ny32182
Member
The die is the seater from a brand new 3 die Hornady set. I have this same brand of dies in 5 calibers now, and this is the first time I've seen it. I was loading up my first batch of .40 this morning and was running into the following problem:
Sometimes after retracting the finished round after seating a bullet, the guide sleeve would drop back to its bottom resting position, and would then become stuck in the down position. No amount of vertical pressure from a new case, or pressing with my finger would move it. Normally it is a free-moving piece. I am 99.9% sure that the cause is that the seater stem (the piece that actually presses the bullet into the case) was getting stuck at the top of its travel, somehow getting cocked ever so slightly sideways, and required side to side giggling of the guide sleeve to let it drop back down. After that the die would operate normally again.
I took out the seater stem, and polished the outter bottom rim where it first contacts the guide sleeve with 600 grit sandpaper. It seems to have helped some, but I still got it stuck a couple times in post-polish testing.
Eyeing my press, it is probably not mounted perfectly square to the ground (it is on a now well-used Workmate), and I'm sure that is not helping matters, but by the same token, I've never had this happen on any of the other calibers.
Has anyone ever had a problem like this with this die set? Will a better (more square) bench fix it, or is it likely that something is really screwed with this seater die? Thanks,
Sometimes after retracting the finished round after seating a bullet, the guide sleeve would drop back to its bottom resting position, and would then become stuck in the down position. No amount of vertical pressure from a new case, or pressing with my finger would move it. Normally it is a free-moving piece. I am 99.9% sure that the cause is that the seater stem (the piece that actually presses the bullet into the case) was getting stuck at the top of its travel, somehow getting cocked ever so slightly sideways, and required side to side giggling of the guide sleeve to let it drop back down. After that the die would operate normally again.
I took out the seater stem, and polished the outter bottom rim where it first contacts the guide sleeve with 600 grit sandpaper. It seems to have helped some, but I still got it stuck a couple times in post-polish testing.
Eyeing my press, it is probably not mounted perfectly square to the ground (it is on a now well-used Workmate), and I'm sure that is not helping matters, but by the same token, I've never had this happen on any of the other calibers.
Has anyone ever had a problem like this with this die set? Will a better (more square) bench fix it, or is it likely that something is really screwed with this seater die? Thanks,
