I went red. Hornady LNL

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Well that's weird. Just stuck a spent primer cup on the bottom of the primer seater punch....it can fit up in the nut body... measured before and after how far the pusher extends above the sub plate. Primer cup gave it an additional .020" travel. Tried to prime a case and still wont seat any deeper. Best I can do on the hornady is .001" past flush no matter how many times I try to reseat it or force applied. And every single one I can walk over to the single stage with and they drop right down to fully inserted at .0035-.004 without any abnormal force.

Lee primer Seater punch is .003" larger diameter than the hornady also. Thought maybe its hitting the case.
 
Yup screwed in snugged with wrench. Blown it out a few times. I'll try the dime thing out and see if that changes anything.
 
Oh! Something else to watch out for... on mine, the powder measure liked to rotate over time, and would eventually "unlock" the LNL bushing, if that makes sense. Suddenly, the case no longer actuated the powder measure, instead just pushing the whole powder measure up in the air (producing a very light powder charge)
Click to expand...

Hornady has some shims that address the issue if you have it but I just used a couple wraps of teflon plumbers tape around the bushing.
 
Suedenflames68 said:
A lot of dillon users certainly seem to have an intense brand loyalty,
Click to expand...

Dillon users find your decision curious

CourageousBitterBronco-size_restricted.gif
 
I'm beginning to find it curious as well. Expected to have to do some initial setup stuff which I didnt think would be a big deal.

Tried the dime. Didnt change anything. I'm missing something, just dont know what it is. Putting the primer cup on the bottom of the punch and verifying that it increases the throw of the primer punch seater and then having it not being able to seat primer deeper baffles me. And again I take the brass over to the single stage press with its short handle and with way less effort on the handle it goes right in to being fully seated...done it 20+ times now with same results.

Even played with the pawls, even though they looked perfect, just to make sure I understood how it was working, and they are good to go. Tried moving case all around when priming to eliminate any alignment issue without any different outcome.

With the increased throw the primer cup gave, i think that eliminates a mechanical stop happening that would limit primer depth. I cant see even grinding the nut making a difference, cause that accomplishes the same thing of increasing the throw, just with a different method.... unless the cup was hanging up on the nut body under load of priming but not without load. Had same amount of shell plate rock/flex with the cup as without, and eating up that additional .020" of throw would take a lot of flex anyway.

I get about .050" above the subplate set up factory, and goes up to about .070" with the cup on there.



My shims just got here. Guess I'll try those when I get done changing the oil in my car.

Any ideas are welcome and appreciated. And if anyone has those measurements of primer seater punch above subplate for comparison that would be fantastic!

James
 
If you are goi g to shim the sub plate I wouldn’t go more than 4 or 5 thou and check all shell plates to make sure they don’t drag as they are all different.
I tried it on my LNL and ended up with a 2 thou shim. But then again my LNL sets primers close to 5 thou.
 
Yeah that's gonna be the bummer of shimming it. If the plates arent all exactly the same might have to do that again during caliber changes. Kinda ruins quick change overs. So far only have 9mm and 45 colt cause the colt was clearanced for $20 for some reason. All the others I need are almost $10 cheaper online so was gonna order for 380/223 , 40/10mm, 45acp, 38/357, and others later to save a few bucks.

Cut a piece of saw blade that will definitely not interfere with or contact nut body to see if that makes a difference in seating depth/effort.

James
 
Suedenflames68 said:
With the increased throw the primer cup gave, i think that eliminates a mechanical stop happening that would limit primer depth. I cant see even grinding the nut making a difference, cause that accomplishes the same thing of increasing the throw, just with a different method.... unless the cup was hanging up on the nut body under load of priming but not without load. Had same amount of shell plate rock/flex with the cup as without, and eating up that additional .020" of throw would take a lot of flex anyway.
Click to expand...

Shell plate deflection was what I found to be the cause of poor primer seating also. I remedied it by replacing the stock shell plate bolt with a shouldered bolt. I also added a large thick fender washer between the bolt and shell plate. That reduced the amount of flex where I can now seat primers properly.
 
Thanks peels. Got really excited at that idea. Had a huge 1/4" thick washer and a longer bolt with wide flange built into the head in my bins . Seemed to help a little. Actually got one down to .002 with that but still took unreasonable pressure. And that's with my saw blade shim under the punch....and was too thick to cycle press, hit the top and limited travel. Had a thinner large washer and used it with stock bolt and washer and it helped measured deflection a couple thousandths, but left me stuck at the .001 as max depth.

Palm is sore today from how hard I'm pushing this thing. Started using 2 hands on the knob and using my 250lbs to better effect.... still walk over to single stage and without discomfort from my sore palm gently press these primers down to fully seated afew thousandths deeper than the lnl can do.

Saw blade too thick to leave (and apparently not really helping) there at about .040" . Gotta raise press a little to slide brass in if primer present. But eliminates mechanical stop of primer seating punch as an issue. Nut will still contact frame with no case in that location. But doesnt when priming. Just dont get where all this force is going if it's not going to the primer.

With that big of a shim under the punch I cant see the few thousandths I'd get from the arbor shims making a difference either.

