GSI bullet feeder goodness

[AbitNutz]

It's been a bit of a trial but I finally got my new GSI bullet feeder figured out. The main problem turned out to be I had the wrong seating stems. I can tell you that trying to load 357 magnum with 9mm or 38 super seating stems is a no go. However, I got the 9mm & 38 Sup seating stems for free.

The good part about all of this is that in diagnosing the problem I stripped the GSI toolhead to the bone. It made me completely understand it and appreciate the elegant design.

The collator is not 100% with cast bullets but I got it close enough that I can live with it. Baby powder makes them slippery as well as smell good. I throw a couple of 100 in my tumbler with a tablespoon full and wait a few minutes.

I ordered the 158gr FPBB mold for my Master Caster. I'll send it off to have it converted to HP. The hollow point/bevel base should feed and load really well through the GSI and Dillon 650.

I think GSI could improve the reliability of their collator several orders of magnitude if they made the motor auto-reversing. About 99% of all the jams I get are cleared right away by hitting the reverse switch. Making an auto-reverse circuit is really not difficult or expensive. Ideally they could make an auto-reverse and jog circuit kick in upon detecting any kind of jam.

The toolhead is really quite a piece of work. The collator could be improved with just a few changes...I talked to GSI and I'm not the only one who has mentioned this idea. I expect they'll do it. When? I can't say.I hope if and when they do put in a jog/auto-reverse circuit it is retrofitable. Overall, I'm quite happy with it.

[VHoward]

Glad it worked for you. I spent so much time clearing jams that I was not loading ammo, just clearing jams.

[AbitNutz]

There does seem to be something of a black art to having it run cast bullets. The collator hangs on a large post now instead of mounting directly on the press. This lets you play with the orientation of the collator by shimming under the post. Small changes make pretty big differences...

I'm still enamored with the toolhead. I did experience the "ring" of lead with plain base bullets but bevel bases load sweet and straight as has been said.

Perhaps they'll have a retro-fit kit with a jog/auto-reverse for the collator. I'd look into another collator if it worked with cast bullets and didn't cost the same as a car. Putting another collator on this rig is a no brainer as it just hooks up to the stack holder with a spring/tube.

[jmorris]

I have owned their tool heads since they came out and didn't even have a collator, so I built my own.

I messed with one of GSI's collators around the time the KISS feeder came out (actually played with both the same day) and decided I had no use for the GSI collator. I have a bunch of GSI tool heads now but I use homemade collators with them, saves a lot of money and they don't fail.

[AbitNutz]

The collator is definitely their weak point but that is almost everyone's weak spot, no? with the myriad of bullet shapes I can see how difficult it is to get things to work. The same identical bullet style, one in BBFP and the other BBHP...the FP doesn't jam at the top while the HP does. I had to elongate the drop hole a bit to remedy this.

The same goes for the toolhead indexer cam. I had to dress it up with a file to get it to work smoothly against the 650's shell plate. Once I matched up the angles and lubed it up, it is so smooth you don't know it's contacting it until you begin to seat the bullet.

All in all I would like to have a more bulletproof collator but as I fiddle with it I'm making incremental improvements. Again, a MAJOR improvement could be had by adding a auto-reverse/jog circuit that kicks in as soon as a jam occurs.

[AbitNutz]

I was able to reduce the jams to a mere annoyance instead of a show stopper by taking my air-dremmel to the drop hole and the first divider. I slightly elongated and beveled the drop hole and beveled both sides of the first divider. Now my HP bullets fall cleanly. This thing is all aluminum so it took the modifications very nicely.

Now...if they would only do an auto-reverse/jog circuit I think I'd be at 99.5%....

[jmorris]

This thread has one of the collators I built and shows how it works/mounts to a GSI 650 tool head. It will collate anything except a HBWC with the right "flipper".

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?232791-Mr-Bullet-feeder-for-star