Dillon RL550b for reloading?

To be fair, if you look on the Dhillon site at back issues of the Blue Press mag, you will find a story where a US junior service rifle team won a bunch of competitions at some very high levels using Dhillon gear.

They needed to make the whacks of ammo the team blasted through each week. Thousands of rds.

Now this is service rifles with AR's. How accurate are the rifles? How accurate do the rifles need to be? No clue.

But they did work for this group and they had quite an interesting assembly line. Sorry, no copy.

As with everything, it is all relative. Through the eyes of an F Open shooter, I want my ammo and rifle to have the mechanical accuracy of 1/4 min at 300m (approx 3/4" many rds groups) but will happily take 1/3 min if it is consistent. Hopefully, this will also translate to similar accuracy as far as I will ever compete.

I say mechanical accuracy because the nut behind the butt isn't always that good on any given Sunday :)

Through the prism of a BR shooter, 1/4 to 1/3 min average wouldn't even be worth warming up the truck to drive to the match. They need mechanical accuracy at least 50% better!

Jerry
 
I think it depends on what sport you are interested in loading for, and what your comfort level and mindset is. I'm convinced a number of loading techniques people carry out are done more as a step to eliminate a potential problem than to solve a problem that truely exists, and that same thinking would apply to their belief that a progressive cannot be as precise as a single stage press.
David Tubb (a highly accomplished NRA highpower shooter) loads on a 550.....so for all the nay-sayers I'd say you may want to consider that. To those with a progressive, I'd say try it out and see for yourself -you may be happy you did.

I currently load all of my SR match ammo on my 550, and I've toyed with .308 precision loads on it too.
Everything I've loaded on my 550, I've cross checked against identical loads made with my Rockchucker.
Maybe the Rockchucker sucks, but I can make ammo every bit as good on the 550 as I can on the RCBS press (with the exception of trickled powder)-maybe an Arbour Press is on the horizon....
I have Redding Competition dies on my 550, and the runout is very low, and no worse than the same dies set up on the Rockchucker.
My throws for ball powders, both pistol and rifle (predominantly .223) are nuts on. Extruded powder variance in throw is in the 0.2 grain range.
0.2 grains - let's put that in perspective.
With a typical .223 load of 24.5 grains of Varget - 77SMK - 205m primers - Win brass @ 1.7550" and an oal of 2.260" the average velocity out of a typical 20" AR is 2850 fps.
That same load with 0.5 grains less Varget will net a change of 80 fps less - a 2.8% drop in velocity.
With 0.2 grains - the change in powder is less than 1%
 
Obtunded said:
I seat my bullets in several stages. I seat partially, rotate the case about a third of a turn and seat a bit further. this technique drastically reduces runout. It is impractical to do this sort of seating on a progressive press.
Click to expand...

Something is not right. What kind of die is this?
 
beltfed said:
I think it depends on what sport you are interested in loading for, and what your comfort level and mindset is. I'm convinced a number of loading techniques people carry out are done more as a step to eliminate a potential problem than to solve a problem that truely exists, and that same thinking would apply to their belief that a progressive cannot be as precise as a single stage press.
David Tubb (a highly accomplished NRA highpower shooter) loads on a 550.....so for all the nay-sayers I'd say you may want to consider that. To those with a progressive, I'd say try it out and see for yourself -you may be happy you did.

I currently load all of my SR match ammo on my 550, and I've toyed with .308 precision loads on it too.
Everything I've loaded on my 550, I've cross checked against identical loads made with my Rockchucker.
Maybe the Rockchucker sucks, but I can make ammo every bit as good on the 550 as I can on the RCBS press (with the exception of trickled powder)-maybe an Arbour Press is on the horizon....
I have Redding Competition dies on my 550, and the runout is very low, and no worse than the same dies set up on the Rockchucker.
My throws for ball powders, both pistol and rifle (predominantly .223) are nuts on. Extruded powder variance in throw is in the 0.2 grain range.
0.2 grains - let's put that in perspective.
With a typical .223 load of 24.5 grains of Varget - 77SMK - 205m primers - Win brass @ 1.7550" and an oal of 2.260" the average velocity out of a typical 20" AR is 2850 fps.
That same load with 0.5 grains less Varget will net a change of 80 fps less - a 2.8% drop in velocity.
With 0.2 grains - the change in powder is less than 1%
Click to expand...

My need for better scales was driven by how sensitive a 223 is to load weights when tuning out the vertical dispersion at LR. Had nothing to do with muzzle velocity.

In my testing, I have seen quite a surprising amount of group size/orientation change with 0.1gr of Varget. The scale I am using indicates weights to 2 kernels of Varget - yes, that is extremely small.

In my 223, the loads are held WITHIN 0.1gr from case to case. Seems to work and LR accuracy is excellent.

As said before, it is all about what you want to achieve with the rifle you are loading for. I really don't think a well tuned AR is going to see the same levels of precision that show up in a match bolt action.

But maybe if load tolerances were held tighter, it might??????
Jerry
 
Rob.
"Otherwise, it seems like it would take a long time to accumulate a decent amount of ammo."

What ever is worth doing is worth doing right.
It will all depend on your requirements of accuracy and your expectations.
If your wanting 1/4 moa. then that takes a certain amout of dedication and time to produce CONSISTANTLY.
If your looking for 1 moa. then that takes less time and can be banged off quickly on almost any press and produce large amounts of ammo.
If your only shooting 25 rds a year at a hunt and your looking for 1 min. of Moose, buy factory stuff and be done with it.

How much you expect out of your ammo will dictate how much you put into it.
Most top notch shooters here produce better ammo than what the factorys call "match"

Mike.
 
mysticplayer said:
I really don't think a well tuned AR is going to see the same levels of precision that show up in a match bolt action.

But maybe if load tolerances were held tighter, it might??????
Jerry
Click to expand...


I've no personal experience with it, but from what information I've read, you can get scary close, especially when they are single loaded (in theory, when single loading an AR, there is really no difference between them and a bolt gun). I've only ever played the Service Rifle game with my ARs, and the only time I bag them is to test loads. The best barrels to date for me have been Colt H-bar match barrels and can hold moa to 500m. (let's be honest though, the Colt's are just really decent service grade tubes).

I'm going to build up a true match upper here in the next several months to see how it will fair in F-class, and whether it is appropriate for double duty in SR.
 
I have loaded thousands of rounds of amtch ammo on a 550 and a 650.

The brass is always factory primed virgin brass, so priming is not an issue. Stick powder does not meter well enough for long range work.

I used ball powder, usually Win 748 or 844, and it would meter almost perfectly. maybe one or two tenths variation in 10 shots, with most being bang on.

Used a Forster bencrest seating die and seating was good enough.

But for the best ammo, a single stage press and a RCBS Chargemaster is the way to go.
 
Side note: For those that have Dillon 550B's, consider getting something like the "Mr. Dial" for your powder measures. I have one and it works fantastic, as does the Dillon powder. I find it to be at least as accurate as my RCBS Uniflow.
 
The MRDial or Uniquetek micrometer is an absolute must for the Dillon powder measure. Adjustment can be quite onerous with just the wrench.
 
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