captain awesome
Member
It's been a while since I sold my Hornady Lock N' Load press and all the goodies I had with it in favor of trying out a Dillon 650. A couple people wanted me to write an update with my opinions on it, but I really wanted to get to know the press before I made any comments on its operation. So here I am several months later having done several Caliber changes with both large and small primers and loaded several thousand rounds. I know it pretty well now 
. Here are my thoughts:
First, I have to say on the whole it's a solid well built press that functions very well. It's well thought out in most ways and from what I can see has no obvious major weaknesses but does have a few quirky little things that you probably have read about, but I will chronicle them here.
Starting at the top, I added a case feeder. I actually stole it off my Super 1050 but from what I understand they are the same anyway. If not, they are At least close Enough to work fine on my 650. I just loaded 1000 rounds of 9mm for my sister this afternoon. It seems as the funnel from which the cases enter the drop tube wears or gets dirty, I get more stoppages in the form of casing pile ups in the funnel. Basicly a 9mm casing drops in and somehow turns sideways blocking more from entering. It doesnt activate the stop switch on the feeder so it keeps piling more and more on top until it over flows and rains 9mm cases onto you and the press. I have been told that cleaning and polishing the funnel will alleviate this, and it makes sense because it seemed to happen more and and more often towards the end of my loading session today. I havent experienced this issue with any of the other cartridges I load for so it may be a problem unique to 9mm, but it isn't unique to the dillon case feeder as I experienced the same thing happening on my old LNL Hornady press case feeder. Here is a picture of a pile up;
Moving down the line once in a while I would get a stoppage from a 40 S&W brass casing that somehow made it's way into the mix. They are too fat to make it through the coupling at the bottom of the drop tube and get stuck. Now this is obviously not the fault of the press or feeder but it is somewhat of an irritation to clear. I have to use a dental pick to lift out the last 9mm casing that was dropped into the top of the drop tube to remove the tube if its full; the top case arrests the tube from snapping out of place unless lifted free. Seen in the picture;
Then I carefully try not to let all the 9mms spill out of the tube as I pull and lift the tube out. Then I take out the piece the drop tube nestles into and remove the 40 case with a pencil or whatever. This also happened with other cartridges where I bought bulk range pick up brass. Again not a fault of the press but I felt it is worth noting. I bought some brass sorter strainers so hopefully that won't happen to me any more.
Next, sometimes a 9mm case feeds upside down. This causes a stoppage that's easily cleared but brings me to the next item; priming.
The way the press primes is with a little priming carousel that holds 20 or so primers and spins around. In the case of the upside down casing, unless you manually flip it over and re-feed it into the first station, this causes a missed primer. At station two from having no case present. This is one advantage I felt the Hornady LNL had over the Dillon was that the Hornady operated on a slide so no primers were ever missed and discarded by the machine. Once the primer is missed it continues around on the carousel and is dropped onto what some people affectionately call the "primer ski jump", which seems appropriate. MOST of the time the ski jump holds the primer but once in a while one decides to go for an Olympic gold and flies off into oblivion never to be seen again.. And it only holds 5 or 6 maybe 7 before they start consistently falling on the floor. Several people on Ebay sell fixes for it, but I have yet to purchase one. It seems like a piece of card stock and tape would adequately keep them off the floor but I need to play around with that a bit. Here is a picture of the carousel and ski jump;
The missed primers can be caused by several other things as well, like primer pull back or "riders" as I have heard them called where a primer sticks on the end of the Depriming pin and pulls back into the primer pocket slightly. This happens to me a lot more often when I use mixed head stamp once fired brass from an unknown origin, but it is infuriating. I have heard of all kinds of ways of dealing with it but the most effective is Dillons pistol dies that have a spring inside that acts kind of like a pogo stick with the depriming pin. The spring compresses and when it bottoms out it pushes the primer out and snaps back down causing enough jarring shock that the primer flings off the end. If you dont have the special Dillon dies, then I suggest filing or sanding the pin down at a 45 degree angle and using lock tight on the expander balls or nuts that hold the pin on the depriming rod. This USUALLY works.
