quiller

Did a little more testing late evening because I suspected I was getting an extra bell at the powder station. Removed the complete powder hopper station, emptied the powder, removed hopper and reinstalled it without hopper. I can pull the arm up to the top by hand, only tension is from the springs, once its released it will drop by itself to the bottom position. Having nothing to compare it to I can only assume the arm is working as designed. I removed the powder drop but left the die and the powder insert tube in the toolhead. I cycled the press with and without brass and the insert tube goes up and down as expected. I put the powder drop back on and with a new piece of brass adjusted it so I got a full cycle on the powder drop arm. I placed a new piece of brass that was rolled sized and primed, but not expanded and cycled the press. The powder station is definitely belling the brass. I'm also working with Mr7 and have a call today. Will keep you all updated. Thanks for all your help to date.

Other than all the sizes I listed I discovered that the powder drop is also belling the brass. However, I cannot set the powder die low enough so the drum rotates fully or high enough so it will not extra bell the brass! Instructions say it needs to rotate fully. I really hope I'm missing something here as I'm almost 100% certain is was not doing the extra bell when the old shell plate was installed. I'm guessing the extra bell is causing the issue or at least not helping. So, how do you find a happy medium on....assuming theirs one to find!

On the ones that passed. Below is the range of sizes where I pulled out 8 rounds from each head stamp. FC .3780 to .3785 Blazer .3780 to .3790 WIN .3775 to .3795 On the practice rounds. Keep in mind I placed all the practice rounds in one box as I'm not going to Chrono them. .3770 to .3795

slavex, its alive! Here's the scoop. I installed the new shell plate the other day and spend some time readjusting the dies so suit. New plate is a tad thicker or sits a tad higher than the old one. I also swapped out the Redding Premium Expander die for a Lee Universal Expander Die with Mr. BulletFeeder powder funnel in it. Right off the bat it fed cases much better and looking down at the swage it appears to be aligned. I ran a bunch of test round, one at a time, no primer or powder, just sized, moved to expander, then skip the powder and then though the remaining stations. After I tweaked the dies I was getting very good results so I decided to give it a go and run a bunch through the entire press without stopping. Here's the breakdown of my results and I'm using the same process as before, mixed head stamp range brass wet tumbled and rolled sized to produce 9mm Open - Precision Delta's with 7.8 grains of HS-6 at 1.145 OAL. 141 - Total round 80 Rounds - Passed the gauge checker. Some remained in the checker when inverted, but the remaining rounds fell out easily with a slight touch. I randomly plunked tested several rounds without issue. Head stamp breakdown: 31 FC 14 Blazer 12 WIN 6 RP 4PMC 2 MKE 2 GFL 9 Additional rounds with all different head stamps 52 Rounds - Went in the practice bucket. Either they sat a tad high in the case checker of I was not happy with them for other reasons. Head stamp breakdown: 13 Blazers 12 RP 10 FC 3 CBC 2 PMC 2 WIN 2 Aquila 2 PPU 6 Additional rounds with different head stamps. 9 Rounds - Outright rejected pile. Most sat way high in the case checker or the I did not like the look of the crimp. 2 Blazer 2 FC 5 Additional rounds with different head stamps. My ratio of Passed to overall was 56%. Not sure I like that number but wanted to get some additional feedback...other than I need to start sorting by head stamp and only load FC and Blazer....which is not something I'm not looking forward too!

Works like a charm. Ran about 500 rounds through with the above set up and did not see or get any issues. Thanks for the tip BinkSwans

Thanks. I took it apart last night in about 4 minutes per the video Mark 7 provided. I'm going to give it a good cleaning (not that its done a lot of work, but it did sit around for a while), lube it up and wait for the shell plate to arrive. I will keep you updated.

See above for what I did today with Mark 7 support. I was not getting any extra flare at the powder drop, just powder...thankfully. The crimp was hit or miss and I did notice while testing the other day that if I hunkered down and looked up at the crimp die as it was coming down it appeared to be misaligned. When I check today by looking down through the head at the swage alignment with the shell plate its clearly off. That's the same misalignment I (hopefully) see at the crimp station. Also, on some rounds I can see a dent (like its over crimping) on one side of some rounds, so thinking I had too much crimp I'd let off, but then I had too little! Lets see what happens in a week or so when I get the replacement shell plate.

