Reloading .303 on a Dillon

[Ovenpaa]

As we no longer shoot .357Mag/.38Spl the mighty Dillon 1000 has been sitting gathering dust. So last night I hauled it out, clamped it as a temporary location to a workbench and had a long think about what to do next. I do have some spare shell plates so I can load some centre fire rifle cartridges including .223, .308 and .303 British and whatever else and it is the .303 that got me thinking. I have no plans to shoot .223 despite having .223 Dillon dies. I have no real interest in .308 as I prefer 6.5 cartridges so that only leaves the .303 and I do have a few .303 rifles even though the brass is never swapped between rifles. So in theory I could produce runs of a couple of hundred rounds or so for each of the rifles.

Does anyone have any thoughts on such an exercise as I hate to see the machine gathering dust. I do accept that this might be a bit of a mission!

[Sim G]

Personally, because I load rifle and pistol cartridges differently, it was never worth it using the Dillon.

[Ballistol]

I do have a Dillon XL650 with calibre conversion kits for multiple calibres, mostly rifle, mostly unused.
I have found that when swapping calibres, it takes a good while to make the finite adjustments necessary to allow the machine to work really efficiently.
I would imagine swapping calibres every couple of hundred rounds could potentially be very frustrating and you’d just be getting it in an optimal condition, then swapping it out.
Still, we are in lockdown and a man’s got to have a hobby

[Ovenpaa]

Apologies, I mean build 100-200 .303 per .303, so it would only ever be used for .303 loading. I use dedicated brass for each rifle and fireform the first round with an O ring to keep the case head tight to the bolt face, then necksize after that,hence they cannot be swapped between rifles.

[BooBoo]

There is another option... and should you wish to part company then I may be interested...

[Ovenpaa]

Thanks however it is stopping with me for a bit yet.

The conversion is proving interesting, the case pusher aperture is too small, I do have a spare however it is for .223/9mm so I will open the .357 pusher to suit the .303 and hopefully it will still work for .357/.308 etc if needed. if it does not I can sleeve it to allow it to be returned to original. I will flare the case necks very slightly as I do use cast bullets from time to time, this means machining a new flaring plug however I have the material and a heat treatment oven to produce one. The case feed tube is a tad too small at the top, that should be easily resolved and I need to modify the powder feed tube. Other than that it is actually quite doable.

[Ovenpaa]

The quest to build .303 British on an RL1000 is nearing the end, so if anyone ever needs to replicate my project:

The case feeder works with 4 spaces to every pin and the gate is set at 1.040" You will need a dedicated powder adapter, I machined mine from some 6082 Aluminium round bar and it ended up looking like this picture. I machined this by hand and it works so no point in moving it to the CNC however I did put it onto CAD if anyone is interested. Other than that is reasonably straight forward although beware the brass you use as PPU/PPV case rims are slightly larger than others and tend to stick in the feed tube. You will need a #4 Shell plate and the large primer adapter, I also opened the case feeder arm aperture to just under 14,0mm and it worked first time and straightened the ejector rod slightly to prevent the rim of the finished rounds jamming against the side and that is about it.

I am throwing 40.4 grains of Varget and it is incredibly consistent with the occasional 0.1 under which is acceptable for my service rifles.

I can comfortably build at a rate of around 650-700 loaded rounds per hour so a bit slower than when we were building .357Mag not that I need to go any faster :)

[Ovenpaa]

I forgot to add, I ditched the idea of the case neck flaring, the original Redding seating die is too long in the die plate and the bullets were catching once seated so I opted for a Lee seating die which is very consistent. I also moved the press away from my cabinet makers bench as it is in constant use. So the Dillon now sits on it's very own 12"x24" bench which is screwed to the wall so rock steady which is so important when running these things.

I also forgot to add that the primer feeder was modified a while ago after a chat with Bradders.

[rox]

the original Redding seating die is too long in the die plate and the bullets were catching once seated

Is that a 'competition' (sliding-sleeve type)?
I had to shorten the sleeve to use one on my Dillon 1050.

[Ovenpaa]

Yes, it is the sliding sleeve type which sits probably 5mm too low so 30 seconds in the lathe would have got the job done. I have since realised I have a spare seater anyway so no excuses.