Here ya go, Brad......

smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
The only reason I have the lathe, mill and tooling I have, is a bit of luck and a lot of just plain not knowing when to give up. Those two things made me the last man out of the Sony Pictures (formerly MGM) Studios Metal Shops.
When the work ran out and I announced to the studio brass that I was laying myself off, they came to me and asked me to liquidate all the assets in my building. I had a 6,000 sq. ft. shop. After reaching a tentative agreement on a time frame they asked how much I wanted to do the job. My price was, the best toolmaker's mill (aka knee mill) and the most rigid and versitile lathe in the shop. Plus, and these were my exact words, "all the tooling I can carry". Their response was immediate; one word, "done".
If I'd had more space I'd have taken a surface and cylindrical grinder, a bigger granite surface plate, a flat leather belt drive drill press, a cup wheel tool grinder with coarse and fine diamond wheels, a heat treating oven and 15 gallon stainless quenching tank and a Rockwell hardness tester that did both "C" and "B" scales. The Sheet Metal Shop which was also part of my domain had a real nice old finger brake that would have been nice to have.

In addition to the tooling I got several hunded of each, fasteners, bearings and springs.

While putting in about 25 hours a week clearing out the Sony Machine Shop I was working nearly 50 hours a week in the Universal Studios Machine Shop.

I worked hard for my machinery, but I was bloody lucky to get what I got and I know it.

Now all I have to do is get myself a little spread where I can have a 900 sq. ft. give/take shop.

I need to make a new sear for this...
IMG_0249.JPG
 

Ian

Notorious member
Just don't buy property next to another gun nut, you know what will happen....
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
Ian,
All my "Lathe" work has only been on my drill presses for years. Sometimes I wish I could lay them horizontal for some stuff Just to see better. Like for making "M" die mandrils! If I get stuck i run across the street to my buddy Ric , who owns a real Precision Machine shop. He is always so busy & I' feel i'm forever imposing but he sure does help me out in a fix!
Really like what you have created with you "drill press lathe!"
 

Ian

Notorious member
I finished the 300 BLK PTE die tonight, WOW what a headache. Turns out I need a lathe, someone might have mentioned this....

The issue with small-caliber powder-through-expander dies is case mouth alignment. The powder drop hole needs to be as large as possible to avoid powder bridging, but the larger the hole, the smaller the taper of the expanding spud and the more likely a case mouth gets out of line and crushed by the tip of the spud. With .223 cases that wobble and flop around every which way in the shellholders, it becomes necessary to make a sliding alignment sleeve to keep the case neck centered within the die. So I took the Rifle Charging Die body and ground something like 3/8" off the bottom, and beveled it on the outside. Then I made a sliding sleeve out of a fired .45 ACP case that I drilled out to .342" and taper-reamed to about .350", thus leaving a step inside for the 300 BLK shoulder to rest on, but enough room for a belled neck to pull back through. Then I packed the case with epoxy putty and inserted a waxed, fired case to make a form-fitting sliding sleeve that slip-fits within the bottom portion of the die. After the putty set up, I filed a little off the length as required to make the measure work, staked the opening at the bottom of the die in three places to keep the sleeve from falling or pulling out the bottom, beveled the putty at the bottom of the sleeve with a 45' chamfer tool to ease the case going into it, and got it all set up on the measure. It works like a charm, but it sure would have been nice to turn a die body with two internal steps instead of one (a lip on the bottom inside of the die and a step above for the spud to park on), and make a sliding sleeve out of steel (not that this one will wear out, it would just be nice). Now I can load 300 BLK on a three-station progressive!

Anybody use any of the commercial aerosol case lubes? I'd rather not goober-up my case feeding tubes with my alcohol/lanolin spray mix.

 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Why not size and deprime on a single stage press first. Then clean the cases. Then you can run clean, sized cases thru the progressive to crop powder and seat bullets. I use the siz die station with a universal deprime die to punch media from the flash hole.
A bit more work but it lets me have clean cases and does still speed the process a bit.
 
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Ian

Notorious member
That's a good idea. Generally, I run all my high-volume stuff through a universal depriming die and SS tumble it, then use a carbide die in the press. No carbide for this one, so I suppose I could just rinse the brass off dry it, size/deprime, then SS tumble, then load with an expander in station one and the rest like normal.

I can't believe you haven't bought an SS media tumbling setup yet.....of course I'm sure you can't believe I haven't bought at least a cheapo bench top lathe yet, either.

Midway had their FA tumbler kit on sale a while back for something like $160. It's not Thumbler's, but it ought to last a while and the double-ended drum makes part of the process easier.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Space is at a premium, that is for sure.

Right now I'm looking at 5C collet Chuck for the lathe. It would speed up some production stuff. That or a far better 3 jaw Chuck. Either way I'm looking at 500 to 1000 dollars.