Once you become grooved-in on the operation of your Dillon reloading machine, you’ll find you get an immense amount of feedback through the handle. The sensations that come through the handle as you’re cycling it to operate the machine can alert you to potential problems before they become real problems.
I strongly suggest NOT operating the handle vigorously up-and-down; rather a slow, moderate stroke is what’s needed, giving you time to pay attention to what’s happening, the “feels” through the handle.
To start with, as you cycle the handle, if you get a “chunk” feeling, and the handle stops, that means the case at the resizing station wasn’t fully inserted into the shellplate, it’s a little off-center. Stop, back off slightly on the handle, pulling the ram down just slightly, push the case in until it’s centered, then continue on. MUCH preferable to forcing the handle and crunching a case at the resizing station.
When seating a primer, slow down as the time comes to seat, then apply light pressure to start. If you feel the primer begin to seat, no problems, then increase the amount of force and complete the action. If you suddenly feel movement stop, and the primer does not begin to seat, STOP IMMEDIATELY. If you’re handloading .45 ACP, it’s quite possible you’ve gotten a small-primer case mixed-in with your large-primer brass. Pull the case out of the machine, check the primer. If it’s small-primered, you can either set it aside until you have enough small-primer .45 ACP cases to justify switching over the priming system in your machine to handload them, or you could do what I do, and instantly deposit that case into the trash where it belongs.
There’s a very distinctive sensation that comes through the handle when you have a primer turned sideways at the primer seating station, there’s resistance, but much lighter than if the primer were oriented correctly. Granted you catch it in time, before you’ve deformed the primer, you can pull that case out of the machine, remove the primer from the primer pocket with your fingers, insert the primer back into the machine oriented correctly, then the case, and complete seating it. The real solution to this is to adjust your machine’s priming system so it doesn’t turn primers sideways. This is quite possible, but a topic for another article.
At the bullet seating station, you need to keep your fingers on the bullet, holding it straight up-and-down, until it’s entered the die. If you remove your fingers too soon, the bullet could flop over, laying lengthwise across the case mouth, and the bullet can crunch the case instead of being seated. Again, pay attention to sensations coming through the handle. When this happens it’s very distinctive. It’s another “chunk” feeling, but further through the stroke than if it were a case misaligned at the resizing station. If you catch this before you’ve put any real force into the bullet-seating stroke, therefore you haven’t deformed either the bullet or the case, you can back off on the handle stroke a bit, realign the bullet, then complete the process.
Learn your machine, learn how to analyze the feedback it gives you through the handle, learn what certain issues feel like, use a slow, moderate stroke on the handle that gives you time to detect problems, and rectify them. This is one of the real hallmarks of the skilled, experienced handloader.
