Bullet feeder with cast bullets?

[AbitNutz]

Is this possible with conventionally lubed bullets? And what I mean by possible is not having to re-engineer the thing to work. I'm not fond of dry lube. The only ones I know of are MR Bullet Feeder and GSI. I'm looking at a Dillon 650 outfit.

[VHoward]

I have the Mr Bullet Feeder on my XL650. It works great with powder coated bullets and fmj bullets. Traditional lubes can be used, but are messy and the entire thing will need to be cleaned often. Using a harder wax lube would cut down on the frequency of the cleanings and I have heard of some using a powder substance to coat the wax of the lube in the groove so it will slide easier. GSI sells such a powder. I did buy a GSI unit, but returned it as I could not get it to work with my 230 grain round nose cast bullets in 45 caliber. The bullets were continually jambing up in it. GSI could not figure out what was wrong. They insisted that they had sent the proper ring for the bullet. That is the major dis-advantage of the GSI unit is you need a different ring for each wieght and profile of bullet. Mr Bullet Feeder will work with all wieghts and profiles, you just adjust the settings for each one. No extra part need to be purchased for each wieght bullet.

[jmorris]

I used wax lube bullets with my GSI feeder an a homade collator. I now coat my bullets and use KISS style homade collators.

If you dusted your bullets with a powder of some sort, to make them less sticky" any of them would likely work fine.

[AbitNutz]

Hmm...this seems like it's going to be a painful exercise.

[JASON4X4]

Just switch to PC you will never look back

[AbitNutz]

PC? What is PC? Sorry to be so obtuse.

[AbitNutz]

If I sacrifice the hopper and just use the tube system on the Mr Bullet Feeder...does this avoid/minimize the issue with lube cast bullets? It certainly makes it cheaper.

[Handloader109]

Powder coating. See forum a couple below this one. You can take the colored Powder used for Powder coating, use plastic container and tumble a batch of boolits in a bit of the powder to coat. Then using oven at about 400°f, bake for about 20 minutes. Coating replaces lube and is slick and clean shooting in most cases. My description is very simple, read more below.

[AbitNutz]

Hoh boy. I've spent a hundred years getting the right lube with the right bullets at the right velocity with the right pistol/rifle. I'm not ready to change gears and start cooking bullets. Although they're likely better than my wife's cooking.

[VHoward]

If I sacrifice the hopper and just use the tube system on the Mr Bullet Feeder...does this avoid/minimize the issue with lube cast bullets? It certainly makes it cheaper.
The bullet feeder die would get sticky with the lube. Use a harder lube or dust the bullets to cut down on the stickyness.

[AbitNutz]

Well, we're going to give it a try. I just ordered a Mini Mr Bullet Feeder from CED. Hopefully, the weight of the .45 bullet stack will make a difference .

[AbitNutz]

One of the problems with a bullet feeder on a Dillon 550B is that you don't have a dedicated station for a taper crimp. I just saw that both Hornady and RCBS offer a combination seater and taper crimp. I've never seen that before. In the past, all I ever saw was seater and roll crimp. Midway had the RCBS in stock but not the Hornady, which I much prefer because of the alignment sleeve. I ordered the RCBS and back ordered the Hornady....I'll let you all know how everything works.

[Leatherhead Bullets]

Looking forward to your report on both units! I am currently in the market for a feeder as well. Curious how reliably they feed vs. the amount of "tuning" needed.

[VHoward]

http://www.gsiinternational.com/DillionRL550.html
GSI has a replacement toolhead that combines the bullet feed and bullet seating station into one so you can still have a separate crimp die. I don't think much of their bullet collator though. I tried one of their systems and the collator kept jamming up. Never got a satisfactory solution to the problem so I returned the system to them for a refund. The toolhead system works fine though and you can purchase just that part.

[Beesdad]

Hoh boy. I've spent a hundred years getting the right lube with the right bullets at the right velocity with the right pistol/rifle. I'm not ready to change gears and start cooking bullets. Although they're likely better than my wife's cooking.

I did not have to change anything when I went to PC on the pistol rounds... Just enjoyed the results.

[jmorris]

GSI did not offer collators when I bought my first feeder from them and was not impressed when I did finally mess with one of them. I make my own to save some money.

You don't need a collator to use a bullet drop/feeder but if you don't, your not gaining much.