Hornady Lock-N-Load Kit

[Lawmaker]

This is the kit I am talking about.
http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=858110

It looks to me as something that could really speed up the reloading process. Does anyone have experience with them. I just worry that it is cheap and reduce accuracy in the reload process with play in the connections.

 

[bohem]

Re: Hornady Lock-N-Load Kit

I have it installed in my Rockchucker and I did it as a way to keep common adjustments between my progressive LnL and the single stage.

It doesn't allow me to keep common adjustments although now that it's installed it's in place and I don't really see a reason to remove it.

I haven't found that it reduced the time as much as I would have hoped.

 

[lvmike]

Re: Hornady Lock-N-Load Kit

I had hornadys single stage press with the lnl collet system and did not like it. Party because the press was not as nice as the rbcs rockchucker iv but mostly because the collets had issues.

The lugs on the press are steel and the collet for the die is all aluminum (including the lugs). What happened to me was i noticed I was suddenly getting cases that I could not close the bolt on. I had been sizing my brass to 0.003" shorter at the shoulder then fired brass and had zero issues until that days worth of reloads. After adjusting the die it worked avaunt for about 3-4 months (roughly 2k rnds) and he same behavior showed up again. After experimenting I found that it was sizing the brass .002" longer then I wanted and a fresh collet (without adjusting the dies lock ring) sized the brass around .007 shorter then I wanted. I tried a few fresh collets (all from the same pack as the original) and found they varied by a bit but they were all sizing the brass more then the original. My end conclusion was that through use and some abuse (occasional stuck cases) the lugs on the collet peened and caused the "headspace" in the body die to increase.

Take it for fwiw (some Joe on the internuts), but I had a bad experience. I'll stick to the standard thread in method. The only thing the collets really made an appreciable decrease in effort to install was a collet bullet puller due to the handle on the top of it.

 

[bohem]

Re: Hornady Lock-N-Load Kit

Mike, how old are your bushings? All of mine are definitely steel. The adapter is steel, the insert in the AP is steel as well, it's threaded into an AL press body, but all the bearing surfaces are steel for my stuff.