Anyway one difference with the hornady press vs all the big Dillon presses, is the cases ride on the the sub-plate on the Hornady instead of the shell plate like the Dillons. This means that if you have a "rider" primer you know about it immediately on the Hornady, because it stops the press up when it tries to index. But with the Dillon the cases are elevated enough above the sub-plate that it usually doesn't stop the press. Then when that casing makes it over to the priming station the fresh primer just reseats the old primer and if you dont feel it, it goes along its merry way through the rest of the cycle; a fresh loaded round with a used primer still in place. I always catch it because the priming feels "off" but new users may not. Either way it causes another missed primer to be dealt with.
Another cause of potentially missed primers on this press is when at the priming station the cases don't quite seat all the way into the shell plate and are off center from the priming punch. This is only an issue at station one and two (resising/depriming and priming/powder charging) because the locater pins take care of it at the other three. But if something does go amiss at the priming station, you have to remember to push the case at station one all the way into the shell plate or you will get a stoppage, and possibly a ruined case or broken/bent depriming pin. The case can be crushed while off center trying to enter the resizing die. This is because the last little bit of travel of the case feed slide is allowed by the action of pushing the press handle forward while priming. If you can't or don't push the handle all the way forward because of a priming blockage cause by a misaligned casing or a "rider" at station two, the casing at station one won't feed all the way into the shell plate. So just be aware of that.
The way the press came from the factory, larger cartridges weren't a problem at station two. Smaller diameter casings like 223 or 9mm can be an issue. The spring loaded retaining arm that pushes them into the shell plate (pictured below, also a good shot of the top of the primer carousel) doesn't have enough travel to keep them fully inserted in the shell plate. So I tweaked mine with some pliers and problem solved.
Edit; JMorris was kind enough to point out there is a way to adjust the travel of the locator arm at station two with an Allen wrench as Dillon intended. Dont break out the pliers for this one. See his post below. I wonder if someone makes a thumb knob for quick adjusting this...
Moving forward, I really like how this press handles powder spillage. I would love to claim this never ever happens to me but I am just human, it does. Sometimes It comes out the bottom of a primer pocket that was missed somehow, sometimes powder sloshes for various reasons....it happens. But it doesnt cause any stoppages or hangups which is WONDERFUL. I just gently blow it off with a straw and move on with life. On a side note this was one of the reasons I ditched the Hornady press. Get a kernel of powder caught in the primer slide groove and it would cause all kinds of grief. Anyway..yay Dillon.
Continuing forth, I am not that fond of Dillons powder measures. Cost wise they are a great value compared to others I have seen but operationally they aren't as consistent in my experiences as the drum styles I have used (Lee's and Hornadys). They are consistent enough for most purposes though, and as long as they are hooked up right, tight and full, they WILL throw a charge every time a case is present during a stroke of the press. But making charge adjustments on them is a pain in the back side compared to the other two I mentioned. You need a wrench, hex socket or nut driver and you have no way of knowing your starting point or how much you adjusted without paying close attention. Here is a picture of the bolt you have to turn clockwise to increase the powder charge/counterclockwise to decrease the charge;
counterintuitive IMO, as I have to stop and think about it every time I make an adjustment.
Setting the right height of the powder die for the particular cartridge is also more time consuming and has to be done with Allen wrenches. It is more simple on the Hornady LNL. But once it's set, you dont have to change it on the Dillon unless you use the same powder die for multiple calibers. And they are cheap enough to just leave on a dedicated tool head. (Btw calculate the cost of a powder die into each of your conversion kit's. Things are never as cheap as they seem right of the bat. But It's totally worth the extra 10 bucks or how ever much they are..)
Another quirk if you arent familiar with the dillon powder measure is the way they attach to the powder die. As I mentioned, a hex Allen wrench is needed and the actuator that throws the powder is right in the way of one of the screws. Not a huge deal but yet another irritation to deal with. Some can just leave a dedicated powder measure on each tool head. That would cost me about a thousand bucks in powder measures. I am not willing to do that. So I ordered a little fix for it that is spring loaded so I won't have to deal with the Allen bolts any more. I will report how that goes. If its secure enough I will add one on all 3 of mine. Here is the Allen bolts with the actuator in the way of one of them;
Powder slosh. Before I even ran my press stock I did a few of the common mods, the indexing actuator bearings, the shell plate bearings, the bearings on the case feed slide rod and the low mass ball detent for under the shell plate with a reduced power spring. I havent had much powder slosh out of the cases under normal operation, and I assume it's because of these mods. It is important that you get the indexing actuator bearing in the correct position so your index timing is spot on, especially if you're using the low mass detent ball and reduced power spring, or your shell plate won't index to the right place and it will cause you head aches. I ended up putting the old ball and spring back in before I knew this.
