Tag: Dillon

I am seriously hoping this past week was the last gasp of summer. It felt like a normal day in Alabama, which is to say, hot, humid and miserable. Then suddenly the weather turned and this week feels like late September/Early October. It has been fantastic (Sorry Marc).

I got the R/C airplane patched up, I think I have narrowed down the issues to having a prop that was too small and improperly set up control horns. I got the replacement parts on order.

Most of my time has been spent trying to finish this batch of 9mm. This has been an ongoing project for the last couple of weeks, and I was glad to wrap it up last night.  About 2k rounds in the bank, it’ll last me a good while. It never fails that I always seem to have left over bullets. If it was one or two, I could probably get over it, but 10 is just annoying. It’s not enough to justify doing much of anything with. Next time I load 9mm, there’s a good chance I won’t even be able to find them.

Marc has also had a new set of neighbors move in, a mama bear and her cubs. He’s overjoyed at the development and sent me some screen shots. I have found it analogous to those back-to-school photos that seem to be all over social media lately. On a completely unrelated note, Marc has also been reevaluating whether his bear loads are ready to bear.  

Website Updates

No new updates this week.  I do have a bit of catch up to do there’s some editing that needs to happen before I can make a few articles live. Expect to see them this week.

Time at the Bench

Primer Woes

As I mentioned at the beginning, I have been working through this batch of 9mm loaded with a 124gr Berry Plated hollow point. This is the first time I have loaded any but 45 ACP on my Dillon 550. The Dillon 550 is a fine piece of machinery, and it really has not caused me that much trouble. Things tend to just work.

However, this week I’ve been having some issues with the primer pick up tubes. For some reason when dumping the primers into the primer feeding tube, I’ll get a primer sideways into the blue funnel tip. Once that primer flips sideways, it’s all over, it jams up the works. When this first happened it really bound up the tube and I spent the better part of 20 minutes trying to unjam the feed tube and not spill primers all over the place. I was successful in only one of those tasks.

After cleaning up the primers off the floor, I noticed a few primers had some damage on the cup, I’ve taken a picture below.  The primers are a surprisingly tight fit in the primer pickup tube, and these dents may have been part of the culprit. At the same time, I’ve struggled with a few of the tubes since then. They always want to flip just as they transition from the end of the tube to the funnel. That’s where they get stuck.

Being aware of the potential problem I have been careful when loading primers, and I have found a few of the tubes are more prone to it than others. I am suspecting it is more of a tube issue than it is a primer issue at this point. I have at least one tube that reliably dumps primers without an issue. You might think you could just replace the blue tip, but the only way to get one off seems to be breaking it, they are stuck on something fierce.

If I keep having these issues I may consider looking into Derraco Engineering’s pickup tubes for the Dillon Press.

Speaking of Worn Out

When I first set up the Dillon 550 about seven or so months ago, I noticed it seemed a little stiff. I put a little oil on the ram and checked everything. I didn’t pay much attention to it and once I got to loading, I got used to it. Then it started to squeak. I hate it when it presses squeak. I spent about a half hour troubling shooting that.

I ended up spraying some WD-40 that was impregnated with PTFE on the upper and lower hinges. A few squirts and two things happened. 1^st, the squeak was silenced and 2, the press felt like a brand-new press.

This was much to my chagrin. I try and keep my nice presses clean and lubricated but it was obvious to me at that point that I had failed to grease the pins on the press.  Dillon makes a special maintenance kit, which I have never used. Now that I am ready to tear the press down and switch over to 40 S&W I’ll probably take a look at cleaning and greasing the bottom end of the press.

Caution when Loading Large Batches

To be honest, I think the best advice I can give someone is never load too much in one sitting. I am the worse offender of that, I will spend the afternoon loading, as it is very cathartic. The danger in doing this is that you can really start getting complacent or take shortcuts that will later burn you. Especially when loading with progressive press.  Once everything is set up, you just get into the motion of things, and it is easy to dig yourself a big hole.

I have been reminded of this twice in the last two weeks. The first time I went to grab some 223 I had loaded about a year and a half ago and came across a note reminding me I needed to set back the bullet. That ammo was the product of a marathon loading session where I did not check to make sure the COAL would work in the magazines I was using. They gauge fine, they ran fine on the press, except now I have probably 3-4k of 223 that I need to knock the bullet back by about .025 so they will not drag the tip against the front of a standard AR-15 Mag.

With the 9mm I was loading this past week, I had bullet seating die back off. I caught it when I went to drop a round in the ammo checker, and it would not sit all the way. I have no idea how many rounds I loaded with the COAL being too long. I made the corrections, but I will need to go back through the batch and sort out the rounds that will need to be seated a bit deeper.

A few years ago Dillon Precision seemed to really make a push for first time reloaders to purchase the Dillon 750XL. I thought it was a misguided campaign by Dillon. I constantly had to remind people when they were looking at buying a Dillon 750 as their first press. “You are either going to load a bunch of good ammo, or a bunch of junk ammo” and “You’re better off figuring out how to make good ammo, before you try to load a bunch of it.”

Mystery Bullets

The mystery bullets we shared last week are still a partial mystery. Mark K. has memories of doing this back in the days when “Dirty Harry” was popular. They would stick a BB in the nose of the hollow point to make it more “Barrier Blind”. That was the going theory anyway, but there was no hard data to confirm the effect. Best explanation we’ve heard so far.