I called Mk7 and we determined its the shell plate. I removed the swage die while on the phone, lowered the head and looked down from the top at the alignment between the swage and the shell plate. It was way off and as I cranked the handle it's consistently off. Its hard to see in the photo, but real easy in person. So, new shell plate on the way and we'll see if that addresses the issue. I uploaded a photo to the google link so you can see the miss alignment. Since my machine was real early in the production line apparently the firm making the shell plates were not holding to super tight tolerances. Mk.7 has that one under control now. As for customer service it was wonderful....Here's the link again: https://photos.app.goo.gl/sCzLMG5r5cNVXWSu8

I emailed them on Saturday. If I don't hear by mid day tomorrow I'll call them. The bad news is someone complained about the noise at my gun range and the cops used this dan virous as an excuse to shut it down! I'm not a happy camper. Trust me I feel safer at the range than I do at the gas station!

Had a chance to do some more testing today but the end results were terrible. Keeping the same process, rollsize, size, bell, MrBullet feeder drops a round, seat and crimp. If I do one at a time I have slightly better results, however, running the press as it should be run the results get bad really quickly. If they were all bad I'd say I just need to fine tune for running the press at regular speeds (by hand mind you), but the results are all over the place. If I go back to one at a time the results are better, but still way off. Out of 30 rounds 11 sat flush in the gauge (same gauge I used on my 650 for years, same load, same ammo). I removed any that were not flush as clearly they were not going to work. Of the remaining 11 rounds, 6 fell out when the gauge was inverted and 5 did not, however a slight tap and they did fall out. 10 of the 11 passed the plunk test and 1 would not rotate in the chamber. Given my results I would accept that one, but its still not as good as I'd like and still not as good as my 650. At this point I'm ready to call Mk7 and see what they can do for me. As you all know I have a bunch of money tied up in this press and right now it would make a better anchor! I'm all ears if you have any other suggestions. Thanks

I'm going to continue fine tuning but here's a video of the press cycling. Not sure if it what you wanted but ping me back if you need anything in particular. https://photos.app.goo.gl/sCzLMG5r5cNVXWSu8

Thanks for reaching out. I think I got it. I adjusted the bell all the up. Ran a few pieces of brass through and made sure the crimp was set correctly so they would gauge without bullets. Then I adjusted the bell a little at a time untill the bullet seated but didn't fall off. Then I readjusted the crimp ran a few more through, this time with bullets and all gauged correctly! More importantly, they plunk tested. Its late at this point so I'll get back at this tomorrow evening, but we are moving in the right direction. As for the scraping I believe it was caused by too much bell and possibly too much crimp also. Will report back with an update tomorrow. I'll post a video also just in case I'm missing something, but I think it's cycling correctly and everything is aligned. Thank again.

