mec 650

[emptyhead]

Can you change guages on the mec 650. I picked one up at a swap meet at our club for 10 bucks but didn't look at it closely.I think it's setup for 20 guage right now. Any help would be great

[woody1]

Can you change guages on the mec 650. I picked one up at a swap meet at our club for 10 bucks but didn't look at it closely.I think it's setup for 20 guage right now. Any help would be great

MEC says die sets are not available. Frankly, I think it'd more trouble that it'd be worth. If you got a complete 650 for $10, IMO you got a he!! of a buy. Sell it and buy the one you want/. By-the-way, the 650 doesn't resize if that's any concern for you. Regards, Woody

[Patrick L]

The short answer, as Mec says, is no. And I definitely would not recommend doing it often (like if you think you are going to have a press for two gauges.)

That said, I have done it as a one time thing. All of the parts are available from MEC, except one. On the older presses, the base was milled to guide the shell around the circumference of the loading sequence. On the newer ones, there is a riveted piece that does the same thing. That is the one part that is either very hard or impossible to change. BUT, the trick is to go down in your conversion. In other words your 20 gauge press can be converted to 28 or .410. The smaller shell will travel in the wider trough with no problems.

A few years back I converted a spare 12 ga 650 to 16 ga. I actually had a lot of the needed parts floating around my MEC parts box (I had done a LOT of gauge converting on their single stage presses, which use many of the same parts.) The whole thing ended up costing me something like $30, which was a lot cheaper than buying a new press.

So, within limits, it CAN be done.