Thanks Mark for taking the time to provide that insight.

Industry and Legislative News

For the most part this past week has been quiet. I have not seen any major developments in any of the major stories we’ve been following.

There was one interesting news article that caught my eye, that was a reported sniper kill that was 4,000+ meters.  The article claimed that artificial intelligence and drone coordination were used to enable the shot. The rifle used was a Snipex Alligator chambered in 14.5x114mm.

This is a massive rifle, and the round is markedly larger than the .50 BMG.  Developed in 1939 the 14.5x114mm is effectively 58 Caliber, and the bullet weighs on average around 980 grains. Muzzle velocity from the Alligators 47in barrel is reportedly around 3,200fps.  The rifle weighs over 55lbs. The purpose of the rifle and the rounds are antimaterial, but obviously it can be used to be just about “anti” anything you want it to be.

I am a sucker for the big guns and have long been fascinated with .50 BMG, .460 Styer, .416 Barrett and the 20x138mmB fired in the Solothurn S18-1000. Of course, one of my personal favorite cartridges is the 30x173mm which is fired from the GAU-8 Avenger mounted in the Fairchild A-10.

As anyone knows, hitting a target out past 1760 yards is about 60% skill and 40% luck. There are just too many variables that you have no possible way of accounting for.  Even if your rifle could hold half MOA, the dispersion pattern is not linear, .5in at 100, and 1in at 200, does not equal 5in at 1000. The combined effects of wind, velocity variation, and little things like variation in jacket thickness, causes groups to open. Extreme Long-Range shooting is something that I love to participate in, and guys can pull off some truly incredible shots. Someday I would love to know what the shooter did to pull it off.

Artificial Intelligence in the Firearms Industry

Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve heard about ChatGPT and other so called “Artificial Intelligences” which are more correctly referred to as large language models . They are everywhere, and it seems like there is a frenzy of “powered by AI” or “Integrated AI”. Marketing is having a field day, and I can only assume it is a matter of time before we see “AI Integration” in optics.   The aforementioned article of the record long distance shot mentioned it was accomplished in part with the aid of AI.

Gun owners tend to be naturally suspicious of new technology, and of course new ways that Government and/or Corporations can take advantage of us via data harvesting. All of these concerns have proven to be real. With that said, about the worst thing we can do is to shy away from it. Like the internet, AI is not going away, it will become a more and more prevalent tool in everyday life.

I don’t know how AI was involved in the longest shot, anything I might say is pure speculation, but what I do know is that AI cannot replace the fundamentals. If there is a takeaway from this mini discussion, is it this: AI does not create, it regurgitates information. In many ways it is a magnifying glass, if you are already knowledgeable about the topic, you can use AI to expand your depth of knowledge. If you are ignorant, it is likely AI will make you look like a greater fool.  I have been on both sides of that coin when using AI as a research tool.  

New Guns and Gear

Springfield Armory Operator

Springfield Armory recently announced a new 1911 build.  Honestly, I probably will not have much chance to mess with one. However if the build quality of the Springfield Prodigy (A 2011 pattern pistol) is any indication of what to expect in a Springfield Armory 1911, I probably will pass. Unless I plan on swapping out the sear, disconnector, hammer and safety for something that is a bit more quality.  These parts are all Metal Injection Molded (MIM), which makes sense, these are tricky parts to machine.

From a design standpoint, they can be tricky parts to model, I’ve done it a few times. From my experience MIM parts are designed to be massed-produced at a lower price. There are sacrifices to quality and durability, the metal in theory should be strong enough to handle everything you ask of it, but in practice they break. Especially along edges that need to be sharp, such as the sear and hammer hooks.  This results in a heavier trigger, or if you try and tune it to be a lighter trigger, the gun will hammer follow.

RCBS UPM-3 Competition Powder Measure

Traditional powder throwers do not seem to get much love anymore. Everyone seems to gravitate towards the automated powder dispensers. Which are cool but they are also often an investment, and unless you purchase a high dollar one, they are slow. For that reason,  I have gone the other way. When I first started loading I really wanted  an automated dispenser. I bought a Hornady one and it served me well for many years.  I have since fallen in love with a Harrell’s powder thrower. With most powders it is accurate to the .1 of a grain. Which, for loading rifle, is plenty accurate enough to get SD’s in the low teens to single digits.

I think new handloaders would almost be better off using a traditional powder thrower rather then trying to get sucked into the world of automated powder dispensers. This new thrower introduced by RCBS would be a good one to take a look at. It claims to have a meter tube that can dispense as little as .5gr up to 100gr per throw. For the cost, $200 you are going to throw charges that, for the money, are as accurate as a similarly priced powder dispenser in a tenth of the time.

It is still valuable to have a quality scale to set up the thrower, but once it’s set up, very little changes. At some point in time, I’d love to do a comparison between all the powder throwers on the market, but for right now the only one I can definitively say stay away from is the Lee Precision thrower, that is a miserable piece of junk.

That is all we have for this week.

The Ballistic Assistant is a website dedicated to the art of handloading and shooting. We aim to share tips on reloading and shooting, inform others on what’s going on in the firearms community, and provide our opinion and thoughts on firearm related news and events. If you like what you read, we only ask that you subscribe and share with a friend or two.

If you have questions, comments, or ideas, we’d love to hear from you.

Jay – jay@theballisticassistant.com

Marc – Marc@theballisticassistant.com

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