JonF

Why the different OAL's? If taking the 4.8gr loads down .015 to 1.120 added 3 PF, i wonder what those 5.1gr loads would register at that length. They would be some screamers for sure!

Bump, price lowered. Will consider trades + cash.

Sweet! Glad to help. The shell feeder is a fantastic addition as it saved quite a bit of time and motion. The bullet feeder, while it is helpful, i'm finding is not as much a time saver as the case feeder. Some good powders for 9mm are VV N320 (clean and soft but its hard to get), Titegroup, Clays (softest shooting you'll ever find), Solo 1000 and some of the AA powders (maybe #5). These are the most common ones you see people using for 9mm minor in the competition circles and as such, are known to perform well. There are other 2nd tier choices like WSF and stuff like that but a lot of those will have less than desirable attributes like you've seen where they are picky, dirty, temp senstitive, harsh recoil, etc. Here's a primer pick up tube tip: use a case reamer tool (The kind for removing/reburring crimp's) to ream the mouth of the plastic tip on the pickup tube. It will relieve some of the pressure the tip exerts on the primer and reduce the effort needed to push the primers past it. IT may not seem like much but when you're loading a few hundred at a clip, your hand will thank you.

Yo baba, do you like your bullet feeder? I just got one and am not sure if its all the helpful yet. The PTX die seems to bind quite a bit and that slows me down a little. Plus, although i'm not putting bullets on shells, i'm kinda pausing to look at everything with each stroke so its almost the same as before except my left hand is idle. Jury is still out yet while i get used to the new rhythm i guess.

Bump. the FEG is still available.

I tried some of the supermax stuff this past weekend and out of 1 box of 50, i had 1 seriously undercharged. Luckily it exited the barrel, but it was so light, it almost sounded like a colibri! I've not shot much of this Aguila ammo or aguila in general, but it seems the consistency isn't quite the same as CCI. Speaking of colibri's and super colibri's, i shoot both out of my lever 22 and both exit the barrel just fine. I even have a 8x10" steel plate that i can hit at 100yds with both although the regular colibri's require some pretty silly holdover. The point is that they still have a decent amount of energy even after exiting the barrel so they are not going to get stuck in normal conditions.

Christ, it just friggen opened!

What Mark said!

Noosh, No, not really. I mean, i can see the graduations just fine. It is a precision dial so just like a target turret on a scope, the graduations are fine so you can dial in precisely what you need. Sometimes adding .1 more grain is just a matter of a few ticks so its good to have that degree of precision. Frankly, if the scale were too coarse, it would be worthless as a precision measure. I have seem people mention that the scale "doesn't match the powder charge weight" and thats just ridiculous nit picking. It's just inherently not possible to match the measure scale to the charge weight since not only are there so many powders with different densities out there, but also the powder measure throws by volume, yet we measure by weight. Frank, I believe there is a micrometer setup for the Dillon measure. It might even be made by teh same folks that make the locking toolhead (i recall we conversed about that in another thread).

Another +meh on the powder drain. Had i not wasted a few bucks on that POS, i'd have 1 more hopper full of powder to load with and not all over my floor. I actually highly recommend the micrometer powder measure insert. You record the setting for every load and its super easy to go back and forth between settings. Its even better when you are doing load development and want to load a few at 4.0, a few at 4.2, a few at 4.4, etc, then easily go back to your regular setting. With the rough stock inserts, you have no referencing and so if you deviate for any reason, the lack of indexing means you're hunting for that old setting again. Plus, without any indexing, you can't tell if the regular insert has ever lost calibration unless you make some kind of mark. Sure you can buy several regular inserts but past 2 or 3, you're losing money vs the micrometer.

Brand new, still in the box. $180 FTF. Product Description The 2SKB-5014 ATA Quad Rife Case is made to ATA 300 Category I specifications - the highest shipping container specification of the ATA. This case is molded from ultra-high density molecular weight polyethylene (the material specified by the U.S. military for cases and containers) and was designed to carry four rifles with SKB's trademarked "bunk-bed" padding and divider protection system. The 2SKB-5014 features SKB's unique Perfect Match Valance Bending System for a perfect seal. This case is weather resistant, stackable, and features bumper protected hardware and solid die case zinc locks, built-in Polymer wheels, and both carry and tow handles for easy transport. Product Features Capable of accommodating four rifles. Internal Dimensions: 50" x 14.5" x 6"; Weight: 30 lbs. Features TSA recognized and accepted trigger release latches. Molded HDPE shell

SOLD

Nice link. I might have to get a couple of those emitters.

