Sales Conspiracy (MEC 650 adjustments)

Just now finished dialing in my 12 ga MEC650 adjustments to run the newer 2-piece AA hulls glitch free. I must have spent 5 or 6 months of futzing with it -- just for a few minutes every few weeks. It's not like I made a concerted effort of it. I just tinkered when I was in the mood and had some time.

Anyhoo, what a bunch of back and forth it requires (at least for me -- and others judging by internet threads)! I suspect it's part of a master plan by MEC to sell more reloading presses. They price 'em cheap enough compared to higher end Posness, Hornady, Dillon et al that you just add multiple machines instead of risking messing with your settings.

When I bought this one used ~6 years ago, it must have been set up for old style AA hulls. It would run the new AA hulls -- mostly.

This is a cutaway view of the old one piece hulls (may they rest in peace).
I just lived with the occasional bulged/wrinkled hull and cheated reshaping some of them in my supersizer (yeah I know, I know -- that's supposed to be a no no). After about 1500 loads that way I finally got fed up and got to reading up on it.

The wads don't sit down in the new 2 piece hulls like the old hulls. They need pressed into that tapered interior cup. Otherwise they don't set at the right depth down on top of the powder column.

Oy. It's a bit of an art form adjusting these -- or at least a secret decoder ring operation. There's a bit of back and forth from one station to another trading off adjustments. I see why so many guys set up for one hull and then leave it. Alone. Forever.
It can be a bit of a mess getting it figured out the first time.


I think I've got it mostly down now and could make a change over reasonably quick if I did it in the next couple weeks. A couple months from now? Yeah, prolly not. I'd almost certainly be mis-remembering stuff and have lost the knack.

The manual only seems to give you about 80% of the recipe. I did a lot of reading on the intrawebz and tried to glean the wisdom from the chaff.
I don't know if this is the right sequence or not but here's generally what I did. There was a bit of back and forth to get to this point.
Ya gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet. Quite a few if you're a bit clueless still on the learning curve.

First off I adjusted the wad pressure to set the wad down in the interior cup in the 2 piece hull. I went to 40 lb's recommended on line but finally backed off to 30 lbs because I was getting a wee crease showing on the hull.

Second I adjusted the crimp starter to leave an opening just a wee bit smaller than a pencil diameter. Mine is the old school style which is adjusted up or down by changing internal shim washers. I ended up working with pennies and dimes. I may go ahead and get the adjustable plastic starter at some point. It has a reversible insert or something for fast change from 6 pt to 8 pt. For now the old school metal 8-pt starter is fine.

Third I adjusted the crimp finishing station to set the crimp depth to match a factory load. I mreasured the depth from the crimp limp down to the fold on a 4 or 5 to get an average depth to set to. I was getting a nice star without any spiral but did have a bit more opening at the center than I liked. I left it for the moment.

4th I raised the final (taper) die a bit. It was set a bit low and was causing the hull to buckle on some shells. This was the main defect that finally got me to try adjusting the press.

5th I went back and experimented with the crimp starter again to try closing down the hole in the crimp center. This is where it got a bit futsy and (I'm sure) my inexperience got in the way. Swapping in different washers/coins, I choked the starter down but that wasn't the answer. I opened it up but that wasn't the answer. I set it back to where it had been leaving just about a #7 1/2 size hole.

Up to this point I had left the mysterious cam on the crimp finishing die linkage alone.
It was near one stop already so I set it to that stop and cycled 4-5 shells through. Nope. Ugly crimps. And so it went for several cycles of tweaking. Change the crimp starter opening, Move the cam. Stare at undesirable result. Then try again. I've got quite a few loads needing me to drip wax on crimp holes before boxing.
I wound up with the crimp starter leaving an opening just smaller than a pencil diameter and the cam back about 30% of it's adjust from one stop.
The trick was finding the right combo of crimp starter depth and cam position that finishes them just about perfect.

Voila!

Good thing I don't do this for a living. /heh/

Yeah, still cheaper than therapy.

Keep your powder dry

There here intraweb thingie with it's free flow of pricing info has taken the peaks and valleys out of pricing for used goods. I dunno if it's lowered or raised the average selling price of things but it's tougher to find the really good deals/steals that make a thrifty Scots heart sing. However, there's deals to be had out there if you keep your powder (cash) dry.

Case in point I came across a fella who'z getting rid of his 9mm bootlitt casting and reloading stash. He didn't want to go on (Fe)ebay to sell and seemed to be looking for cash sooner rather than later (no waiting for auction to run it's course). Worked good for me this time Got a mess of 9mm cast boolitts (2400 147grain, 500 Lee 121 gr FP boolits) and 9mm brass (1000 1x fired) for ~30% below the going auction rate.


