A #### day reloading...

HKfan

HKfan

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Man, what a day yesterday was.

I had the day off in the lead up to Christmas, and since I had nothing on the cards (and even less in the ammo box) I decided to spend most of the day reloading 9mm.

I had my Dillon RL550B set up, 1100 projectiles on the left side and some shiny polished brass ready to be reloaded on the right. My new electronic scale too. I was in a good mood, I had good music on in the background and I was all set to go.

First round. I pull the lever down to decap and nothing happens. I have a look around and find that the little pin in the decapping die has snapped off, and so I will not be decapping today. DAMN!

So, I get on the phone to my local gun store and find that they have a carbide decapping die in stock. I hop in the car, and 45 min later I arrive at the shop where I buy the die and a few impulse buy items (;)) and head back home.

45 min back home. I set everything up and it all looks good. First round goes up to the new decapper and crunch!, the case gets firmly stuck in the die. I had forgotten to remove the sizing part of the die and so it was wedged.

I spent the next hour and a half getting the damn case unstuck, and I set up again.

Finally it starts working. Immdeiately I find that the powder throw / bell stage is giving it too much bell, no problem. Sort that out and start loading.

I load 20 rounds successfully and all is well in the world.

WRONG! I hear a crunch and would you believe it, I have a LOADED round stuck in the Lee factory crimp die in the 4th stage. Damn it all to hell! I have spent the last two hours trying to delicately remove this live round. Of course I am being careful, but it is firmly stuck. I am going to try and pull out the projectile with nose pliers, pour out the powder, decap with a nail and then hammer the bastard out.

So there you have it. Over 6 hours of reloading has yielded a broken die, a stuck case and a grand total of 20 rounds successfully reloaded. :mad:

Hope your day's reloading was better than mine! :D

Now, back to get that f^&*king case unstuck!
 
Silly question what caliber were you loading??? were they belled cases or rifle calibers?? Did you lube them???

Even with carbide dies you need to lube them...
 
Mommabear, I guess you see the glass as half full eh! :D

Bear,

I am loading 9mm on the Dillon 550 progressive. First stage is deprime / prime, second powder throw / bell, third is seat bullet / close bell, fourth is taper crimp.

I have never had a problem like this in any of my dies until tonight, so it has been a right of passage so to speak! I guess I need to lube my cases more, although the dies are lubed with WD40!
 
You lubed your dies???

Have you cleaned your dies recently.. any lube will pick up dust and crap on your brass... If you lube your dies you need to clean them before hand.. Dillon pistol dies are made of carbide and don't need to be lubed..

I don't lube dies.. I do lube my 400 corbon and 357 sig brass after I polish and I give them time for the wax in the lube to setup before reloading...

Then after I'm finished reloading I clean the dies and remove any lube that has built up in the dies...
 
Perhaps your third stage didn't iron out the belling enough BEFORE entering the Lee die or the case was decapped without any further resizing and was reloaded as is :confused:
Good luck next time around! :)
PP.
 
On the bright side:rolleyes:?????????? If the friggin Libs have their way we wont be needing our pistol dies any more:mad:. Pardon me for being a jerk this morn but I just watched a bit of Mr. Martin on the news so my blood pressure is up a bit :eek:!!!!!
 
Yes it was a bad day on all accounts. I have reloaded about 20,000 rounds using these dies (carbide Lee dies).

Generally I lightly lube the dies using WD40 despite the fact that oil does deactivate primers. Whenever the dies are cleaned I spray some on and wipe off afterwards so that there is only a tiny film. I only put a small amount in the seating and crimping dies, and none on the shell plate. I am not worried about deactivating the primers because there is so little oil, and secondly the ammo never lasts more than 2 weeks on average.

My brass is tumbled and I have added a small amount of Brasso (which I then dry out in the sun / oven) and it brings the brass to a brilliant shine. I usually tumble for arond 3 hours. I like clean brass!

However tonight the fact that oil deactivated primers was used. I thoroughly drenched the stuck loaded round with WD40 and left it for a while before trying to fiddle with it. Just in case. I then used a hack saw to cut into the side of the shell (5 strokes at a time to avoid heating the shell). Once there was an opening I sprayed a huge amount of WD40 into the opening. Left it for an hour, then cut off the rest of the base/primer area. After that the powder fell out in mud-like lumps, and I was able to gently tap the bullet out of the die from the back. Then I used pliers to cut the brass and peel it away. What a process!

I also found out tonight why the round got stuck in the crimping die. First, the shellplate was a bit loose as so it did not grip the case rime as well as it should, and second the new decapper does not size the case at the same time as depriming, and so as a force of habit I simply forgot about resizing. What an idiot! :rolleyes:
 
I certainly hope that was a sarcastic comment.
WD40 wrecks primers? anyone actually tested that? cuz I have and it didn't in fact the rounds fired just fine after sitting in WD40 overnight. might want to think about that.
 
after reading this thread:D im on the look out for a few spare dies..so if i ever run into this..i just change the die and deal with the problem when i get around to it:D
 
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