Star Sizer lube blobs driving me crazy!

[Sundogg1911]

Lately i've been running into trouble with my Star sizers. Each boolit is getting 3 blobs of lube slightly larger than a pinhead between the lube groove and the bullet nose. It happins with both of my stars. I'm using hard lube. (I know....but I ship a lot of them accross country and with hard lube they don't all stick together) I have heaters on both stars. I've tried Magma hard lube, Rooster red, and jakes purple. all with the same results so I don't think it's the lube. It looks like i'm getting lube through some of the plugged holes since there is 3 holes per row, and 3 little blobs or maybe it's coming through the open lube holes as the bullet passes them. It's not just with one sizing die. Happins with most. It seems to happin with both of my Star presses. If I lower the pressure the lube will not fill the groove. Most of my bullets are single groove to make it easier. I plug all the other holes with shot. Could the temp be too high or low. (Have the temp turned all of the way up, but I have tried it lower and I don't get enough lube in the groove.) it's really slowing me down wiping each one off, and it's wasting a good bit of lube. (not to mention driving me insane!) The larger the caliber the worse it seems. both heaters are Midway, although one has a knob to turn the temp up and down. I have the other one on a dimmer switch that works the same way Help!:(

[230EAGLE]

I AM HAVING ALMOST THE SAME PROBLEMS BUT WORSE. IF I TURN UP THE HEAT THE LUBE IS EVERYWHERE, SAME WITH PRESSURE, TURN DOWN HEAT OR PRESSURE AND NO LUBE AROUND THE GROOVE THEN THE NEXT WILL HAVE TIME WILL HAVE A GREAT ONE LOTS MORE BAD(HORRIBLE) ONE THEN GOOD. I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM DOING WRONG. I TOO ARE ONLY DOING SINGLE GROOVES.
I KNOW IN ALL ARE DIFFERENT CALLS TO MAGMA IT COULD BE JUST A SMIDGE OFF IN THE DIE. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU, BECAUSE I AM HAVING THE SAME PROBS.
BY THE WAY WHAT IS THE HARLEY IN THE PIC. I HAVE ONE ALSO. 2005 STANDARD SOFTAIL FXSTI.
:castmine:

[garandsrus]

Sundogg,

I think your pressure is too high. When I see the three "dots" of lube on the boolit nose, it comes from lube leaking out of the die when the nose of the next boolit passes by. You can test this pretty easily by sizing as you always do and then push the boolit out with a smaller caliber (or any other way) and leave the die empty with the handle up. If you watch the lube holes for a few seconds, you will probably see three small slivers of lube appear from the residual pressure.

John

[Sundogg1911]

230 Eagle,
That one is a '93 FXSTC (Softail Custom) I also have an '80 Ironhead sportster, and an 06 Big Bear Venom with a Revtech 110. (But it's for sale and probably sold)
Hopfully get the the bottom of the Star problems soon. I probably have 10,000 boolits to size/lube. I've been crankin' them out on the Master Caster every chance I get! :-)

[Orygun]

Very well could be pressure or that and heat. I am using an aluminum plate with an iron and lay a flat thermometer on the plate. I find that I get the same problem when it gets over 100°, so for me it's heat control.

[utk]

I had exactly the same problems when my Star was new to me. Less pressure from the pressure screw did it. I think the pressure screw is just for feeding lube to the high-pressure pump which is activated with the final push of the handle.
When I get partly filled lube groove, I turn the screw a little bit and recirculate that boolit "to fill it up".

[Sundogg1911]

I think it could be too much pressure, not enough heat. I'll have to hit the heaters with my IR thermometer. The lube says 120F is recomended. I wonder if i'm getting hot enough. I guess I should guage the heat from the reservoir as well as the base. I'm gonna call my Buddy the next time I size and He's going to walk me through a few things.

[Orygun]

I think it could be too much pressure, not enough heat. I'll have to hit the heaters with my IR thermometer. The lube says 120F is recomended. I wonder if i'm getting hot enough. I guess I should guage the heat from the reservoir as well as the base. I'm gonna call my Buddy the next time I size and He's going to walk me through a few things.

Again on temp,
I'm using "Jakes purple lube" and it calls for 120° and when I get to that temp, I get the 3 dots plus other mess. I back off to 100° and get a perfect fill without excess lube. Your thermometer may vary. Pressure is fairly easy to adjust along the way. FWIW

[Lee W]

I called Magma about the same problem, they said it's heat and pressure. I ended up setting up a PID temp control (+- 2 F normal) with the sensor next to the sizing die. It helped. I plan on getting an air cylinder next.
Both things should control the little dots.

