[howa9700]

When I snagged that used Grabber back in August, it came with a couple thousand Federal paper hulls. When it was working right, it made some nice loads. But for some reason, I was having trouble inserting wads and dropping shot. If memory serves, every now and then a wad snagged on the edge of the hull and it buckled down, leaving me in purgatory with the handle bottomed out and a load of shot about to go everywhere. Sorting out the carnage after a few of those was enough to cause me to sour on them.

Never duplicated the same problem with a plastic hull. Also did much better with the cone shaped crimp starter. And 12S0 clone wads vs. the CB6100 that work well with Top Gun hulls.

 

[howa9700]

Attempted to load some more Federal paper hulls today. The load worked well as far as stack height, crimp, etc, but kept having malfunctions. Now and then a hull would not drop down into sizer, going down just far enough to screw up sequence of primer seating, powder and shot drops. The other problem was the wad guide would snag on the hull edge, causing it to collapse down before the wad could be inserted. Between the two malfunctions.......and sorting it out with getting powder and shot drops back into sequence (after having to clean up numerous spills), I began thinking I'm not cut out to run a progressive loader.

Had been thinking these were once fired hulls, but that may not be the case. Some hulls had spent primers protruding a bit......far enough they would not pass into the sizer/deprimer, and edges somewhat frayed. The cone shaped expander on the depriming pin arm does not clean them up as well as the spreader on my Texan does. Could use it but do not have a cone shaped crimp starter for it and the 6 point starter does a poor job on them.

All things considered, I may be forced to give up on the whole lot of them. A good sized trash bag full.

 

[howa9700]

First job for tomorrow is to look close at the collet. It may have a piece or two of shot in it. The other odd thing was handle when fully up, was not allowing enough clearance to insert a CB6100 wad into the wad guide (top gun hull for those). That was new. The two may be related.

 

[howa9700]

Send me a PM with an address.

How many hulls will fit in a flat rate USPS box? Would that do it?

 

[howa9700]

Dumped a couple pieces of round shot from loader.....not sure if they came from the collet or elsewhere, but whatever the case, ran about 20 hulls thru the re-sizer and all dropped down as they are supposed to and worked fine.

These are a random sample from my stash. Some look rough and mangled on the crimp edge and some look new and once fired. All have same gold colored primer.

At worst, can load the straights but set the rough ones off to the side for someone else or to pitch as they come up.