Gary Reeder
One little note to those that like tightening screws.
Thursday, May 09, 2024, 14:01

That little screw in the base pin in our custom guns is left loose for a reason. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE TIGHTENED!!!! The Belt Mountain base pin is fit to the gun and is as tight as it needs to be.
If you tighten it, it pushes down on the base pin and up on the barrel which binds up the cylinder and causes misfires. The misfires are when the base pin causes the cylinder and barrel to be slightly out of alignment. When this happens the hammer rubs against the side of the hammer recess and slows down the hammer fall and you get a misfire. After you run 25,000 rounds thru the gun and it is beginning to get a bit loose then very lightly tighten the screw, but just until it touches the underside of the barrel.

I talked to 2 Misfits at the HHC who were complaining about a misfire with their guns. They brought the guns to us and sure enough one of them had tightened that screw up as far as they could and it put the base pin in a bind pushing up on the barrel and down on the base pin and screwing up the alignment of the cylinder, causing the sides of the hammer to rub against the rear of the gun and making the hammer fall too light. The other one had done his own action job and that had a lot of problems. Robert fixed both problems while we were there.

I talked to another of our Misfits late yesterday afternoon who had misfire problems. He had one of the little LEE primer seaters. The little rounds plastic gizmo. They are OK for the first 50 or 55 primers but the seating is done by your hand and after 65 or so primers you seated your hand gets tired and you don't quite seat the primers as good as they need to be.Then by 80 or so primers you are not seating them as good as they need to be at all.
I am not bad mouthing the Lee product but am mentioning the problems they cause. If you are going to use one of them, seat a few primers then set the priming unit aside and let your hand rest and then do the rest a bit later. I prefer the RCBS bench primer. I think it is called the Auto Prime.


This little gizmo lets you feel the primer seating in the palm of your hand. You can prime a couple hundred cases as quick as you can pick up a case and put it in the shell holder. I have to load every night of the week for our test firing the next day or so, so if I can give you guys some helpful hinks that is all I am doing.