Generally with semi-auto's, as you start reducing the powder charge from known "healthy" loads, you generally get slide operational issues before you stick a round in the barrel. Unless you go straight to a true squib load, if you just gradually reduce the charge, you will get all kinds of other failures and still have plenty of "oomph" to clear the barrel. Eventually you will get to that point (And sooner in a rifle), but how much is hard to tell but the sheer lack of any cyclign of the action should be a good indicator. When starting to reduce the charge, you will find that the first thing to be affected is the cycling. First you'll get lethargic ejection as the slide does not reciprocate as forcefully as before. As you reduce the charge even more, you then start to get ejection failiures, aka the Stove Pipe and anything where the spent shell doesn't fully exit the gun. Continuing the trend, you then see failures to feed as the slide may not reciprocate back far enough to strip a new round off the mag and other effects such as failure to c0ck the action. Then you get to the point where the slide may barely move and so what good is a single shot semi-auto even if it recoils like a water gun? You can observe these kinds of effects with the various mid and low velocity and no powder 22LR ammo out there. The low velocity stuff may cycle some guns, but may cause erratic cycling in som guns. The subsonics and "CB" type ammo are guranteed to not function your guns and in some cases, are advised against using in rifles since the CB's may not actually clear a longer barrel. For example, the CCI subsonics will eject, but not feed a new one in my 10/22 since the slide will only go back part way upon recoil whereas the CB's and super Colibri's dont even make the action move!

You generally bell the case in station 2 right before throwing the powder charge, not after. Using a powder check die is never a bad idea. It could eventually catch that one squib/double/undercharge that you happen to miss. Another advantage is that you can pick up your pace a little bit too if you are not leaning over to carefully inspect each powder level every single time.

I have had issues with Wolf LPP primers in my press too. I generally use CCI exclusively, but picked up some Wolf to experiment since they were HALF the price of the CCI! THe primer wouldn';t drop clean out of the tube and the shuttle kept hanging up on it during feeding. I did get them to work better but adding a small chamfer to the shuttle hole opening but i think i'll just avoid them altogether. Searching the net i found other folks having issues with that brand and no others so they are probably of poor tolerance and consistency.

I think I'm going to the Oaks show on saturday morning. Just looking for some odds and ends.

Another one of Vlad's builds now that he's living in America with all this new free time?

I was there. I generally squad up with the same guys every time (ss group) but I didn't see any of the forum folks there. Noosh, were u there (I don't think we've met so I didn't recognize you)?

Hmm, i think i just found a cheaper alternative to Stingers for my comp'd 22 pistol. Thanks Chief!

I'll be there. Like Noosh said, membership issues aside, its still a really fun match and worth the time. I did my first match in sub freezing weather and was grinning ear to ear all day.

Tough to say, thats a very specific request. You might need to get some input from STI themselves or other Trojan users who also shoot a LSWC.

While there are ramped barrel 45ACP 1911's out there, its of little advantage to have one in that configuration. Again, thier biggest benefit is with support for the higher pressure calibers. Ramped barrels also tend to be steeper and narrower than ramped frames and if you reload with a bullet that is know to be finicky in feeding, you may exacerbate the issue by going with that type of system.

With Glocks, its different. It's a product of sloppy chambers and too deep a throat and not solely related to being ramped. Many other manufacturers, if not most, have the same configuration and don't suffer the same excessive "bellying" of cases. Back to 1911's, the "ramped frame" notion is even a bit of a misnomer as its a combination of ramping in the frame and ramping of the barrel which is just some beveling and throating to the bottom edge of the chamber. The issue with that is that its generally done in a very wide fashion for 45's and translating that to a high pressure, smaller diameter case lends itself to lesser overall case support. Combining feeding and support, you are going to compromise something and high pressure cases defintely want more support. You can narrow the ramping and make the throat more shallow but then you make feeding more difficult. Going to a ramped barrel 1911, you let the ramp do the feeding and the chamber can be fully supported so long as you don't throat it too agressively to compensate for feedramp inadequacies or problematic ammo. With this style you split the functions of feeding and supporting and then the high presure cases are happy again.

I meant difference in reliability. How each is ramped is a fact, no need to have a consensus on that. Getting a reliable 9mm 1911 is a crapshoot though. Some brands do it better than others and some feed fine with some types of ammo and not others so it can be frustrating if you get a finicky one. At least the 45 is more of a known quantity so i can't blame you there for wanting something more reliable. My Spartan V is dead reliable and has never had any issue as of yet (though i have only fed it 230gr FMJ ammo).