Presses

Just broke a pawl of my Hornady LnL, and the primer assembly is giving me fits. They are closed on Saturday, but sent an email, expect they’ll send me a free replacement.

man the primmer slider on mine is about the only gripe I forget about. It works great when i keep it lubed lol.
 
man the primmer slider on mine is about the only gripe I forget about. It works great when i keep it lubed lol.
My only problem with the primer slider is caused by the crappy primer tube assembly.

I took a wrench with me to Cabelas today thinking I might talk a guy that knows me into letting me borrow a pawl from their display press that is already missing all small parts, but he wasn’t working.
 
Ive run every powder u can run in an AR thru my 650 with their charge bar, Redding BR dropper and Lee Auto drum. Measure every powder drop and then tell me its accurate and repeatable. Those 3 devices will vary anywhere from 0.1grn (which is totally acceptable to me if any one of them would consistently do that) to 1.5grns over. I'll load blasting/plinking ammo for 223/556 on the 650 by dropping but match ammo gets weighed.
I never noticed that much variance with my Dillon. Most of what I have done on the Dillon, however, are pistol loads. So I am using the small charge bar, small drops, and generally +/- 0.1gn. Some powders, such as large flake or stick powders, are problematic, though. I've had some success with the large flake powders by strapping an aquarium air pump to the hopper - the vibration helps settle the powder more consistently into the charge bar. I recently started loading 223 on the 550, and I use the Lee Auto-Drum measure for that. I does a better job than the Dillon when it comes to extruded powders. I'm like you, though, I measure each drop for my precision loads.
 
With a flake powder such as Unique or Blue Dot, the worst variance was .3 grains. A fine ball powder such as 296 or 231 was dead on every time.
 
I may have a unique prespective as I have 3 progressive presses set up on my bench right now a lee loadmaster will load good ammo (I do not prime on it I use a hand primer ) needs to be "tinkered with occasionally set up for .45acp. Lee has been outstanding when I have broken parts. Next up a hornady LNL AP with case feeder good press the case feed system has a problem with setting down the cases in front of the slider (they sometimes fall off) many people use a cut down 12 ga hull to help guide the case into position its set up for 9mm hornady has been good with support on broken parts (lee was better support) then I have a Dillon xl650 with case feeder it is much smoother than either of the others I have not broken any parts so I don't know how support will be its set up for 40 S&W I use lee 4 die sets in all of them. for switching calibers the easiest is the Dillon followed by the lee then the hornady. If I had to do it over I would go with 2 XL650s one with small primer and one with large primer set ups and never look back
 
I may have a unique prespective as I have 3 progressive presses set up on my bench right now a lee loadmaster will load good ammo (I do not prime on it I use a hand primer ) needs to be "tinkered with occasionally set up for .45acp. Lee has been outstanding when I have broken parts. Next up a hornady LNL AP with case feeder good press the case feed system has a problem with setting down the cases in front of the slider (they sometimes fall off) many people use a cut down 12 ga hull to help guide the case into position its set up for 9mm hornady has been good with support on broken parts (lee was better support) then I have a Dillon xl650 with case feeder it is much smoother than either of the others I have not broken any parts so I don't know how support will be its set up for 40 S&W I use lee 4 die sets in all of them. for switching calibers the easiest is the Dillon followed by the lee then the hornady. If I had to do it over I would go with 2 XL650s one with small primer and one with large primer set ups and never look back
To fix the case feed issue on the LnL I replaced the support bracket for the case feeder, that is the square red tube. The cast bracket for the pivot mounts to this tube, and the screw for mounting it applies enough pressure to distort the tube which throws it out of alignment. The other cause of the problem is having a case hang up in the mechanism so that it falls from the pivot all the way to the plate in front of the v-block, this is usually an adjustment issue caused by the threaded rod that controls the amount of pivot becoming loose.

Oh, and Hornady did send me the free replacement parts that I needed. Not sure how they thought a new lg primer pickup tube is supposed to help, but they included one and I don’t mind having another since it fits my RCBS bench primer, a wonderful tool!
 
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To fix the case feed issue on the LnL I replaced the support bracket for the case feeder, that is the square red tube. The cast bracket for the pivot mounts to this tube, and the screw for mounting it applies enough pressure to distort the tube which throws it out of alignment. The other cause of the problem is having a case hang up in the mechanism so that it falls from the pivot all the way to the plate in front of the v-block, this is usually an adjustment issue caused by the threaded rod that controls the amount of pivot becoming loose.

Oh, and Hornady did send me the free replacement parts that I needed. Not sure how they thought a new lg primer pickup tube is supposed to help, but they included one and I don’t mind having another since it fits my RCBS bench primer, a wonderful tool!

I have nothing against the hornady lnl and if it was a choice between it and a Dillon 550 I would (and did) take the lnl I hated my (550 I hate having to index) the LNL did take more tinkering to set it up. the Dillon just seems (so far) to be just more of a easier set up and leave it alone press
 
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