Taking a break from this thing for the rest of the day unless there's more exciting ideas I cant resist

Thanks
James
 
This whole primer seating deal has me a bit confused. Aside from not removing enough crimp from 223 brass I've never had any issue with my LNL AP priming system. The only thing that would make sense to me is if you're using the large primer seating punch on small primers.
 
Yup definitely has me confused too. Even measured diameter of punch and its smaller than the lee by .003" .

I couldn't leave it alone. Drilled out a primer pocket .008" bigger than a primer to run around into the primer stage and a primer will slip in and out of the brass without disturbing it till its bottomed out to confirm timing after I played with it some more.

Not super accurate measurements...just with a tape measure. Lnl has .75" handle movement to drop ram 3/16" for priming.

Lee single stage has 1" handle movement for 3/16" even with it's 5" shorter handle.

Might just be a leverage disadvantage but doesnt seem like enough to make the difference I'm experiencing. Maybe the shell plate flex eats a lot more force than seems to make sense. dunno.
 
My LNL-AP's primer punch only sticks up about a 1/16" above the subplate. I've not had any trouble priming cases to up to .005 under flush with normal pressure except for Remington 5 1/2 s. I could only get about .001- .002 below flush on my cases with my #8 shell plate.
With CCIs, Winchesters, and Fiocchi primers they are right where I want them.

So your primer seating problem is really strange. I put a flat washer on my shell plate,
This is a pic of the ram on mine bottomed out.
primer punch.jpg
I'll try to remember to bring my feeler gauges home tomorrow to get you some measurements to compare against.
 
With the shell plate tightened down to the drive hub, how much up/down free play do you have? My press is almost nil, just enough that you can tell there is some slop there, but less than .010"
 
I would check the clearance between the shell plate and base. Mine runs 0.002"-0.003" less is better as long as it does not bind. And check to make sure the base is secured to the ram, 2 allen head screws. I have not measured mine primer seater but it's at a min of 1/16" above the base plate. I drilled where the divot was and put in a steel plug, sets a few 1/1000s high.

If your spilling powder during index you can back out the detents to lessen the snap.
 
Got arbor shims installed that go under the sub plate to tighten the gap to the shell plate. Had to do it 5 times. Started with the .004" one and still had big gap. Jumped up to .008 and it was perfect. Amazing! Had that .002 -.003 gap. Primers seated the same as on my single stage! Still a little more pressure to do it but nothing crazy. Fixed!...... until....

I tried my 45 colt shell plate on there and it was locked up. Backed it all the way back down to the .004 shim I stuck in there originally :( it spins, but still tight. Probably should go down another .

So colt should work nice and tight and seat primers good. 9mm primers seat to about .0025 on average now where it was .0035-.004 with the bigger shim just like my single stage. So back not fully seated.

Seems like a lot of variance on these plates if they affect it that much. About .006 difference in subplate gap between the 2.... what's it gonna be when I get the other calibers I'm gonna want.
 
Suede,
I don't know what it may be that's giving you the issues. But, on my one press that I use for all the other calibers, small and large primers, I don't have any big issues with priming. I am NOT using the shims as I played with it and found that they would go quickly into drag mode for me. So, I'm just using the various shell plates with the lock washer, and the dime under (was glued) under the primer punch. As I said above, the only times I've had primer issues were when the shell plate was loose.
Out of curiosity, what cases are you loading? Might they be crimped primers?
 
It's all pmc brass. No crimps. I'd start trying other brands of brass and primers if they didn't seat so dang easy on my single stage. Even tried cleaning primer pockets on some to no avail. Weren't very dirty anyway.

James
 
The small amount of PMC brass that I have typically only allow primer seating to be flush or so slightly below flush. I think you are crushing the primers on the single stage inorder to seat deeper.
 
I guess i have to admit that could be a possibility. Though they do seat to that depth very easily and pretty consistently on the single stage and turret. Seems strange I wouldn't be able to do the same (even if I was in fact crushing them) on the new hornady no matter how hard I pushed even with the spacers I tried that increased primer punch travel, with the exception of when the shell plate was nice and tight. Effort to seat them even seemed reduced then, though still more than the other presses.

I'll explore the seating depth in those cases. Maybe cut one in half and or drill another pocket out making sure I'm not increasing the depth and measure. I need some better calipers. I don't trust the depth measurement on the end of the handle to be accurate enough to compare the thickness of the primer to the depth of the pocket....zeros aren't the same, but repeatable. So works well enough to compare one depth to another or one thickness to another. I'll still see what it says tho. Maybe I can get my dial indicator in there.
 
please ... PLEASE ... PLEASE. go to post titled (what clever little things have you "invented or discovered" that you can share) then go to post # 1334. Follow it and your problem will go away. I can set my primers with two fingers on all four of my ammo-plants. The primer has to be perfectly under the primer pocket to go in smoothly.
 
DRAINSMITH said:
please ... PLEASE ... PLEASE. go to post titled (what clever little things have you "invented or discovered" that you can share) then go to post # 1334. Follow it and your problem will go away. I can set my primers with two fingers on all four of my ammo-plants. The primer has to be perfectly under the primer pocket to go in smoothly.
Click to expand...

Two finger seating would be amazing. I'll give it a try! I was 1/3 of the way there with drilling out a primer pocket. :) I'll cut it for viewing window and tap up those ball detents and give it another go. Thanks!

James
 
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