Hornady Bullet feeder with Coated lead....Need help

[mach1soldier]

Anyone have 99.5% or better reliability with a hornady bullet feeder and coated bullets? If so, what did you have to do / change?

I'm looking at transitioning to coated instead of plated bullets, but I really like my bullet feeder and it is super reliable right now.

[techj]

I load 9 & 45 the blue bullets using the bullet feeder collater + dies (lnl press).

I had to gently (or they'll break) open up the lower collet on each. also, for the 9 I ended up opening up the top with a Drexel very slightly.

If you check the fit with the collets out of the die it is pretty easy to tell when you have them set correctly.

Edited September 14, 2015 by techj

[chrisstophere]

I almost the same thing as techj except I dremeled the collets to .356 from the .355. to accommodate cast rounds. I followed a YouTube video walk thru and lots of trial and error. Wasn't difficult, just time consuming.

[flyingrhino]

Hornady dies just aren't made to accept the variance in bullet diameters. They are designed for the jacketed bullets. I gave up and bought the MBF dies. They feed everything I throw at them.

[Kraj]

I use blue bullets in 9. I used a sharpie to stretch out the fingers in the die just enough so they would fall out. To much and they just fall through

[sparky2008]

I with flyingrhino on this one.  I spent many hours trying to make those Hornady bullet feed dies work.  With some polishing and bending, I got them to feed coated lead bullets (Blue and Bayou) but when I would start running rounds through my machine, eventually a bullet would come through that had a tiny bump/bubble/glob and it would jam the Hornady bullet dropper.  The best I could get with coated lead was maybe 20-30 rounds before it would jam.  I switched to the Mr. Bullet Feeder (Double Alpha) droppers and wow what a difference.  These MBF droppers will feed anything you throw at them.  I ran 400 rounds through the MBF 9mm dropper last weekend without a hitch.

 

I made a Youtube video to show people how to adapt the Double Alpha bullet droppers to the Hornady bullet feeder.  If you search on Youtube "hornady bullet feeder with mr bullet feeder dropper", you'll see the video uploaded by Sparky.  I made the adapters out of PVC pipe.

 

By the way, another issue with the Hornady bullet droppers is they require what I believe to be excessive flaring of the brass.  The flare numbers are published right in their users manual and it produces quite a bell mouth.  The Double Alpha droppers will work with minimal flare which I think is better.

[mikey_golds]

Reviving an old thread but any links to the setup i cast and want to use the bullet feeder for Hornandy LnL

[mikey_golds]

On 4/3/2018 at 12:05 PM, sparky2008 said:

I with flyingrhino on this one.  I spent many hours trying to make those Hornady bullet feed dies work.  With some polishing and bending, I got them to feed coated lead bullets (Blue and Bayou) but when I would start running rounds through my machine, eventually a bullet would come through that had a tiny bump/bubble/glob and it would jam the Hornady bullet dropper.  The best I could get with coated lead was maybe 20-30 rounds before it would jam.  I switched to the Mr. Bullet Feeder (Double Alpha) droppers and wow what a difference.  These MBF droppers will feed anything you throw at them.  I ran 400 rounds through the MBF 9mm dropper last weekend without a hitch.

 

I made a Youtube video to show people how to adapt the Double Alpha bullet droppers to the Hornady bullet feeder.  If you search on Youtube "hornady bullet feeder with mr bullet feeder dropper", you'll see the video uploaded by Sparky.  I made the adapters out of PVC pipe.

 

By the way, another issue with the Hornady bullet droppers is they require what I believe to be excessive flaring of the brass.  The flare numbers are published right in their users manual and it produces quite a bell mouth.  The Double Alpha droppers will work with minimal flare which I think is better.

wtached your video so since the rifle one from hornandy seats in the same step i would now need a seperate seating die