Another issue I ran into is the ejector wire. It is probably fine without the shell plate rotating bearings and washers, but with them in place it lifts the wire higher than it's supposed to be and it doesn't sit straight. It eventually works it's way up and gets in the way of the case feed slide, and causes more head aches. To fix it I tweaked it with pliers in a few spots and havent had it work loose or out of place since. Pictured here;
One thing I absolutely hate is changing from large to small primers. There is an 80$ fix in which you can speed up this process by buying a whole new priming assembly and just takes 2 bolts to remove and reinstall. This would be fine and good, however...you would still have to change out the primer punch assembly which is the worst part IMO. It is very hard to get to especially if you have large hands and its jamed up so close to the ram you can't use sockets. So get the right size wrench and go at it. (I use a crescent wrench which probably makes life harder because of its bulky size compared to a normal wrench). Here is a picture of the primer punch assembly;
I hate this time consuming nonsense so much that I decided to buy a second 650 and dedicate one to large primers and one to small primers. That's not the only benefit to having 2 of these machines but it is certainly a large part of it. I always contemplated doing this for the Hornady LNL also but it wasnt nearly as bad to change the priming system from one size to the other on that press. I often found my self just saying screw it I don't want to deal with the change over to swap calibers when I wanted to load something, and subsequently some of my guns got neglected. Not any more, at least not because of caliber changes anyway.
A few more things; I highly recommend getting one of the priming shut off switches as well as a case feed shut of mod. The later can be accomplished with a bent piece of wire coat hanger or paperclip. Being able to stop the priming carousel from turning is a huge advantage, especially when making die or powder change adjustments, or even when clearing stoppages. I also reccomend the spent primer mod. Without it, this is common place after a short time into your loading session;
Edit; another thing I thought of while waiting for my girls to get ready for school, I have no idea if this is unique to the newer 650s or if Dillon is updating all their priming systems but they use a brass piece at the bottom of the primer magazines (not the pick up tube, I am talking about the one in the press inside the blast shield). On my 1050 and my 550 they used plastic. The brass is much better IMO.
So there you have it. Though not without its little issues, I think over all it's a great press, good enough for me to invest in a second one anyway. But It's late, I am falling asleep and that's about all I can think of for now. If anything else pops into my head I will post it later. Happy loading!
. Here are my thoughts:First, I have to say on the whole it's a solid well built press that functions very well. It's well thought out in most ways and from what I can see has no obvious major weaknesses but does have a few quirky little things that you probably have read about, but I will chronicle them here.
Starting at the top, I added a case feeder. I actually stole it off my Super 1050 but from what I understand they are the same anyway. If not, they are At least close Enough to work fine on my 650. I just loaded 1000 rounds of 9mm for my sister this afternoon. It seems as the funnel from which the cases enter the drop tube wears or gets dirty, I get more stoppages in the form of casing pile ups in the funnel. Basicly a 9mm casing drops in and somehow turns sideways blocking more from entering. It doesnt activate the stop switch on the feeder so it keeps piling more and more on top until it over flows and rains 9mm cases onto you and the press. I have been told that cleaning and polishing the funnel will alleviate this, and it makes sense because it seemed to happen more and and more often towards the end of my loading session today. I havent experienced this issue with any of the other cartridges I load for so it may be a problem unique to 9mm, but it isn't unique to the dillon case feeder as I experienced the same thing happening on my old LNL Hornady press case feeder. Here is a picture of a pile up;
Moving down the line once in a while I would get a stoppage from a 40 S&W brass casing that somehow made it's way into the mix. They are too fat to make it through the coupling at the bottom of the drop tube and get stuck. Now this is obviously not the fault of the press or feeder but it is somewhat of an irritation to clear. I have to use a dental pick to lift out the last 9mm casing that was dropped into the top of the drop tube to remove the tube if its full; the top case arrests the tube from snapping out of place unless lifted free. Seen in the picture;
Then I carefully try not to let all the 9mms spill out of the tube as I pull and lift the tube out. Then I take out the piece the drop tube nestles into and remove the 40 case with a pencil or whatever. This also happened with other cartridges where I bought bulk range pick up brass. Again not a fault of the press but I felt it is worth noting. I bought some brass sorter strainers so hopefully that won't happen to me any more.
