brass in a 650? Was your auto shell plate advance not working? I haven't popped a primer while reloading since 1984. Knock on wood.

If you are absolutely positive that you want to stick with loading only the 9mm, I certainly don't see what's not to like about the SDB.

i've had my 1050 for about four months now, and after a love/hate relationship that lasted a good solid month, the hate portion is definitely gone. I LOVE my 1050. And yes, after you get the hang of tuning the thing, you can plan on sitting down and loading 1,000+++ rounds without a hiccup. Last week, I loaded 4,000 rounds, and the only problem I had was an upside down primer (my fault). Other than that, just sit there and pull the handle. Dead solid reliability. The swaging station on the 1050 means that you don't have to fool around with military brass. Throw it in the case feeder and forgeddaboutid. Even though the 1050 is reloading Nirvana for me, it isn't without it's drawbacks. Caliber conversion kits and tool heads are just insanely expensive. Unless you're made of gold, it's just not economically feasible to plan on loading more than one or two calibers on it. Make sure you factor that into your buying decision. It's really too bad, too; if it was less expensive to change calibers on it, the 1050 would be just... perfect.

Very cool.

The Auto Drum (don't know about the Auto Disk) does come with instructions on how to deactivate the chain safety, so that it will dispense powder every time a case activates it. Just use the Lee Powder Through Expander die, and you're good to go. Just be careful (as always) about double charges.

Sometimes it does take an opposing point of view... You make some very good points. In spite of the fact that the shell plate bouncing powder out of my cases makes me crazy, I do, in fact, love my press. So much so that it's my avatar picture. While I'd love to see a few things fixed, I did come on way too strongly, and for that I apologize. Darn it, now I need to find something else to be mad about. Overscore said it much better than I did, and with much more tact: "Dillon is completely silent about some problems, which while quite simple, cause a good deal of agita among many of its customers. This is what I find disappointing. I would happily buy fixes for these minor things. I love that they'll replace all the broken things for free, but can't they please address these minor design flaws that have been around for YEARS?"

Interesting that Dillon gets feedback on design problems and chooses not to fix them. I spend (too) much time cruising the various gun related forums... reading mostly, posting occasionally. And invariably the same problems on Dillon presses show up over and over again, yet they choose to just let it slide. The one that seriously bugs me is the shell plate advance jump that causes bullets to tip over and powder to jump out of cases. Sure, there are after market "solutions" to this problem that do help somewhat, but honestly, it shouldn't be necessary, especially with presses in the Dillon price range. We pay premium money for our machines and expect them to work out of the box, and be reliable. Once these issues are identified, Dillon should come up with a fix. The silence is deafening.

A lot of them could be considered nonsense "upgrades", but some of them are very useful. As it comes from the factory, the shell plate needs some aftermarket help to advance smoothly enough to prevent powder from jumping out of cases. The low mass ball and shell plate bearing kits help a lot with this. There is also a tool head cam upgrade that helps to prevent cases getting jammed when being placed into the shell plate when you're running at fast speeds. An upgraded shell plate advance pawl that is *much* stronger than the factory one. But yeah, some of them are convenience items, like the case feed mirror, but even that one I don't think should be considered nonsense, really.

There's definitely two camps for tumbling. The dry guys swear by theirs, and us wet guys the same. IMO, you won't go wrong by being able to do both. I've tried both, and am sticking to wet tumbling. Wet tumbling: Cleans cases inside and out including the primer pockets If you use the correct amount of citric acid, it will passivate the brass, making it more resistant to tarnish and corrosion Knocks off the sharp edges from trimming. Brass comes out looking like it did fresh from the factory. Some guys say it's too much of a pain to wet tumble, but if you have the correct equipment for it, it's dead simple.

Great idea, thanks for that! i'm going to order a 9mm comparator bushing right now.

Finally got a chance to crank out some more ammo. I finished off the plated bullets, and continued to have the same variance in OAL. I received some more FMJ's in the mail yesterday, so I switched to those and loaded up 1k of them. Target OAL was 1.125 Shortest OAL with the FMJ's: 1.122 Longest OAL with the FMJ's: 1.127 Those were the outliers. The majority fell within 1.124-1.126. And that was still using mixed headstamp range brass, including once fired military cases. It appears that Dillon was correct; the ogive variance in the plated bullet was causing the difference in OAL. It was just a bit of a surprise to me, as I have loaded up that particular brand of plated bullet quite a bit (to the tune of around 10k of them) and had never seen that much of a variance. I did switch from one lot number to another while loading up the plated bullets, and suspect that the second lot number had a lot more variance, hence why the OAL variance "grew" during the course of the loading session. Still interested to hear what you guys are getting as your "normal" OAL variance in pistol rounds.

There's not an affordable aftermarket toolhead for the ten fiddly... at least, I haven't found one yet.

Mine too. One very important tip: DO NOT thread the Magazine Shield Cap (part number 13957. See the 1050 diagram) on tight! If you do, you will put too much pressure on the blue plastic part on the end of the magazine tube, and you'll have primer feeding problems like crazy. The manual warns you about this, and it's very important I had problems missing primers occasionally, and the above cured it for me. If it doesn't, you'll want to replace the plastic end on the primer magazine tube. They send you an extra one. It's a consumable part. It's a pain to remove the big metal tube that surrounds the primer magazine tube the first couple of times you do it, but gets easy afterwards. On my press, the primer magazine access bolts were screwed in so tight I darn near broke a wrench getting them out. Often, it's difficult to just look at one of those plastic tips and say "yup, it's worn out". Any doubt at all, just replace it. If loosening the Magazine Shield Cap doesn't fix your problem, you have most likely damaged that little plastic tip. Edit: Just read your wording again...do you mean the primer slide doesn't move back and forth?