yhtomit
June 24, 2007, 03:11 AM
At 1:05 a.m., I pulled the handle on my new Lee Classic Cast press, with a cleaned (but not polished) .45 ACP case in the shell holder, swung the handle through its full range of motion, and ...
<ping>
The primer chimed into the plastic tube at the bottom of the ram, and I grinned. Haven't broken anything just yet, apparently!
I'm starting with a run of 25 cases, because I figure that if I find I'm doing something even the slightest bit out of kilter, I'd rather repeat steps (or toss) for fewer rather than more cartridges.
The 25 deprimed cases are now vibrating their little shiny hearts out in my miniature witch's cauldron from Frankford Arsenal; my compulsive checking tells me that cleaning goes a lot faster once the primers are out -- I was a bit worried about whether my cases were getting clean enough when I did the first round of cleaning, but they're looking more and more convincing now.
I have a few nits to pick with the press, or rather the directions for it, but I'll hold off on those for another time; the Readers' Digest version is that people who write directions assume that people just as smart as they are will be reading them, but dummies like me read the directtions they've created and throw that whole theory in the garbage. (Not a problem unique to reloading presses by any means!)
Another minor complaint, but probably my fault, is that in the decapping process, I find that something like a third of my cases, perhaps even closer to a half, must be nudged slightly in order to properly enter the depriming / resizing die -- otherwise, the lip of each case catches on the edge of the die. Seems to happen less when I lower the lever unnaturally slowly, but sometimes even then -- the shell holder doesn't seem to snap them as firmly at its furthest point as I'd expect it to, and the cases seem to work themselves a millimeter or three away from the very end of the shell holder, which is why they're not exactly lined up with the die, but ... hey, that shouldn't be happening, right?! I suspect I'm missing something, but on this round, the finger-nudge was fine.
I'm not going to do anything involving gunpowder, primers, or fireworks at this time of night; I just wanted to get *something* accomplished wrt the press during this waking cycle -- my oddball schedule means that I'm home only irregularly, spending most of my time in my student apartment in Philadelphia, so I want to squeeze in what gun fun I can during my weekends in the burbs ;) That means I may run into more complaints tomorrow, but for now I'm feeling more mechanical than usual (for me, that's easy) and hoping that the time works out for me to construct and even shoot this initial batch of reloaded ammo tomorrow. However, my operating principle, despite my impatience, is to make each step slowly and carefully, so maybe I'll have another few weeks of waiting. Ah, well!
THR has been and continues to be invaluable as a source of knowledge -- I would almost certainly not have traded so much money for reloading toys^h^h^hools if not for reading it so much over the past year and change.
timothy
<ping>
The primer chimed into the plastic tube at the bottom of the ram, and I grinned. Haven't broken anything just yet, apparently!
I'm starting with a run of 25 cases, because I figure that if I find I'm doing something even the slightest bit out of kilter, I'd rather repeat steps (or toss) for fewer rather than more cartridges.
The 25 deprimed cases are now vibrating their little shiny hearts out in my miniature witch's cauldron from Frankford Arsenal; my compulsive checking tells me that cleaning goes a lot faster once the primers are out -- I was a bit worried about whether my cases were getting clean enough when I did the first round of cleaning, but they're looking more and more convincing now.
I have a few nits to pick with the press, or rather the directions for it, but I'll hold off on those for another time; the Readers' Digest version is that people who write directions assume that people just as smart as they are will be reading them, but dummies like me read the directtions they've created and throw that whole theory in the garbage. (Not a problem unique to reloading presses by any means!)
Another minor complaint, but probably my fault, is that in the decapping process, I find that something like a third of my cases, perhaps even closer to a half, must be nudged slightly in order to properly enter the depriming / resizing die -- otherwise, the lip of each case catches on the edge of the die. Seems to happen less when I lower the lever unnaturally slowly, but sometimes even then -- the shell holder doesn't seem to snap them as firmly at its furthest point as I'd expect it to, and the cases seem to work themselves a millimeter or three away from the very end of the shell holder, which is why they're not exactly lined up with the die, but ... hey, that shouldn't be happening, right?! I suspect I'm missing something, but on this round, the finger-nudge was fine.
I'm not going to do anything involving gunpowder, primers, or fireworks at this time of night; I just wanted to get *something* accomplished wrt the press during this waking cycle -- my oddball schedule means that I'm home only irregularly, spending most of my time in my student apartment in Philadelphia, so I want to squeeze in what gun fun I can during my weekends in the burbs ;) That means I may run into more complaints tomorrow, but for now I'm feeling more mechanical than usual (for me, that's easy) and hoping that the time works out for me to construct and even shoot this initial batch of reloaded ammo tomorrow. However, my operating principle, despite my impatience, is to make each step slowly and carefully, so maybe I'll have another few weeks of waiting. Ah, well!
THR has been and continues to be invaluable as a source of knowledge -- I would almost certainly not have traded so much money for reloading toys^h^h^hools if not for reading it so much over the past year and change.
timothy