All, sorry for the long post but I wanted to make sure I gave as much detail as possible. I’m trying to dial in my Mk7 Evo manual and it’s not working out. I bought the Evo over two years ago and it sat in storage as we moved a few times in between. Below is my dia set up and here’s my process for making rounds for my 9mm open gun with 124 grain Precision Delta's, over 7.8 grains of HS-6 at 1.145 OAL. Go to range, shoot and pick up more brass than I arrived with. I’m too cheap to buy brass especially when I have access to unlimited amounts at the range. Caliber sort, wet tumble with stainless steel needles, lay out to dry. I do not sort by head stamp and I would prefer not to (if possible). Didn't need to on my 650 and I don’t want to start on the Evo. The 650 made rounds all day long the same gun. Rollsize all brass and then its one pass through Mk7 Evo, with a spray of One Shot. Die set up based on info I asked for and found here way back when I first started setting up the press: Case feed Redding Premium Titanium Carbide resizing die with the decapping pin Mighty Armory THE BACKER Swage Die Mighty Armory THE BACKER Primer Die Redding Premium Expander die Powder measure Back up camera to 6” monitor so I can see powder in case Mr. Bulletfeeder Redding Competition micrometer seating die Redding micrometer taper crimp die After Rollsizing and resizing (station #2) all brass will size correctly in my EGW case gauge and will fall out if inverted. After a bunch of fiddling I managed to get 20 or so rounds through the press fully loaded so I could chrono but many more would not fully seat in the case gauge, or would seat, but would not fall out when inverted. Some needed a tap and seemed to feed okay in the gun, but others would not feed correctly. I measured the final bullets diameter and I’m within tolerances. I tried adjusting the expander die thinking it was too much, but there’s a point where the bullet will not seat at the Mr. Bulletfeeder station, so I think I have it belling correctly. I adjusted the crimp, removed the crimp and reinstalled, but I’m lucky if I get 5 out of 10 rounds that case gauge correctly and will feed/cycle the gun correctly. One thing I did notice is if I rollsize, resize, bell, seat a bullet and crimp so I have only one round in the press on the crimp station when the head is raising back up after the bullet is crimped I feel a slight knock (more like a scraping) like something is not aligned. Beyond that everything else seems to me working as expected. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

$25 a year seems about right.

Correct, Earl (above message) emailed me a set of instructions. Thanks, Alan

Hi all. I bought the full set of the Steel Challenge Banners (originally from steelshootbanners) last year here and they sat in storage as we moved. I just pulled them out of a box and would like to start using them but they never came with instructions. I searched here, watched a few video here and on steeshotbanners.com, all mention standing at 5' and 10' with the top of the round targets set at 5' off the ground. However, I have no idea what targets need to be set up at the 5' or 10' distances. Does anyone have the instructions that are mentioned in the videos? Can someone please attach a copy? Thanks in advance, Alan

I bought the full set of Steel Challenge here last year and they sat in storage as we moved. I just pulled them out of a box and want to start using them but they never came with instructions. I watched a few video and the one on Steeshotbanners.com and all mention standing at 5' and 10' with the top of the round targets set at 5' off the ground. However, I have no idea what targets need to be set up at the 5' or 10' distances. Do you have the instructions that are mentioned in the video? Can you attach a copy? Thanks in advance.

I bought the full set of Steel Challenge here last year and they sat in storage as we moved. I just pulled them out of a box and want to start using them but they never came with instructions. I watched a few video and the one on Steeshotbanners.com and all mention standing at 5' and 10' with the top of the round targets set at 5' off the ground. However, I have no idea what targets need to be set up at the 5' or 10' distances. Do you have the instructions that are mentioned in the video? Can you attach a copy? Thanks in advance.

I just happened to check out the classified and saw it. Was surprised it lasted as long as it did!

I had the manual version in my Cart on the DAA site about a hundred times! Even that was more money than I wanted to spend......but when I saw a DC version listed here and I jumped on it. I'm very happy I did and hopefully I'll finalize press set up in the coming weeks and start rolling my own again.

Still setting up my Mk Evo and I was having a fair amount of issues with my end results. Keep in mind this is range brass not sorted, just wet tumbled. Yesterday, I tested a Rollsizer I bought here and clearly it works. The near row is some of my test dummy rounds that were not Rollsizer, where many would not gauge correctly. The far row went through the Rollsizer, then through the press. I wasn't a firm believer until I saw the results!

Great, I like happy stories. Looking forward to getting the SRO set up. I mounted an Atlas mount yesterday and with the shim the slide has clearance....and I have lots of clearance between the underside of the mount and the slide top. Hope its not way above the RTS2, but I can adjust my sight picture if necessary.

Thanks, I ordered one this am.

K. Thanks for the info

I'm considering an SRO for my open gun. Best price I found is $469.95 (free shipping over $49) from Aim Surplus https://aimsurplus.com/trijicon-sro-sight-adjustable-led-5-0-moa-red-dot/ Anyone ever buy from them? Several reviews I found slam them, but only on used guns and ammo. I'm assuming if the dot dies I would be mailing it to Trijicon...is this correct?