[targetshootr]

Same problem here using Magna blue and it seems to help to adjust the punch up or down and not let the lube get too warm so I unplug the heater after things get rolling, then plug it back in after 15 minutes.

Also get one spot about 1/8" wide missing lube on lots of booltis.

[Sundogg1911]

I lubed some 9mm's on my other star last night. No problems at all. fast as I could drom 'em in the press. That press has the Midway heater with the screw adjustment. I have it backed off full just a bit. The other star has the small square midway heater. I put a dimmer switch on an extension that the heater plugs into I back the heat off a bit when it gets up to temp. I'm going to check it with an IR thermometer tonight if I can get back to it. We'll see how it goes. That one now has Jakes purple in it.

[Springfield]

Too much heat. It should be just hot enough to feed the lower chamber, the pump has plenty of strength to lube any smokleless groove. I do Big Lube(tm) bullets and they hold 5 times what you are probably doing and it works fine. If you don't hae enough lube in the bottom chamber you will have incomplete fillout, so bump up the pressure. I run an air feed at 145 lbs just to keep the bottom chamber filled, so don't be afraid to crank the handle.

[Lloyd Smale]

fine line between heat and pressure and ive found it can get real tricky with either real hard lubes or real soft ones. Another thing that can do it is when you plug your holes sometimes they will leak through ill take a small center punch or nail and tap the shot plugs in till they deform and if theres room ill even up a second piece of shot in the hole. another thing that can cause it is if your bullet is real close to the size of die your using and your not actually swadging your bullet enough to seal it in the die. I also will occasionaly empty it and clean it completely out inside as when you get a litte dirt inside plugging things it takes more pressure to fill the groves and that extra pressure tends to blead out on the bullets. Same can happen if say one or two of the holes in the die that are being used have a small blockage. So you might want to stop occasionaly and remove the die and clean the holes.

[DonH]

I don't cast or lube enough volume of bullets anymore that I sold my Star (maybe foolishly) but I used it heavily for years. This was way before Magma and air cylinders. I got on the bandwagon with the hard lubes because they were the latest and greatest. The leakage caused by the heat/pressure required by these lubes was so much aggravation that I eventually switched to an LBT formulation soft enough to flow through the Star without heat. The fault is not with the machine, rather in what we are asking it to do. The only real gain I found in using the hard lubes was esthetic or tactile, not in lube performance or accuracy.
The Star sizer was developed when lubes were 50/50 beeswax/alox and they were the best sizer/lubers ever. For use with lubes requiring heat there will probablyalways be the dance between heat and pressure until someone develops a machine which will pressurize the lube only at the instant it is needed. Failing that, developing a lube soft enough to not require heat but with a somewhat higher melting point and not tacky to the touch would be just the ticket. Unless one is a high volume commercial caster MNSHO is that the rock-hard lubes are more trouble than they are worth.
In fairness I have to say that the heater I had lacked a means to control the temp; something that would make things simpler.

[DonH]

Addendum: I WAS not driving bullets above 2000fps either. High temp/pressure magnum pistol loads were the max.

[Sundogg1911]

I do agree that soft lubes work better for me, but I feel that its sometimes a necessary evil. I usually cast in large volumes. I ship boxes of them to people all across the country, and with soft lubes I'd have one sticky blob in the box when it arrived. I only use soft lubes now if i'm going to load 'em right after I size 'em. Thats actually why I bought the second Star, but now I usually have them both set up for hard lubes only in different calibers.

[BigCheese]

If your bullets are not aligned with the lube grooves at the holes in the die, you may have to increase pressure to fill the grooves. Here is a copy of an old post of mine for setting the bullet punch:


I will assume the bullet has one groove. This is for seating base down.

First, use a vernier to measure distance from the base of the bullet to the center of the lube groove Call this #1. Then measure the distance from the base of the die to the lube holes. (The die will have to be removed from the Star and lube removed to access the holes). Call this #2. Subtract #1 from #2. This is the amount the base of the bullet should be recessed up from the bottom of the die when the handle is fully actuated to dispense the lube.

Use the depth gage at the end of the vernier to span the hole at the bottom of the die. Start a bullet high; keep turning down the top punch and operating the handle (no lube pressure) until the base of the bullet is at the calculated distance above the bottom rim of the die. Once you do this, keep the dimension in a notebook so the Star can be reset when you change bullets. To make resetting easier, after the setup is complete, you can raise the handle all the way up and use the vernier to measure the distance from the top of the die to the bottom of the punch. Next time you use this die & bullet combination, just screw the punch up and down to repeat this distance.