Next, sometimes a 9mm case feeds upside down. This causes a stoppage that's easily cleared but brings me to the next item; priming.
The way the press primes is with a little priming carousel that holds 20 or so primers and spins around. In the case of the upside down casing, unless you manually flip it over and re-feed it into the first station, this causes a missed primer. At station two from having no case present. This is one advantage I felt the Hornady LNL had over the Dillon was that the Hornady operated on a slide so no primers were ever missed and discarded by the machine. Once the primer is missed it continues around on the carousel and is dropped onto what some people affectionately call the "primer ski jump", which seems appropriate. MOST of the time the ski jump holds the primer but once in a while one decides to go for an Olympic gold and flies off into oblivion never to be seen again.. And it only holds 5 or 6 maybe 7 before they start consistently falling on the floor. Several people on Ebay sell fixes for it, but I have yet to purchase one. It seems like a piece of card stock and tape would adequately keep them off the floor but I need to play around with that a bit. Here is a picture of the carousel and ski jump;
The missed primers can be caused by several other things as well, like primer pull back or "riders" as I have heard them called where a primer sticks on the end of the Depriming pin and pulls back into the primer pocket slightly. This happens to me a lot more often when I use mixed head stamp once fired brass from an unknown origin, but it is infuriating. I have heard of all kinds of ways of dealing with it but the most effective is Dillons pistol dies that have a spring inside that acts kind of like a pogo stick with the depriming pin. The spring compresses and when it bottoms out it pushes the primer out and snaps back down causing enough jarring shock that the primer flings off the end. If you dont have the special Dillon dies, then I suggest filing or sanding the pin down at a 45 degree angle and using lock tight on the expander balls or nuts that hold the pin on the depriming rod. This USUALLY works.
Anyway one difference with the hornady press vs all the big Dillon presses, is the cases ride on the the sub-plate on the Hornady instead of the shell plate like the Dillons. This means that if you have a "rider" primer you know about it immediately on the Hornady, because it stops the press up when it tries to index. But with the Dillon the cases are elevated enough above the sub-plate that it usually doesn't stop the press. Then when that casing makes it over to the priming station the fresh primer just reseats the old primer and if you dont feel it, it goes along its merry way through the rest of the cycle; a fresh loaded round with a used primer still in place. I always catch it because the priming feels "off" but new users may not. Either way it causes another missed primer to be dealt with.
Another cause of potentially missed primers on this press is when at the priming station the cases don't quite seat all the way into the shell plate and are off center from the priming punch. This is only an issue at station one and two (resising/depriming and priming/powder charging) because the locater pins take care of it at the other three. But if something does go amiss at the priming station, you have to remember to push the case at station one all the way into the shell plate or you will get a stoppage, and possibly a ruined case or broken/bent depriming pin. The case can be crushed while off center trying to enter the resizing die. This is because the last little bit of travel of the case feed slide is allowed by the action of pushing the press handle forward while priming. If you can't or don't push the handle all the way forward because of a priming blockage cause by a misaligned casing or a "rider" at station two, the casing at station one won't feed all the way into the shell plate. So just be aware of that.
The way the press came from the factory, larger cartridges weren't a problem at station two. Smaller diameter casings like 223 or 9mm can be an issue. The spring loaded retaining arm that pushes them into the shell plate (pictured below, also a good shot of the top of the primer carousel) doesn't have enough travel to keep them fully inserted in the shell plate. So I tweaked mine with some pliers and problem solved.
Edit; JMorris was kind enough to point out there is a way to adjust the travel of the locator arm at station two with an Allen wrench as Dillon intended. Dont break out the pliers for this one. See his post below. I wonder if someone makes a thumb knob for quick adjusting this...
Moving forward, I really like how this press handles powder spillage. I would love to claim this never ever happens to me but I am just human, it does. Sometimes It comes out the bottom of a primer pocket that was missed somehow, sometimes powder sloshes for various reasons....it happens. But it doesnt cause any stoppages or hangups which is WONDERFUL. I just gently blow it off with a straw and move on with life. On a side note this was one of the reasons I ditched the Hornady press. Get a kernel of powder caught in the primer slide groove and it would cause all kinds of grief. Anyway..yay Dillon.
