New to me Dillon 550B

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06-27-2009, 08:03 PM
smith357

New to me Dillon 550B

Just picked up a new press and learning its quirks, so far it seems to be a good press. The action is smooth and positive and works well when I remember to index it. I got it used from a friend who no longer reloads, it came with 4 tool heads for .45acp .45 Colt .9mm and .223
There are a few things I'm on the fence about as to wheather or not I like, I'm used to using my Lee 1000 auto indexing press with automatic case feeder. First is the manual indexing, then there is no case feeder so that is another extra step, and the primer feed is also much more cumbersome than the Lee 1000. On the Lee I just pull the primer tray, fill it and then put it back into the machine. The Dillon requires me to load a tray, then pick out the primer one by one with a tool, then drop them into the feed tube. One nice thing on the dillon is the low primer alarm the beeps when the feed tube gets low on primers. The other big plus is the quick change ability, it takes 30 seconds to change out tool heads, about 2 minutes to swap shell plates and 2 minutes to swap primer bars, so o can go from 9mm to .45 colt in about 5 minutes.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...g/IMG_4274.jpg
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06-27-2009, 08:14 PM
Anonymous D

Id love to have a nice reloading setup. My grandfather has some old stuff Ive been meaning to pull out and see what he has.
06-27-2009, 08:59 PM
fm2176

That's better than what I have. Now that I have a house I have no excuse other than lack of funds to start reloading.
06-28-2009, 12:54 PM
smith357

Quote:

Originally Posted by fm2176

That's better than what I have. Now that I have a house I have no excuse other than lack of funds to start reloading.

With the rising cost and scarcity of components right now is may not be a good time to get into reloading. just trying to get primers and powder over the last few months has been very agrivating. My friend that sold me the press happend to have a large supply of primers that I snagged. I also got 5000 pieces of .45acp brass and bullets, 1000 .223 brass and a second tumbler.

It seems as thought the buying frenzy is slowing down a bit, I found my powder at a local shop a month ago and they still had plenty last week when I stopped buy to get tumbling media.

Also it really depends on how much you shoot, it does take a while for the initial investment to pay off. The most basic starter kits cost $200 and go up from there. All told I probaly have well over 2k worth of reloading gear, but I shoot a couple hundred rounds per week.
06-29-2009, 07:28 AM
fm2176

Well, the lack of funds will be for the foreseeable future. Too many things to do around the house and the children literally eat up a lot of money.
06-29-2009, 07:17 PM
Anonymous D

Wanna sell some .223? :D
06-30-2009, 05:14 PM
smith357

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anonymous D

Wanna sell some .223? :D

Too much liability and legal crap to go through to manufacture ammunition for resale. :(
06-30-2009, 06:39 PM
Anonymous D

Quote:

Originally Posted by smith357

Too much liability and legal crap to go through to manufacture ammunition for resale. :(

Yea. Ive heard of some people getting their guns royally fucked up due to buying reloads too. I saw this one guy who bought and M1 Garand and some reloaded bullets from the same shop that sold him the gun. First shot it exploded. He opened the other bullets up and saw that the powder was all the way to the bottom of the bullet itself.