Zeak,

With all due respect to Shooter Dan, DO NOT!!! buy a Hornady progressive press, buy a Dillon 550B.

A few years ago I had a case of the “got to get it nows” and bought a Hornady “Lock-n-Load” progressive press instead of waiting for a Dillon to be shipped to me. BIG MISSTAKE!! Right from the box the Hornady was out of time and had to be adjusted, the powder measure would constantly stick in the dispense position, the problems with this press were never ending. But the worse part of owning a Hornady product I found out was their customer service, which stinks at best. I called repeatedly about the problems I was having with the powder measure sticking I was told to “read the directions”. Trust me I had, more than once. Yes I used graphite like I was told to do, yes I “worked the burs off” but it would still stick in the dispense position. I sent the powder measure back after a number of insults from their customer service personal. I did receive a new powder measure from them, which of course still stuck. I worked at removing the burs and using graphite until the measure seemed to be working reasonably well. By the way don’t even think about using extruded powder. I had loaded about 500 45acp loads for IPSC competition which only took about 3 months to get loaded considering all the BS I went through with their customer service trying to get their press working. So off to the range I went for some IPSC competition. With me I take my custom Caspian match comp gun. Can you say BIG money?

Well I discovered in a most spectacular way that the powder measure had stuck once again in the dispense position while loading these rounds. While smokin through a rack of pepper poppers my pride and joy comp gun detonated in my hands. The barrel burst, the magazine was blown out of the mag well, the red dot scope mounts were blown out of the frame, the slide was bulged to the point it had to be cut from the frame. Luckily I still have 10 fingers and eyes to see them with. I ended up with only minor powder burns and a destroyed pistol.

To make a long story short what we discovered was that the powder measure had once again stuck in the dispense position thereby not dispensing powder in the following round. While speed shooting the pepper poppers the round not having any powder entered the chamber and the primer placed the bullet just down the barrel. Using the light recoil springs commonly in use on comp guns the primer alone had enough power to cycle the slide and chamber another round and in an instant a $2500 gun was turned into a useless lump of steel.