[NC Shooter]

For Christmas my wife got me a Dillon 550B reloading press. Yesterday I shot my first 50 reloads from it and have become hooked!!

My groups were much tighter and more consistent than with factory loads not to mention reloading is just plain fun! Started out with some fairly light loads and now will try some experimentation with other loads to see if I can improve on yesterdays results.

Mark

[jerry]

You lucky dog! The Dillons are nice. I'm still stuck on single stage. Of course my shooting volume has peaks and valleys in it. Sometimes I can justify it sometimes I can't.

Hey, just curious. Can you hunt/shoot in Carolina on Sunday? Some guy told me this long ago. I can't remember if it was N. or S. Carolina, or mabe Virginia. He could have been mistaken all around?

[NC Shooter]

Quote:      

Originally posted by jerry You lucky dog! The Dillons are nice. I'm still stuck on single stage. Of course my shooting volume has peaks and valleys in it. Sometimes I can justify it sometimes I can't. Hey, just curious. Can you hunt/shoot in Carolina on Sunday? Some guy told me this long ago. I can't remember if it was N. or S. Carolina, or mabe Virginia. He could have been mistaken all around?

Thanks, I do like the press and even moving slowly it still churns out a bunch of amo in a short time.

I can't answer your question about hunting on Sunday for sure, but I believe I have seen hunters out on Sundays around here.

Mark

[CHEK52]

Hey NC:

Dillons are great but be careful. I had a "Dillon Square Deal" press that I used for reloading 45ACP. I had the enlightening experience of setting off a full tube of large pistol primers. It wasn't a defect in the press but my fault. I had a primer that seemed to seat hard. Instead of stopping at that point and checking out what was wrong, I figured I'd give it (handle) another shove. Wrong answer! I crushed that primer, it went off and started a chain reaction. Luckily the Dillons are built tough. The tube held and the primers ended up imbedded in my ceiling! There was a small burn mark on my powder hopper (it was half full of BullsEye powder). After my wife stopped yelling about "scaring the sh*#" out of her, I called Dillon and explained what I did. The next week I received replacement parts from Dillon at no charge! After using these type presses for a while you will develop a "feel" for how it operates. If you think theres something wrong, stop and check it out! Another common problem is double charges. Depending on what caliber your reloading check out the filled cases before you seat the bullet. some calibers (like the 45 ACP) are much easier to spot a double charge. One trick I discovered was to tape a small inspection mirror (adjustable head) to the press and angle it so that I could see inside the case without constantly leaning forward. I would also check your powder charges with a scale every twenty rounds or so. Better to be safe than sorry.

[NC Shooter]

Chek52,

Thanks for the advice. I have already noticed that there is a "feel" to this press. You can tell when each operation is happening and what is going wrong. I have also learned that it does not need any forcing, and if it does there is something wrong.

You really spit out a bunch of loads once you get the into the swing of reloading, but I have also learned to be carefull.

MArk