Miss Bea Havenow
Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 2
Hi, I'm new to this forum, but have been lurking for over a year as I learned to hand-load. There's a wealth of good information here.
I am pretty much up to speed with the Lee Loadmaster, aside from lingering primer feed troubles. I load mostly .357 mag and .45 acp, and a bit of .44 mag. When I'm not having primer feed troubles, I can load, oh, about 300 rounds per hour including the time it takes to supply the brass and primer hoppers. It seems like a terrific piece of gear for the money.
Once I learned to put the sizing die over the primer position, my plastic primer feeder parts started lasting a lot longer. The large primer feeder seems to have very few problems now, and lasts a LONG time. But the small feeder is not lasting long at all. Typically 300 to 600 rounds for me. Maybe 1000 at the most. Eventually, I start getting a lot of mis-feeds. Missing primers, flipped, sideways, and so on. It seems that I need to replace the top and bottom portions of the feeder tube (trough) and the slider as well. Replacing just one part never solves the problem. With new parts, I get pretty much 100% good feeding until, well, until I don't. The problem seems to come on abruptly, and the only way to fix it is to replace the three parts. Springs rarely go bad. The rotating part that moves the slider when brass is present NEVER goes bad for me, though I hear others have problems with that part. All in all, I'm spending nearly as much on primer feeder parts as I do on primers!
Recently I needed a new supply of parts, and found that you can't buy them individually now. They come as an assembly including the top and bottom of the tube (trough), the slider, the rotating slider pusher, screws, and o-rings. It's not much more expensive this way, but the parts themselves have been re-designed. The tube is no longer gray; it's black. And the shapes and sizes of some features have changed. Now here's the real problem. I get a high percentage of mis-feeds (flipped over or sideways) even with a brand new assembly! And the press frequently locks up from sideways primers.
Does anybody know what's going on? Might there be something wrong with my press, my setup, or something? Why did Lee change the design in the first place?
Thanks in advance.
I am pretty much up to speed with the Lee Loadmaster, aside from lingering primer feed troubles. I load mostly .357 mag and .45 acp, and a bit of .44 mag. When I'm not having primer feed troubles, I can load, oh, about 300 rounds per hour including the time it takes to supply the brass and primer hoppers. It seems like a terrific piece of gear for the money.
Once I learned to put the sizing die over the primer position, my plastic primer feeder parts started lasting a lot longer. The large primer feeder seems to have very few problems now, and lasts a LONG time. But the small feeder is not lasting long at all. Typically 300 to 600 rounds for me. Maybe 1000 at the most. Eventually, I start getting a lot of mis-feeds. Missing primers, flipped, sideways, and so on. It seems that I need to replace the top and bottom portions of the feeder tube (trough) and the slider as well. Replacing just one part never solves the problem. With new parts, I get pretty much 100% good feeding until, well, until I don't. The problem seems to come on abruptly, and the only way to fix it is to replace the three parts. Springs rarely go bad. The rotating part that moves the slider when brass is present NEVER goes bad for me, though I hear others have problems with that part. All in all, I'm spending nearly as much on primer feeder parts as I do on primers!
Recently I needed a new supply of parts, and found that you can't buy them individually now. They come as an assembly including the top and bottom of the tube (trough), the slider, the rotating slider pusher, screws, and o-rings. It's not much more expensive this way, but the parts themselves have been re-designed. The tube is no longer gray; it's black. And the shapes and sizes of some features have changed. Now here's the real problem. I get a high percentage of mis-feeds (flipped over or sideways) even with a brand new assembly! And the press frequently locks up from sideways primers.
Does anybody know what's going on? Might there be something wrong with my press, my setup, or something? Why did Lee change the design in the first place?
Thanks in advance.
