I had a pretty decent pass rate on ammo QA with the Lee Pro1000. I didn’t really keep any stats on it; I didn’t think I’d ever need to prove it out.

The new (to me) Dillon press had an even better rate, at least to begin with. When I did have a QA failure rate that crept up kind of unnoticed, I first blamed the brass, but in the last post I revealed that I had found the real reason, which on the surface was a loose nut. That loose nut may have been me, but the point is now I have the press all readjusted and probably even better than before.

I loaded a box worth of 40S&W night before last. If my goal is “a box of ammo”, I don’t particularly count them as I’m loading them, but I know what about a box of ammo looks like in the output tray. I happened to have loaded 59 rounds when I stopped. I put them, one at a time, into my gauge block and of the 50 rounds it holds, I had one that didn’t quite drop into the gauge block freely and it was towards the end of the block.

The thing is that I don’t think I have ever had 40-something rounds in a row drop freely into the gauge block, even when I thought the ammo QA process was going along swimmingly. This tells me that I have the press adjusted better than I ever have.

To verify the dimensions, I put the calipers on 10 fairly random rounds out of the finished box. Overall length was 1.125″ +/- 0.002″ and case mouth diameter was 0.419″ +/- 0.001″

The failed round was good on OAL, but read 0.422″ at the case mouth. This round did drop unimpeded into the actual chamber of the Lone Wolf barrel in the pistol, so I am confident that this particular degree of “failure” is not worth rejecting the round.

As for what I was loading, I finally ran out of Power Pistol, so I have put in my next experimental powder, Winchester 231. I bought a pound of it quite some time ago based on a recommendation for it as a soft shooting powder for 40S&W. They were right. With 3.7 grains pushing a 180 grain bullet, it was a joy to shoot in a match last night. I could probably reduce the charge even more, but I need to see what it’s doing on the chronograph first.

So joyous, in fact, that I made 6th overall in the standings again. That’s two weeks in a row. To fully disclose, a fair number of the club’s better shooters were down in Bellville for some match I couldn’t attend this time, and one particular Master class shooter had to leave early, so I might not have placed so well had they all been there. Doesn’t matter, 6th overall! 🙂