Hornady Case Feeder

[atmiller]

Does anyone use a Case Feeder on the Hornady LNL AP? It looks pretty tempting for reloading lots of pistol calibers.

[rodnocker1]

I have case feeders on both my Dillon 650 and on my Hornady LNL AP. I could give you a comparison between the two but that isn't what you asked for, so I won't. ?

The Hornady case feeder works pretty well (meaning it beats having to load each case by hand) and is moderately fast. It has a single speed motor which is pretty noisy. The setup will take a little time to get the kinks worked out and get it running fairly consistent. As with the LNL AP, Hornady's instructions on the case feeder setup stink. All of these are what some might call minor problems.

The BIG problem with it is if you are planning on loading .40S&W. The instructions tell you to use the small case feeder tube assembly and if you have problems, a combination of large and small case feeder parts. If you are shooting new .40S&W brass, everything is okay. If you shoot once fired, that's where the problems come in. The brass will hang up in the small feeder assembly and have to be constantly punched through whereas with the large setup, it jambs at the bottom.

I contacted Hornady about this and asked them if there was anyway to get the lower aluminum small case tube machined out to accept the large plastic drop tube. They said they had been trying to fix the problem and didn't have anything like that but would try to see if one of the machinists could do it. They sent me the modified small pistol lower and it works like a charm. My once fired .40S&W cases now drop freely through the upper and don't get out of line and jamb at the bottom.

One thing that is extremely important, no matter what case feeder/press setup you use, is that the bench and press be rock solid.

Sorry to be so long winded and hope this helped a little.

[atmiller]

Thanks for the info.