TamThompson
Member
I bought a Dillon Square Deal B press, it arrived this week, I assembled it with some phone support from Dillon, got it to seat primers and throw powder. Was calibrating my powder charge last night when I dropped one of the locator pins (the brass pins that hold shells into the shell plate) into the deep well where the primers come out of.
*sigh* And things were going so well up until then. Now the handle won't go all the way down and I know I shouldn't force it, so I haven't. Called Dillon and they said I'll need to unbolt the press from my bench and disassemble it.
Folks, I'm not the handiest person with tools, and it took a good long while to bolt that thing to my brand-new bench (which a friend helped build---well, OK, he built it while I 'helped'.) I'm not BAD with tools, just don't have that much experience. Which is odd, since previously I was a mechanical engineer and worked in design and in manufacturing, but I digress...
Is there ANY WAY I could get that pin out of there without disassembling the whole blasted thing? Several ideas have come to mind:
1. Fish around in the primer well with tweezers--already tried.
2. Look with a flashlight to see if I see the pin--already tried, don't see it.
3. Roll some masking tape onto a paperclip, sticky side out, and fish.
4. Unbolt press from bench, tape down powder top, remove primer tube,
and turn the whole thing upside down and jiggle it to see what fall out.
I have never reloaded before. Granted, maybe I shouldn've started with a single-stage, but I hear so many stories about time being saved, and with my engineering history I thought I could handle this.
I can tell the Dillon machine is of good quality, but personally, if I'd designed it, I would've either made the locator pin's heads larger or something like that so that they cannot fall into nearby holes that are larger than them.
I would also have written the manual such that someone with no reloading experience would be better able to assemble and operate the press, and I'd have a diagram of which station is 1, 2, 3, 4.
I may suggest to them that they have an 18-year-old high school grad who's never reloaded before read the manual and try to assemble and operate the press.
Ideas?
*sigh* And things were going so well up until then. Now the handle won't go all the way down and I know I shouldn't force it, so I haven't. Called Dillon and they said I'll need to unbolt the press from my bench and disassemble it.
Folks, I'm not the handiest person with tools, and it took a good long while to bolt that thing to my brand-new bench (which a friend helped build---well, OK, he built it while I 'helped'.) I'm not BAD with tools, just don't have that much experience. Which is odd, since previously I was a mechanical engineer and worked in design and in manufacturing, but I digress...
Is there ANY WAY I could get that pin out of there without disassembling the whole blasted thing? Several ideas have come to mind:
1. Fish around in the primer well with tweezers--already tried.
2. Look with a flashlight to see if I see the pin--already tried, don't see it.
3. Roll some masking tape onto a paperclip, sticky side out, and fish.
4. Unbolt press from bench, tape down powder top, remove primer tube,
and turn the whole thing upside down and jiggle it to see what fall out.
I have never reloaded before. Granted, maybe I shouldn've started with a single-stage, but I hear so many stories about time being saved, and with my engineering history I thought I could handle this.
I can tell the Dillon machine is of good quality, but personally, if I'd designed it, I would've either made the locator pin's heads larger or something like that so that they cannot fall into nearby holes that are larger than them.
I would also have written the manual such that someone with no reloading experience would be better able to assemble and operate the press, and I'd have a diagram of which station is 1, 2, 3, 4.
I may suggest to them that they have an 18-year-old high school grad who's never reloaded before read the manual and try to assemble and operate the press.
Ideas?