Bit of a setback this evening.
More of a 'come to Jesus' moment. One of my realizations is that unless you have something like a powder cop for a progressive press, you're taking a real leap of faith.
I recently bought this press from am ODT member with a pretty complete setup for 9mm and 40S&W, along with bullets and a heap of brass, so I thought I could get to learn the setup and techniques and I'd be away to the races.
Well, so much for THAT. Getting this all setup took a while - I dismantled, cleaned and degreased all the parts, ordered in some spares and additional bits like bullet feed tubes, adjusted the indexing pawls that advance the shell plate, took my sweet time in adjusting the primer drop mechanism (all well-known pain points on Hornady presses) and thought I'd done a swell job.
And so, couple days ago, finally got all the (careful) setup completed, and loaded 50 rounds of 124gr 9mm with a 'starting load' - these will be just for testing and plinking.
After running them thru' the press, I stopped the process every 5 or 6 rounds to weigh the powder that the measure had dropped. Consistent 4.8gr of CFE Pistol for the whole sample.
I measured the OAL of every round, and plunk tested them in what I think is probably my tightest chamber (CZ 75 SP01) and everything looked great. Set them aside and went about my business.
Then the doubts started.
Am I really sure that I didn't double or zero dose any of the brass? In all the excitement, I'd still managed to watch very closely what I was doing and any interruptions to the process resulted in me particularly checking that there had been a drop of 4.8gr of powder.
So I thought - better be safe than sorry - and so tonight I pulled all the bullets and measured the powder from every case. Note to all - a press-mounted bullet puller is a lifesaver when you want to cleanly de-bullet more than a couple of rounds!
What did I see? No double charges, but two empty cases - effectively a 4% failure rate - which after the care I thought I'd taken - is obviously lousy QA. The good news is that for the other 48 of the rounds, the weight came in at a consistent 4.8 gr.
So what next? I had ordered an RCBS Lock-out die a couple days ago (which is basically a more elegant powder cop) and hopefully that'll save me from noob errors once it arrives in the next few days. I know my primary aim is going to be reloading to make carefully tuned subsonic ammo, but I do want to get the bullets safely out of the barrel.
The moral of the story? I have a lot to learn, including some humility.
More of a 'come to Jesus' moment. One of my realizations is that unless you have something like a powder cop for a progressive press, you're taking a real leap of faith.
I recently bought this press from am ODT member with a pretty complete setup for 9mm and 40S&W, along with bullets and a heap of brass, so I thought I could get to learn the setup and techniques and I'd be away to the races.
Well, so much for THAT. Getting this all setup took a while - I dismantled, cleaned and degreased all the parts, ordered in some spares and additional bits like bullet feed tubes, adjusted the indexing pawls that advance the shell plate, took my sweet time in adjusting the primer drop mechanism (all well-known pain points on Hornady presses) and thought I'd done a swell job.
And so, couple days ago, finally got all the (careful) setup completed, and loaded 50 rounds of 124gr 9mm with a 'starting load' - these will be just for testing and plinking.
After running them thru' the press, I stopped the process every 5 or 6 rounds to weigh the powder that the measure had dropped. Consistent 4.8gr of CFE Pistol for the whole sample.
I measured the OAL of every round, and plunk tested them in what I think is probably my tightest chamber (CZ 75 SP01) and everything looked great. Set them aside and went about my business.
Then the doubts started.
Am I really sure that I didn't double or zero dose any of the brass? In all the excitement, I'd still managed to watch very closely what I was doing and any interruptions to the process resulted in me particularly checking that there had been a drop of 4.8gr of powder.
So I thought - better be safe than sorry - and so tonight I pulled all the bullets and measured the powder from every case. Note to all - a press-mounted bullet puller is a lifesaver when you want to cleanly de-bullet more than a couple of rounds!
What did I see? No double charges, but two empty cases - effectively a 4% failure rate - which after the care I thought I'd taken - is obviously lousy QA. The good news is that for the other 48 of the rounds, the weight came in at a consistent 4.8 gr.
So what next? I had ordered an RCBS Lock-out die a couple days ago (which is basically a more elegant powder cop) and hopefully that'll save me from noob errors once it arrives in the next few days. I know my primary aim is going to be reloading to make carefully tuned subsonic ammo, but I do want to get the bullets safely out of the barrel.
The moral of the story? I have a lot to learn, including some humility.