The Red, White and Blue truck of happiness dropped off the goodies Friday (or was it Saturday).


As he carried them to the shop door the Postman asked my wife, "What's (ungghh) in (ungghh) these (unnggghh) boxes?"

Said she, "My husband's making bullets (sic) and getting ready for Armageddon."

Nah, just a day or two at the range. /heh

Anyhoo, I finally got around to unpacking them in a spare moment this evening.
That's a mess of boolits!I'm set for 9mm for quite a while now -- or set with some good trading/barter stock.

Salesman of the month

Ad at local gun store hails Obama as their salesman of the month. The boss says sales are up 300% since election day. Mostly EBR related stuff (Evil Black Rifles). The rush to stock home armories has extended to other stuff too -- like reloading supplies.

I went looking for a lb of a particular powder to experiment with some new 30-30 loads. It seems there's an overlap between powder with burn rates suitable for 30-30 loading and the .223 (5.56mm) loads popular in AR-15's.

The local shop was cleaned out.
"Any Varget in stock?" asked I.
"Nope."
"W748?" "Nope."
"3031?" "Nope."
"Reloader 15?" "Nope."
"BL-C(2)?" "Nope."
"AA2460?" "Nope."

"Shipment due Wednesday." says the gunstore clerk.
"OK, thanks." says I.

I headed off to the range to see what they had in stock.

Right off the cuff, the (National Trap team member) sales girl knew my first choice, Varget, was out of stock.
"How about Reloader 15?"
"I'll check in back" said she.

She came back with 2 lbs. "This is all we've got."
"Sold!" says I. "I'll take a bag of 7 1/2 shot while I'm at it."


Yee-hah. Even at inflated retail prices I was a happy camper. I've gotten spoiled buying in bulk for Powder Valley. Reckon I better get to thinking about another bulk order -- need to see about lining up reloader friends at work and in the area to spread the shipping and hazmat costs around.

At the reloading bench...

The Brown truck of happiness came today. Dropped off a box of 100 Hornady .308 160gr FTX bullets. aka The new soft/flex tip "Leverevolution" bullets.



I'm running out of excuses to finish some 30-30 loads; just need to find suitable powder in stock locally. That's been a bit tricky lately since the Obama-run-on-guns&ammo started.

Also brought a replacement cutter for my Lee case trimmer. Lost track of the 20+ year old one when I moved from old portable loading cabinet to new bench last year.

Still cheaper than therapy.

Headed out the door this morning. Looked at the storm starting outside, the swirling wind, the rain starting and knew what lay ahead. Rain commutes in SoCal = potential insanity, guaranteed gridlock.

Stopped to check the lock on the garage side door and noted about half a tube of primers still on tap in my press. Well, why not pull a few?



Ran a few minutes till primer tube emptied. Then locked up and got in the car -- mellowed and ready to roll. Made it to my desk uneventfully.

Ahh, rhythms.

Roll Tide!

h/t to Lex for this news item.

I understand why Lex being an officer and gentleman, student of international affairs and all, wonders why there's been a run on ammuntion at Walmarts in Alabama. He poses a reasonable possiblity. However, it seems intuitively obvious to me that it's not necessarily 'cause of the Russian invasion of Georgia. Well maybe -- Georgia being raw't next door to 'Bama and all. O'course it may just be 'cause a) the gungrabbers are having their National Convention, b) Michelle spoke last night and c) Hillary speaks tonight. Either way you slice it... :-)

So that gives rise to a perennial and much debated question among gunnies, hunters, shooters, and reloaders. To wit, "How much ammunition/how large a reloading component stash is enough?" It's an unanswerable question. Well except for the obvious answer, "There's no such thing as 'too much.'"

I reckon that once't a feller starts thinking about building an outdoor, underground magazine detached from his house for storage he's gittin' to a reasonable minimum inventory. That raw't thar's the space I'll be converting (Deo Volente) to a powder/primer/ammo magazine... heh, heh, heh. Charlton Heston, RIP.

Score!

Just scored this bench in an auction of surplus material at work. Won it for $20. Yeah baby!

20 dollars. Twenty bucks. Veinte dollares.
HAH! For twenty bucks I could hardly pay for the hardware to put together a bench from salvaged (free) wood.

This one is std desk height -- perfect level for my MEC 650 shotshell reloader.

Now to get it home and clear some clutter from the back of the tool shed. The jointer is going to have to be relocated. Hmm...