Continuing forth, I am not that fond of Dillons powder measures. Cost wise they are a great value compared to others I have seen but operationally they aren't as consistent in my experiences as the drum styles I have used (Lee's and Hornadys). They are consistent enough for most purposes though, and as long as they are hooked up right, tight and full, they WILL throw a charge every time a case is present during a stroke of the press. But making charge adjustments on them is a pain in the back side compared to the other two I mentioned. You need a wrench, hex socket or nut driver and you have no way of knowing your starting point or how much you adjusted without paying close attention. Here is a picture of the bolt you have to turn clockwise to increase the powder charge/counterclockwise to decrease the charge;
counterintuitive IMO, as I have to stop and think about it every time I make an adjustment.Setting the right height of the powder die for the particular cartridge is also more time consuming and has to be done with Allen wrenches. It is more simple on the Hornady LNL. But once it's set, you dont have to change it on the Dillon unless you use the same powder die for multiple calibers. And they are cheap enough to just leave on a dedicated tool head. (Btw calculate the cost of a powder die into each of your conversion kit's. Things are never as cheap as they seem right of the bat. But It's totally worth the extra 10 bucks or how ever much they are..)
Another quirk if you arent familiar with the dillon powder measure is the way they attach to the powder die. As I mentioned, a hex Allen wrench is needed and the actuator that throws the powder is right in the way of one of the screws. Not a huge deal but yet another irritation to deal with. Some can just leave a dedicated powder measure on each tool head. That would cost me about a thousand bucks in powder measures. I am not willing to do that. So I ordered a little fix for it that is spring loaded so I won't have to deal with the Allen bolts any more. I will report how that goes. If its secure enough I will add one on all 3 of mine. Here is the Allen bolts with the actuator in the way of one of them;
Powder slosh. Before I even ran my press stock I did a few of the common mods, the indexing actuator bearings, the shell plate bearings, the bearings on the case feed slide rod and the low mass ball detent for under the shell plate with a reduced power spring. I havent had much powder slosh out of the cases under normal operation, and I assume it's because of these mods. It is important that you get the indexing actuator bearing in the correct position so your index timing is spot on, especially if you're using the low mass detent ball and reduced power spring, or your shell plate won't index to the right place and it will cause you head aches. I ended up putting the old ball and spring back in before I knew this.
Another issue I ran into is the ejector wire. It is probably fine without the shell plate rotating bearings and washers, but with them in place it lifts the wire higher than it's supposed to be and it doesn't sit straight. It eventually works it's way up and gets in the way of the case feed slide, and causes more head aches. To fix it I tweaked it with pliers in a few spots and havent had it work loose or out of place since. Pictured here;
One thing I absolutely hate is changing from large to small primers. There is an 80$ fix in which you can speed up this process by buying a whole new priming assembly and just takes 2 bolts to remove and reinstall. This would be fine and good, however...you would still have to change out the primer punch assembly which is the worst part IMO. It is very hard to get to especially if you have large hands and its jamed up so close to the ram you can't use sockets. So get the right size wrench and go at it. (I use a crescent wrench which probably makes life harder because of its bulky size compared to a normal wrench). Here is a picture of the primer punch assembly;
I hate this time consuming nonsense so much that I decided to buy a second 650 and dedicate one to large primers and one to small primers. That's not the only benefit to having 2 of these machines but it is certainly a large part of it. I always contemplated doing this for the Hornady LNL also but it wasnt nearly as bad to change the priming system from one size to the other on that press. I often found my self just saying screw it I don't want to deal with the change over to swap calibers when I wanted to load something, and subsequently some of my guns got neglected. Not any more, at least not because of caliber changes anyway.
A few more things; I highly recommend getting one of the priming shut off switches as well as a case feed shut of mod. The later can be accomplished with a bent piece of wire coat hanger or paperclip. Being able to stop the priming carousel from turning is a huge advantage, especially when making die or powder change adjustments, or even when clearing stoppages. I also reccomend the spent primer mod. Without it, this is common place after a short time into your loading session;
Edit; another thing I thought of while waiting for my girls to get ready for school, I have no idea if this is unique to the newer 650s or if Dillon is updating all their priming systems but they use a brass piece at the bottom of the primer magazines (not the pick up tube, I am talking about the one in the press inside the blast shield). On my 1050 and my 550 they used plastic. The brass is much better IMO.
So there you have it. Though not without its little issues, I think over all it's a great press, good enough for me to invest in a second one anyway. But It's late, I am falling asleep and that's about all I can think of for now. If anything else pops into my head I will post it later. Happy loading!
Last edited:
