Continuation of the Review
Thanks Walkalong...two people have asked me to post the review directly on THR, so I attempted to post the whole review as an edit to the post before yours, but THR seems to have a limit of 15 images (including smilies) per post. That means
this is a continuation of my last post:
A fraction of a second past the last picture...notice several turned correctly to be fed. Sometimes they all feed sometimes only one.
A fraction of a second past the last picture....this time only one made it. It's like pool balls. One hits another and they both are deflected. Yet by two more rotations, 4 more fed....another rotation...empty.
My biggest question and concern right now is the double collet system, allowing only one bullet in the lower collet....that means the weight of only one bullet is pressing the newly fed bullet into the belled case...unlike either the "Mr Bullet Feeder" or RCBS design. I'm wondering how that will work with light bullets making it to the seating station on non-Hornady presses.....this may turn out to be a Hornady AP only design, despite Hornady's advertising to the contrary...since Hornady's AP has a half stroke index, vs. the more jerky full stroke index. Hope this doesn't bite me in the shorts...that will cure me of being an early adopter.
Well here's the scoop on the double collet system. It works pretty good with the Hornady powder measure using Hornady's new improved PTX powder thru expander system. What's improved is the expander drop tubes that actually expand and bell.
Notice the newly sized .45 slips on the expander to the point shown. The remainder of the way the case will expand a bit to about .449 to .45. That means only .001 or .002 under the bullet size of .451. You can't see it well, but the last little bit is a fillet that bells the case proudly. (that's a nice way to say...open wide and stretch the h––l out of the rim.)
Not having a Hornady powder measure on me, I put the case in a shellholder, and with a small caliber sizer mounted in the Rock Chucker, I used the leverage of the press to carefully push the case onto the PTX expander nearly to the hilt, as you see in the picture. Notice the bottom of the case: now you can see the healthy bell in the case there.
The case, wiggled, comes right off. BTW Hornady recommends the following for flared cases:
380/9mm––––.385"flare
38/357––––––-.387"flare
40S&W/10mm––-.430"flare
44SPL/44Mag––-.460
.451/.452––––––––––.481 Gentlemen, that's .030" bigger than the bullets! Do they mean O.S. or I.S. measurements?
Now lets examine the curious double collet Feeder die.
The first thing I had to do is smooth out the interior and expand the fingers just a tad, on the upper collet.
The upper collet HAS to pass bullets freely until its fingers are closed by the collet under it. If it doesn't, nothing is going to feed. (This was a problem only on the .45.) The upper collet on the .40 die was fine. Notice the wedged upper end of this collet (slotted end) Now imagine it resting inside the lower collet on a matching inside wedge. In that state if the lower collet is pushed upward into the upper collet, the slots (fingers) are going to tighten around the bullet sitting there.
Besides illustrating what I just explained, this picture show the distance the case has to go in before the bullet releases in the lower collet....the bullet has about 1 inch to fall...is it enough to hold the bullet until the press indexes it to the seater die??? Notice it's not possible to use the weight of the other bullets in the stack, as the fingers of collet one stops them all while the case is pushed up into the feed die.
So as I tip it up, the bullet falls...if it was on the press, the ram would then move down and pull the bullet/case out, releasing the upper fingers and releasing the bullets into the lower collet to await the next case.
The question is how hard does the bullet fall in its 1 inch fall into the belled case? To find out I figured I could simulate the fall.
So using the (now free to fall in) upper collet...holding a bullet about an inch above the case...the idea is to carefully place it over the case and drop the bullet.
I guess it works on the heavy 230 grain .45...I even shook it a bit. The jury is still out on untested lighter bullets like the 9mm and .40 S&W. I'm betting the expanding part of the PTX helps a lot in this department. Also hoping that I can make my Lee expander die work similarly...if not...I need a few parts from Hornady to convert my Uniflow to use Hornady's PTX system...that means I'd be moving the powder measure out of its permanent roost and mounting it on the tool head Dillon style. The feeder would then be at the permanent station...Hornady style. Not real happy, but I'm committed to make bullet feeding a reality in my reloading room....again....well see. At least I can buy powder thru dies and mounts rather buying more powder measures (Dillon Style)
At this point I'm thinking I'll keep this toy...so the next step is to mount the bullet feeder permanently to my reloading bench behind the press and trimmer. Hornady provides three bench templets, one for the Hornady AP of course, and one each for the Dillon 650 and RCBS Pro 2000. Since the Pro 2000 sits lower than either of the other presses, they compensated by providing a template that mounts the feeder 7" back and 4" to the side of the press! Gotta put those long spring tubes somewhere. I don't have room for that...so I'm choosing to make up the difference by going UP! More Later....
Over on AR15.com there's been way more interest in this Hornady product and bullet feeders in general than here, so I posted the review there first.
Hornady Bullet Feeder Review That link is stickied to "interesting threads" thread stuck at the top of the first page. So it should be accessible for a long long time...but that may be here too!