Re: Whidden toolheads / powder with a Dillon?? anyone
I've got one in my 550 set up for my 6-6.5x47L practical/tactical rifle, and one of the newer (CNC) ones set for my .308 Win. Redding Type 'S' F/L bushing die in station #1, powder die w/ funnel in #2, nothing in #3, and Forster Ultra seater in #4. I also have one of the Uniquetek roller bearings for the shell plate installed.
So far... I seem to be able to get pretty much identical ammo from this setup as I do from my Forster Co-Ax. Same TIR on loaded rounds (0-2 thou), same variation in seating depth (+/- 1 thou), etc. and charges as accurate as you wish to weigh them. I've been using my Chargemaster 1500 with this setup; it has been 'sped up' some by twiddling the appropriate settings. I also do the 'skip-a-station' routine as described by D. Tubb in his book 'Rifle Shooter', so that the *only* thing going on when sizing a case is just that - nothing else, so it doesn't affect the seating operation. With the Chargemaster set to auto-dispense, I only have to wait 3-5 seconds, sometimes a little longer (maybe 10) before it has a new charge ready for me to toss down the funnel. Keep in mind that isn't '3-5 seconds' total dispense time, thats the time I wait on it after dumping the previous charge, putting the pan back, tapping the funnel to make sure everything went down the tube, lowering the ram, setting a new bullet on top of the charged case (to prevent any spillage of my weighed charges as they rotate), turn the shellplate, insert new case into station #1, raise the ram (size it), lower the ram (prime it), turn the shell plate, and raise it again(seat the charged case). Maintaining a steady speed I can do 100 finished rounds (including wiping off the lube while I'm waiting on the powder dispenser) in about 65 minutes.
Some of the viability of the setup depends on how much brass prep you do between loadings. The process described above works great if you take fired brass, throw it in the tumbler, blow the dust off and toss in the 'In' bin on your press. If you want to do other brass prep as a separate step... it becomes a little less efficient. You can run all the brass through station #1 and just not charge and seat on the 'first' pass to give you sized and deprimed cases ready to run through a Gracey or Giraud trimmer, clean the pockets, brush the necks, etc. and then just run them through starting @ station #2... wouldn't have to 'skip-a-station', but the powder dispenser only goes so fast so you may not gain any speed there.
Yesterday we had a 'team' practice @ 600yds. Two strings of two sighters and 20 for record, with a wind coach. For $hits and giggles, I used rounds loaded as described above (straight out of the tumbler onto the press and bullets straight out of the box) for the first string (what one of my team mates refers to as 'heretic ammo'. The second string was fully sanctified 'holy' ammo - shoulders bumped 0.001 w/ a body die and necks sized using a Wilson hand die in a Harrell's combo press, primers seated using a K&M hand tool, charges weighed to within a single kernel on a Sartorius GD503 analytical scale, bullets sorted by weight, pointed and meplat uniformed using Whidden tools, and finally bullets seated using a Wilson inline hand die. About the only step I skipped (besides sorting by bearing surface) was sacrificing a virgin chicken under a blood moon
The difference on target... was small. Both held X-ring elevation with the exception of a few (2-3) off-call shots that went low. I'm having a little issue w/ stock fit at the moment so that *may* not be all due to the ammo. The 'low' shots with the 'good' ammo were mid-ring 10s; with the 'heretic' ammo they were scratch 10s to (very) close 9s just over the line. I'm not honestly convinced that with perhaps just better bullet sorting (and me getting this stock sorted out) that the ammo loaded on the 550 wouldn't be a viable option for F-Class. For Palma/iron sights... you'd have to be one hell of a hard holder to tell the difference. I know I'll probably have to shoot a few more times of 'back to back' comparison like this before I could declare a clear winner.
YMMV,
Monte
