Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Dillon 650 improvement Modifications part 1

I posted these a few years ago but I wanted to make sure all the links and pictures are still go so I'll redo the post.

I will go through as many of the list as I have time to this morning....

Modifications -
1) Improving the powder bars
2) Polishing the bottom of the powder measure
3) reaming out the powder drop cylinders
4) Securing the tool head, and floating the dies

1) Unique Tek makes a kit to replace the really course threaded screws on the powder charge bars, the kit costs ~59 bucks now, years ago it was a bit cheaper. The kit contains two each micro adjustments that really are very, very nice and lets you fine tune and even record and rest (find the setting again later)
http://www.uniquetek.com/site/696296/product/T1231

2) Take the plastic cylinder off of your powder measure, take some emery cloth and polish the heck out of it (this helps all measures throw more consistently BTW)

Before


After


3) Reaming and Polishing the powder funnels
Sometimes powder will form a bridge in the powder funnel that results in a one round being low on powder, unfortunately you catch it when the powder falls all over the place as you let the handle up or the next round gets way over filled and you notice it.
How to fix it - Buy a tapered reamer (or ask me if you can borrow mine) I used a 1/2" to 1/8" reamer - use it to ream out the short powder drop cone inside the die. Once you ream it out, you put emery cloth around the reamer and polish the heck out of it so it's smooth and slippery. ** Don't over ream the drop funnel, the bottom of the funnel has a ridge on it that has to contact the case mouth, if you ream that open the brass won't lift the powder assembly correctly.

4) Securing the tool head, and floating the tool head
- Slight mis-alignments in shell plate to the center of the die can be fixed by by locking down the tool head, and floating the dies.

Uniqteck has a kit to secure the tool head -
http://www.uniquetek.com/site/696296/product/T1230

Personally I think that's a good thing - however i still like some float in my dies so I have a modification for that - but I'm out of time today so I'll post this another time.

Spot

BTW I now some of you guys don't experiment all the much.

if your polite about saying life is too short - all good - to each their own

Here is a picture of what a Dillon powder funnel looks like in terms of dimensions. What the reamer does is it removes the shelf caused by the funnel ar the top so powder falls better vs. bridging.

Thanks!!! Don't believe I saw your earlier post so I appreciate this. Since mine has worked so well from the git-go I never thought of modifying but looks like you've started me on another project. I'll look forward to your posts.

Floating dies ---

I know that many people float the shell holder in a RCBS rock chucker, to aid in ensuring alignment. If you haven't done this yet it's done by replacing the spring clip that holds the shell holder on the ram with a ruber O-ring. This lets the shell holder float around to align easier than a spring that holds the shell holder to one side of the ram.

Ok on the Dillon, there are a few "floating" heads out there that a person could buy. Another way of approaching it (what I did) was to use the tool head kit I mentioned above to lock the head into the same location, and since you can't float the shell holder (in this case a shell plate), well you float the die itself. How do you do that -

The goal of what I'm about to describe is to hold a die lock ring in place (keep it from turning) when the die lock ring is loosened by 1/4 turn or so, yet tightened to the die. This "floats" the die, and ensure it can align with the shell plate as you ram the shell plate up into the dies.

OK so how do you do this - I put a die in, and lock it down with a die lock ring, then back it off 1/4 turn, and drill a hole (very small) through the lock ring, into the tool head. Then I took the die out, and drove a slotted roll pin into the hole, and made the hole in the die locking ring bigger so it could fit over the pin. the result is that I set the lock ring on top of the tool head with the hole in the lock ring over the pin in the tool head. This keeps the lock ring from rotating. Then i screw a die into the ring, and then through the tool head and lock the ring down on the die. This allows the die to float a few thousands of an inch and align better than a fixed setup, or a locked die with a floating tool head.

Looks like someone is making a production version you can order, my method predates this a bit, I don't know who used to sell the kits to float them but I'll look around to see if the older kits are still available.

It looks like it is only one micrometer per kit - am I missing something? For the cost, I would think it's just one.

And thanks for reposting this - good stuff!

I've got one on each the pistol charge bar and the rifle charge bar.

Good point though, I bought them so long ago I may have bought two each.

I do like them a lot over the normal screws that Dillon puts on them, I can really get the powder drop exactly where I want it, and "IF" I bother writing it down I can reset it easily.

I'm in the process of figuring out the best way to get an optimized taper on the powder funnel (up to and including possibly creating a completely new tapered 223 powder funnel).

What reamer did you use? The only 18" - 1/2" tapered reamers I can find all appear to be intended for sheet metal and/or soft materials. I can't find one intended for machining steel and removing large amounts of material. Ideally, you'd have a tool to rough out the tapered bore, and then a finish reamer to take it to final dimensions.

Any idea why the groove at the top of the funnel is there? It doesn't seem to have a function as installed. Maybe it is left over from a previous design where it had a function.

While I await parts, et al. to complete my p0wder measure mods, I am drafting a NEW powder funnel design in anticipation of needing/wanting an optimized design.

Thanks!