Rounds in the last month

I haven’t done any reloading since February. I was working very long hours and finally got that project done earlier this month. And with the COVID-19 thing I didn’t really want to go to the range anyway, so why spend the time reloading ammo I wasn’t going to shoot for a while? When I received the email saying the Area 1 Championship, which I had signed up for last year, was still on I decided it was time to start practicing and reloading.

Today I started reloading some 200 grain bullets in .40 S&W. I only completed round 104 when the indexer return spring broke on my Dillon XL650 press. It sort of looked like I should consider it a consumable and I ordered five of them. At $1.99 (plus $8.49 shipping) I decided to order five so I could quickly replace it when the next one dies.

After ordering I thought about it some more and realized I had never lubricated the spring. If I had it might have lasted longer (I had only reloaded 21,584 rounds when it died).

No matter. I’ll have spares and maybe they will last longer too.

This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223: 7592 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 2,126 rounds.
300 Savage: 50 rounds.
40 S&W: 109,877 rounds.
45 ACP: 2,007 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 144,049 rounds

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3 thoughts on “Rounds in the last month

  1. Springs, a consumable? I understand that’s true for ancient Colt flat main springs. But with modern metallurgy, a spring that breaks in use is defective, misdesigned, or overloaded.
    Messing up a spring during maintenance is a different case; I’ve managed to bend the (very long and slender) recoil spring of a Boberg SR-9 due to not being careful enough putting the slide onto the frame.
    Springs on cars certainly aren’t consumable items; why should springs in reloading presses or guns be any different?

    • The spring is wrapped around the main shaft. It rubs against the shaft as well as partially rotating around the pins it is hooked to on each end. From looking at one end of the broken spring it looked as if it had worn and then broke. This lead me to the conclusion lubrication was important and even then it could be considered consumable.

      This morning I found the other end of the spring and looked at both ends together under a large magnifying glass. It looks more like a clean fracture as the two ends fit together without a wear mark. Also, I can’t see that the break was at a point which would wear. So, I’m thinking more along the lines of a defective spring.

      I’ll try to take some pictures (it’s very small, it may be difficult to get things in focus and large enough) and make a post about it tonight.

  2. Pingback: Broken Dillon XL650 indexer return spring | The View From North Central Idaho

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