Recent content by Lucas McDennis

After posting the below, I browsed around and found the answer in another post, which leads to: http://hodgdon.com/PDF/Trail%20Boss%20Reduced%20Loads%20R&P.pdf where Hodgdon explains how to determine max and minimum loads for any rifle cartridge. The simple answer is that there is no way to...

Pleased to hear that, Realbuffdriver. I learned a little more this afternoon and evening though. The stretched spring is indeed somewhat of a band-aid. Blue68f100 brought clearance between shell-plate and sub-plate to my attention, and brought my awareness to the fact that the retainer spring...

I haven't had a lot of experience with the Hornady yet, but I had splendid results with a heavy charge of IMR 4227, acceptable results with a moderate charge of Tightgroup, but Trail Boss is different. It's very bulky, and donut shaped. Those who've tried it all seem to agree that, at least...

Thanks all for your inputs. You gave me enough insight that I figured out what was happening, and a second call to Hornady (Lonnie this time) led to an easy fix. Apparently this is a common problem, especially for tall skinny cases like .357 mag. In fact, I'm willing the bet .357 mag is the...

Thanks guys. Blue68f100: Yes, I have the pistol rotor and standard fittings attached for .357 (in fact a friend of mine, who is NOT having the alignment problem for his .38's, is also having problems using Trail Boss in the Hornaday, and he claims to get better results, though still not very...

Most of my loading experience has been on a pair of Lee Load Masters. I have learned how to keep them running well, and I like them a lot, but heard so many good things about the Hornady press that I just had to have one. After a little playing around with my new Hornady, my first volume...

Given that stubby little LCR barrel, 611 fps may not be too far off the mark. As I said, 3.4 gr Trail Boss behind a properly sized 125 gr cast lead bullet (in .357 cases) averages 755 fps from my pair of 6.5" Blackhawks. Losing 25 fps per inch of barrel length is not unreasonable. With this...

Crooked Stripe, I have lots of CAS experience with thousands of rounds using precisely 3.4 gr Trail Boss under 125 gr cast lead bullets in .357 cases (a "worse" situation than .38 cases for risk of under-charging). I am thorough in testing and record-keeping (not so much though, in spelling...

Thanks very much AlliedArmory. This is exactly what I was looking for. I love THR.

By tweaking, you mean opening up the ID's of one or both collets?

I wouldn't want to tumble cast and lubed bullets in one of those rotating collators, but would like to just manually load up tubes and use the Hornady bullet feeding dies. Can they be made to work with cast bullets? I'm guessing the answer is no, or at least not very well.

Hopefully no lead was in there, but with combined seating/taper-crimp dies and too much crimp you will shave a cast bullet and leave some lead up there. With cast bullets, you'll eventually want to clean your seating and crimp dies. Bullets will stick in the seating die eventually if you...

Just sold one of my Lee Load Masters to help finance the acquisition of a Hornady LNL AP. One of the things I really like about the Load Master is its simple, cheap, and very effective case feeder. I have found it easy to set-up and quite reliable for everything from .380 acp to .44 mag...

¡Ay chihuahua! ¡Muy expensivo!

How will performance differ from the RCBS powder check? Or is this just for the fun of it?