Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Anyone use a progressive reloader here?

Lennie what is a "red" progressive reloader? Hornady??
the thing I am beginning to worry about is after you size the case you normally trim to length. Seems like you would have to size and trim, separately, while the priming the case, powder addition, and bullet seating could be done automatically. Not sure about crimp if you wanted or needed it.

I have 2 Dillon 550s that I load pistol and 223 on... I process my 223 brass on a single stage so that I can wet tumble and get the primer pockets clean before I load... I keep one press set up for small primer and one for large...

Just reminded me I bought a carbide 223 die. Had a smith cut off the top and make it neck bushing. SO I could run em without lube or very little.

And while it worked I never trusted it enough and unfortunately was getting out of shooting at that time. Gonna have to find that die back and play a bit again maybe.

With a Dillon - just put all the brass in a box and lube it with the spray and shake them around... then let them dry.

Then do a “sizing run only”... that de-primes and sizes...

Tumble

Then you do a loading run on those cases..

I do something similar for lubing , I put them on a cookie sheet and spray them and roll them around .

If anyone wants a hornady projector, I would sell mine. I have probably 4 or 5 shell plates. I think 45 acp/308, 223, 41 mag, 380? You can send me a PM.

I’ve been reloading on the same RL550 I bought in 1992 when I first moved out of Alaska. Probably rebuilt it (springs, small plastic parts) twice


Easily 25,000 rounds.

If required, 223 cases are trimmed before reloading. Yes, press is a Hornady. Like I said, Blue is a great product...I have owned them and they work great. My Hornady was new about 5 years ago and has loaded 40,000 plus rounds. I no longer crimp 223.

I like a fifth station on a progressive for straight wall cases. On a 4 station press when using a separate station for crimping straight wall cases, the bullet seating is the 3rd station and then crimping the 4th station, you have to expand and bell the case at the powder station. Station one becomes the case sizing station, station two..powder and expanding belling the case, station three seats the bullet and station 4 is the crimp die. I crimp straight wall cases by using a Lee carbide crimp die. This die is not made for bullet seating. Use of this die means that all my rounds will chamber and I do not have to trim all the straight wall cases to the same length prior to reloading.

With a 5 station progressive and reloading straight wall cases...station one resizes, station two expands and bells, station three is powder, station four seats bullet and station five is a Lee carbide crimp die.

Hornady and Dillin's 650 are 5 station machines. Dillon's 550 is a 4 station machine.

I use a couple of different single stage presses to process brass (to include a Crow WFT to get to the right length) and then reload with an RCBS powder measure and an RCBS Junior I bought in 1975. Yes, you can reload faster but I find it hard to believe you can reload better. If I were 25 years younger I might consider a Dillion but it would never pay off at this point in my life.

kwg

My standard procedure is to lube the 223 brass on a cookie sheet and run them through a small base die on the Rock Chucker. It has a case kicker on it so I can size about as fast as I can pull the handle. Then it's back to the tumbler to clean the lube off.
Next step is to prime and load on the 550.

Come to think of it, I haven't trimmed a case in years.

I would check my case lengths. 1.76" is the maximum length.

You think? ha ha..

This is what I use to trim to length



Giruad grimmer

Case prep should only have to be done very rarely (other than de-crimping primer pockets which of course is only once). Some guys sound like they're trimming every time; if you have to do that, there's something wrong with your sizing die setup.

Personally I prep brass once, and for all subsequent loadings just run it through the Dillon 550 from fired to loaded in one pass, until cases need to be trimmed again, maybe 5-8 loadings depending on the brass. The caveat is that brass is kept separate and not just randomly mixed in with range brass or dumped in a general 5.56 bucket for later re-use; if you do that you'll need to prep brass every time to be safe.

I don't see the appeal or benefit of doing it that way with 5 stations. Dumping powder while expanding and belling in one station works fine. Maybe you found it harder to adjust? But once it's set, it's done. Maybe I'm missing something but I can't see any reason I'd want to separate those into two stages on a Dillon. Most others seem to agree, and for straight wall pistol cases put a powder check die in the 3rd stage instead.

When loading 5.56, I don't even use the 4th station on my 550. Don't need or want crimp on accuracy loads, and don't need a powder check die either.

What problems do you have with the Uniflow?

The Uniflow works very well for me with no issues...

there are a ton of things one does to accurizing / debug a progressive press.

On a Dillion - I must have posted these years ago..

1). Free float the dies
2). Polish the bottom of the powder measure (inside)
3). Ream out the powder funnel in the drop tubes so they don’t bridge powder
4) float the head that holds the dies

After that you figure out that if you run a bunch of loads 12-15 before you start loading then you get much better powder throws across the board.

5 stages is an advantage. Also you don't need to reach though to place bullet in case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WFvz4dqX0k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmm-LXj5raM

Yeah.. I don't need to watch some mouth breather's shaky video on Youtube to see the differences.

Anyone "reaching through" a 550 to seat a bullet in the 4th stage because they feel the need for a powder check die doesn't know what they're doing; the 550 is not designed or set up to be used that way. Don't take any advice from that guy in your first video. 5 stations is an advantage IF you feel the need to use a powder check die, as I said earlier. That is not what I commented about though, or why you were claiming the advantage of 5 stations. You didn't answer my question.

Bridging, cutting kernels, uneven charges. Changed that right quick to start with by a BR30. Then moved to a couple of Harrels measures. And a cheap Lee for big stick powders.
Still cut a kernel here and there but have very minor changes in charges so I can set and forget and just throw.

Could be the fact mine is ancient, and not the test tube round bottom IIRC. I did finally find it back the other day. Needs cleaning and polishing. Am taking with me to AK since all I have there are lee spoons right now... hope I can polish the turd some.