Dan -
I'm scanning the northerly sky for smoke this morning and don't see any, so that 'brain fire' can't be too bad.
Time to throw on some gasoline !!
• So for the competitor, the 2 most significant areas are
Final OAL and
Taper Crimp. In 15 years of answering these questions, those are the 2 areas that repeat over and over.
Sometimes with the same student ! Get those 2 things right and everything else pretty much falls into place. But also notice, those are
both reloading press adjustments. So of all the adjustments on the 650 (which you said you wanted to understand),
the die adjustments are the most critical.
• Sizing Die. Here you have 2 competing interests: length of sizing and carbide care. You want to size as much of any brass as you can. To do that you want the die to come as far down as possible. However, if the die slams into the shellplate you run the risk of breaking the very extremely fragile carbide ring that actually does the work. With no brass in the machine, lower the op lever till you hit the "stop". Now
slowly lower the Sizing Die until you see the Tool Head start to rise. STOP ! Lock the die right there.
The 650 Tool Head has about 0.020" available up-and-down free play. So
if you can see the Tool Head rise, then all the clearance is gone.
However, you should ALSO be able to pull a sheet of paper out from between the bottom of the die and the shellholder at the top of the op lever stroke. That tiny clearance means the carbide ring isn't being hammered. This adjustment should take about 10 minutes.
• Powder Die. The important thing about this is that the height of the powder die sets the amount of belling. Obviously you want the minimum belling that still allows bullet seating. To work with this you'll need to run about 25 cases through the press and simply experiment. Note that due to variations in case length your
belling will also vary. Therefore, you're looking for best
average belling. This is the only adjustment I change because "best seating" will vary with different dia bullets.
• Seating Die. Dillon dies adjust OAL by moving the entire Seating Die up/down. This is a new adjustment made with every bullet change. So you don't want to lock the adjuster down hard. My answer is to place a fat o-ring under the lock nut. This allows adjustment by hand, but the setting is still solid enough that once set it doesn't ever change. Regardless of die brand, you can use this trick. (Lee and Hornady dies come with similar acting rubber shims.)
Dillon die with a fat o-ring taken from a Lee lock ring• Taper Crimp. This is already covered in the Stickies. Nothing in competition will have you finish in
last place faster than poor taper crimp. Pay attention !
• So basically, all the dies are set in relationship to the "stop" that the op lever hits at the bottom of the stroke. Some presses don't have a stop, and those presses are much harder to get right.
