Addendum 02/13/2013
For some time (as in years) I’ve been having a rare but persistent problem when reloading. When the Dillon 650 places the shell in the first station, on rare occasion – 1 in 100 or 200 – the shell will be slightly out of position such that when the ram comes up to the sizing die, these shells will either “boom” into position as they carrom off the edge of the die, or if far enough out, they will be crushed.
I’ve tried cleaning, replacing the shell plate, giving them an extra nudge, but nothing has been effective at curing this rare problem. In a batch of 500 rounds, I’d be pretty much guaranteed of at least two squishes, and sometimes as many as four or five.
This evening, I reloaded the first batch of 500 using the full-length resized brass and, to my surprise, I didn’t get a single crunch and not even a single near miss which I can feel as a slight thump.
Instead, nothing. Just nice and smooth motion. No bumps.
Was it fat bottoms?
Because the problem has been rare, I’ll reserve judgement for another 500 but, at least so far, it looks like that “shell slightly out of position at station one” just might have been due to extractor-warped bases, and the full-length resizer is now curing that problem by squeezing the bases back into tolerance.
Now wouldn’t that be nice!
Another Addendum 02/25/2013
In the video I say this could be done on a progressive but I need to retract that statement because while possible, it is not practical.
First, you’d need several of the push-up gizzies from Lee, one for each position of the “carries the shells around the progressive.” Second, you’d have to machine all of them to fit if you have Dillon equipment. And third, such an effort would only be practical if you were full-length resizing a huge volume on a regular basis.
So, use of the Lee push-through “Bulge Buster” resizer with a progressive press is not practical.
It’s still a great idea and provides a real fix for used brass with a bulge near the bottom of the case or in the base itself, but for most of us, it’s not practical with a progressive reloading machine.
You’ll need a single stage press.