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Old December 12, 2012, 09:15 AM   #1
TheBear
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Join Date: April 11, 2011
Posts: 303
it was the shellholders fault!

I always had problems with reloading .38spc, accuracy wasnt very good, my marlin had feeding problems,...never had an idea what could be wrong. 2 days ago however i finally got a small pistol primer adapter for my universal priming arm, till then i always used a large pistol priming arm (works too, just a bit tricky), strange thing, priming didnt get more easy, it got impossible! Now i finally know what my problem was, the shellholder is not centering the brass perfectly, the brass isnt exactly in the center of the press, this lead to everything being slightly crooked, not enough to see it with the naked eye but enough to make the ammo inaccurate and enough to make priming only possible with a priming arm that is to big. Got a new shellholder and everything works just fine now.
I`m very dissapointed by lyman, the bad shellholder was a lyman X1.

the moral of the story: if one of you guys has simillar problems and no idea whats causing them, try a different shellholder...

Last edited by TheBear; December 12, 2012 at 02:55 PM.
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Old December 12, 2012, 10:15 AM   #2
rg1
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Join Date: November 6, 2001
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I know that it can happen with any manufacturer but I also got a bad shellholder from Lyman back in the 1980's. When setting the die to contact the shellholder in .223 Rem caliber it allowed the shoulder to be pushed back .010" too much. Instead of being .125" from the shelf to the top of the shellholder it was ten thousandths short. It was an X series Lyman shellholder too. Loaded a few hundred rounds before I caught it. Just shows that you need to check your shellholders plus a headspace gauge I feel is a must use tool.
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