Winchester Large Pistol Primers and Lee?

[PennsyPlinker]

Greetings all

I spent some (mostly pleasant) time reloading some .45 Long Colt this evening. The not so pleasant part came with fiddling around with the large pistol primers and the Lee turret press. I can't quite get the hang of making the auto primer thingie work, and I spent a bunch of time chasing primers around on the floor. It was not a pretty sight! It's like the springs that are supposed to push the trigger (?) back to its original position don't work, and I have to use two hands just to get it to operate. And then, half the time, it doesn't dispense a primer, until I back it off from the little primer pocket. Then it dispenses it onto the floor.

Is anyone else using this setup, and if so, what do you do?

The good news is, I have half a box of cartridges to shoot up to see how I like this load. If I like it, I will do a bunch. If not, I will modify it one way or another.

[Don T.]

I had the same problem until I installed a flat washer under the plastic mount that's bolted to the press. It raised the whole thing just enough that it worked smoothly. I'm not positive what size I used as it came from my catchall drawer. I want to say it was a standard 5/16" flat. Hope this helps!

[PennsyPlinker]

Thanks Don, I'll give it a try.

[Capnswervon]

Just to check...you have the correct primer "plunger" on your press for the large pistol? I could not for the life of me figure out why my primers were no seating all of the way when I first picked up my second hand press....small primer, large seater....nuf said. Luckily, the small one was inside one of the die set box's.

The Capn'

[PennsyPlinker]

Yeah, it is the correct plunger. I know it is easy to make the mistake, so I have already been through all that.

[Bama Man]

I've loaded Federal, Winchester, CCI, Remington primers all with my Lee auto prime, and never had any problems, except with one batch of .45 Long Colt that didn't seat deep enough.
The shells didn't want to let the cylinder rotate. I think the problem was the brass though. I seated them deeper with the primer seater on the turret press
(after pulling the bullets, powder, etc.) and they worked fine.
The next time I loaded the brass, they worked fine using the Lee Auto prime.
I have occasionally noticed that the primers don't always follow each other as closely as I wished through the feeding notch, and have stroked the handle on a "dry" pocket, but, as long as you have the lid over the loose primer pan, you can "shake" the thing and the primers fall in.
That's my experience anyway.
I love my auto prime.

[Bama Man]

Are we talking the Lee auto prime hand tool, or Auto prime II that mounts to the press?
I have never used the Auto prime II unit that mounts on the press, excuse me.

[Don T.]

Originally Posted by Bama Man

Are we talking the Lee auto prime hand tool, or Auto prime II that mounts to the press?
I have never used the Auto prime II unit that mounts on the press, excuse me.

In the original post, he was talking about the Turret Press. Lee has a relatively new Safety prime system made for it. Here is Lee's site with a picture of it. They require some work to set up. Once you get them set, the throughput on the press does increase.

[PennsyPlinker]

Yeah, I have the thing that mounts on the press and swings back and forth. I somehow found myself at Cabela's this afternoon, so I bought a new large primer version. I just finished up loading a bunch of .45 LC, and while it worked better, I still dumped a number of primers on the floor.

I was doing some reading, and Cabela's also sells a model by RCBS which gets very high reviews. I might add one of those things to the list of stuff if I don't get the hang of this auto primer.