Hope this helps.

[Sundogg1911]

Big Cheese. I have done that. I'm 99% sure the single groove is in alignment with the row of holes that arn't plugged with shot. That's why i'm starting to believe that it has to be Heat, or pressure or a combination of the two. Hopfully i'll get a chance to experiment a bit over the weekend.

[GSM]

One thing to keep in mind about pressure adjustments - they are not instant. It can take a little time for the pressure change effect to show up on the lube since it is essentially solid.

[R.M.]

I'd say it's pressure. What's happening is as the nose portion of the bullet passes the lube holes, there's nothing to keep the lube from ozzing out of the holes. Kind of what happens in the Lyman type presses and bevel-base boolits.

That's my take.
R.M.

[slughammer]

Everyone else is saying pressure and temperature, and I'll agree but add one more thing.

When the pressure and temp is at the right point where it doesn't flow out the little holes onto the noses as the boolits pass by, sometimes when going fast you have a hard time filling the grooves. Make sure you don't bounce at the end of the stroke. Hold the handle down until you have the next boolit oriented and ready to go in. Might seem like a slower pace operating the handle with a slight pause at the bottom of the stroke, but it allows the lube an extra 1/2 second at high pressure to flow and fill the grooves completely. In reality since you're only holding it down until the next boolit is fully ready to go in, you haven't added any time to the cycle. Smooth is fast. Quality up, rework down.

[Springfield]

Definately don't short stroke it. Sometimes when you get going fast you tend to not go all the way down. The last little bit of the downstroke does quite a bit of the lubing.

[Sundogg1911]

Well... the Wifes away at camp and I had to work this weekend which gave me some experiment time. The press seemed to work best if the base is about 93 degrees and I crank the snot out of the pressure. (I used a 3M infrared thermometer to check it) Higer temp....blobs, lower pressure, voids in the lube groove. I've also started cranking the handle twice on the .45 H&G 200 gr. mold from my master caster. It seems to have a large groove that doesn't always fill in one stroke. I sized about 2000 9mms in the other star at about the same temp. It went just fine. I could have sized them without looking at them. They were almost all perfect. The problem hasnt gone away, but it's getting a little better.

[GSM]

Sundogg:

The groove on the H&G 200 gr are rather large - I usually end up having to double down stroke on them in order to get them filled unless the sizer is right at the bitter edge of too much pressure.

Also, look at the two hex head screws on the horizontal shaft near the top that manipulate how far the injection spring is compressed on the down stroke - mine seems to like to "walk" a little as the sizer is used.

[BigCheese]

I have found the problem to be pressure even when using Alox lube that requires no heat. When the bullet lube groove is aligned with the open holes in the die, backing off on pressure solved the problem.

With a lube that needs heat, keep backing off on pressure and run bullets through the sizer. If the dots don't disappear before the grooves become only partially filled, increase the temperature a little. If the grooves don't completely fill, increase pressure and see which comes back first, dots or complete filling. If it's still the dots, back off on pressure and raise the temperature again and repeat the trial. When the temperature is raised enough, you should be able to get the lube to flow with lower pressure.

There are three variables here, temperature, pressure, and groove alignment. In reply to my previous post you said you were 99% sure the grooves were aligned. Have you actually measured or is it a guess? If Murphy is the other 1%, it may be the problem, since you still can't get rid of the globs adjusting the other two. Try an actual measurement.

As I found in my business (consulting laboratory), one test is worth a hundred expert opinions!

Hope this saves your sanity.

[Sundogg1911]

Yes I did measure and alignment is correct. I have almost eliminated the problem with heat and pressure adjustments. I think it will take a little more tweaking, but i'm no longer feeling like smashing it with a sledgehammer [smilie=1:
I switched to some 9mm's and .380's that sized and lubed easily, so i'll be coming back to the 5 gallon bucket of 45's or i'll have to get a crane ion to move them out of the way! :-D

[Springfield]

On some bullets with larger than normal lube grooves, which is mostly what I do, you can sometimes use 6 holes for lube. The bullet travels some while being lubed, so if you time it right you can have 3 holes lubing when the groove first lines up and 3 more when it is at the bottom of the stroke. I do about 20,000 bullets a month so I gotta have things working right and quickly. But you have to know where the bullet lines up with the lube holes, no guessing. That's one reason I made 2 piece top punches, easier to adjust to individual bullets. Keep the temp down and the pressure up, works for me. I use a soft Blackpowder lube, hard lubes may work differently, but I doubt it.