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Dillon 550B..my IQ has dropped since I bought this...


ChrisStock

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:rolleyes:

No-no number one: Spill a bit of powder on your shellplate? Thinking a quick pass with the shopvac will clean that baby up? Yes, it will work, but.....It has been proven that if you fail to remove your locator buttons to a place for safekeeping, they will invariably be sucked up in the 6 gallon shopvac, and you will only have a few words come to mind, most of them consisting of 4 letters. Sometimes these four letter words are so prolific that they will form themselves into a complete sentence. Nothing like digging through 10 lbs. of compressed dog hair, sawdust, and the blown attic insulation that was in the canister looking for the shiny brass buttons. :ph34r:

No-no number two: do NOT put the index ball in the big center hole when piecing together the shellplate assembly. Yes, you should generally aim center mass, but this ain't one of them times.

number 3: when setting up the powder die, do NOT use deprimed brass lest you fall prey to no-no number one, above

(fat finger caused typo)

Edited by Lighteye67
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While you may think that your journey is over, it has only just begun!

Just wait until you decide to run the vacuum and find a live primer (after picking up some powder) and you can learn to do the flaming vacuum cleaner dance!

Decide that brake cleaner will make a great solvent to dissolve powder build-up that has gummed up the shell plate. Instead it acts like a catalyst and hardens the powder into the consistency of cement.

Learn that a large primer really can fit into a small primer pocket if you push hard enough.

You can also press a new primer into a case without removing the old primer first.

There are many many more ... just give it time!

:rolleyes:

No-no number one: Spill a bit of powder on your shellplate? Thinking a quick pass with the shopvac will clean that baby up? Yes, it will work, but.....It has been proven that if you fail to remove your locator buttons to a place for safekeeping, they will invariably be sucked up in the 6 gallon shopvac, and you will only have a few words come to mind, most of them consisting of 4 letters. Sometimes these four letter words are so prolific that they will form themselves into a complete sentence. Nothing like digging through 10 lbs. of compressed dog hair, sawdust, and the blown attic insulation that was in the canister looking for the shiny brass buttons. :ph34r:

No-no number two: do NOT put the index ball in the big center hole when piecing together the shellplate assembly. Yes, you should generally aim center mass, but this ain't one of them times.

number 3: when setting up the powder die, do NOT use deprimed brass lest you fall prey to no-no number one, above

(fat finger caused typo)

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You guys are no fun! Your making it so I won't be able to make and then tell these stories (probably). Bah, I'll have to mess up originally I guess.

Thanks for the laughs though. My favorite saying, a latin proverb I think (I should find it), says something like this, roughly, "May you live long enough that you may smile (or laugh) about this too". Cause, I bet you weren't always laughing.

Some of you may still not be laughing?

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The 1050 has a ratchet mechanism that will not allow you to "short-stroke" the press. Once you start to pull the handle, you cannot return the handle until you get to the bottom of the stroke. In case of an emergency there is a ratchet release on the rear of the machine but it is not that easy to find unless you have paid particular attention to it before.

A buddy of mine was trying to set a personal record for fast reloading and did not get his bullet seating finger out of the way in time, and the seater die caught his fingers between the toolhead and the shellplate. He could not find the ratchet release button and was stuck there bleeding and yelling for several minutes until I heard him yelling and released him.

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Removing the ratchet mechanism is as easy as removing one bolt. I personally have had no problems with the ratchet and feel that it eliminates more problems than it causes. If it could not be defeated with one finger, I might consider removing it myself but it has likely saved me a squib in the past. Anytime that I have to defeat the ratchet, I know that I will need to check every round on the shell plate for powder, primer and dimensions.

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Asshattery du jour: removing locator buttons, cleaning the shellplate, then wondering why the powder die just crushed that piece of brass. I forgot to put the locator buttons back in :wacko:

Been there...

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yeah, i vacuumed up my locator pins as well. only i didn't realize until the next time i went to load. by then they were long gone from the vacuum. dillon sent me a set of news ones free.

i blame s&b brass. in fact, any time anything goes wrong with my press i blame that $%&*in' s&b brass.

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When you drop a box of 100 primers, you will only find 83 of them. No matter how hard you look.

However, if you want to find them, simply cut a piece of metal with your chop saw. The sparks will find all 17 of the remaining primers.

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When you drop a box of 100 primers, you will only find 83 of them. No matter how hard you look.

However, if you want to find them, simply cut a piece of metal with your chop saw. The sparks will find all 17 of the remaining primers.

Hahahaha! I think I actually found 94 of them once!

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I have too many and have forgotten many more. Just too many variables at once to be accounted for and will always lead to a problem sooner or later. Your own personal habits will make everyones reoccuring problems different and harder to anticipate. I would say the nuber one thing not to do is........drum roll please........try to load too fast. There you have it! I have always wondered why people give such lofty rounds per hour. It would scare the sh!( out of me to load that fast.....and I would always be wondering what was going to happen while I was shooting them. Oh and I once made some 38 super you could spin the bullet in....seriously...they still shot fine out of my revolver....never kept it long enough to figure it out. My buddies still talk about those bullets free spinning in the cases :rolleyes:

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It is also possible to load .380 rounds on your 9MM die set. I did this today during one of those "the range closes in 2 hours and I need to make some ammo NOW" bursts. With a 115 GR lead bullet being pushed by 4.7 GR of TG, it would've made a *&(k of a noise, and probably blown my wife's Bersa to shreds. I guess this yet another thing that can go wrong...the brass went through all stations flawlessly, and I caught them in the sizing die. No more 200 rounds in 20 minute sessions for me for a bit. Safety first :rolleyes:

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Ensure that there are NO foreign objects in your powder.

I recently sat down and had a 2 hour ^%$%#ed up rounds pulling job that I have been putting off for a bit. After feeling very satisfied that I had cleared my bench of all the garbage rounds, I put the reclaimed powder back in the powder tube, and the bullets in the tray. I noticed that a lot of my rounds semed to be low in powder, and was getting a tad frustrated having to constantly stop operation, back the rounds up, dump the powder out of the case and try again. After getting 10 different measurements, I cleaned the powder die and bar thoroughly. Same problem. I dumped the powder in the tube out, and what did I find? One of the hundred or so bullets that I had pulled had slipped into the powder supply causing uneven measures to be thrown. All I could say was "asshattery". I removed the offending piece of lead, and measured a half dozen pulls in a row. Everything back to normal. :wacko:

Edited by Lighteye67
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