Buckshot take a look at this

Buckshot,

I have been reading your posts on the machining you are doing. Looks like nice work. Also nice to know someone looks at their work and reflects on it before it goes out the door. Pride in workmanship went out with the quest for profit. You may not get rich but you will look at your work and at yourself and smile.

Anyway I thought you might be interested in Mecham Rifles push tru sizer die. If you haven't seen it here is a link.

http://www.meachamrifles.com/

go down to push thru sizer on left pane.

Interesting concept.

Looks like a version of harry pope's sizer/lubricator set up. He used a handle to force the lube through the die and this one looks like you have to push the plunger down to do the same. Frank

You are right about the Pope design, had to look that up. It looks to me like the lube reservoir is a chamber with a threaded rod/plunger that is pressurized by turning the rod. Also interesting to see it is push through.

It was interesteing to me to see the sizing inserts. you could easily do step sizing. first step a little and then the next step is a lubed bullet for a little more.

The other thing I like about this type of sizer is the utility of not having to have another piece of equipment mounted on the bench. Most of us have one or more reloading presses and all we would have to do is screww in the sizer select the proper sizer rings and lube away.

A person could make one of these that used different size push thru rods and only have to change the sizer rings and the push through.

I have a push thru bullet sizer die that I purchased from William Woods ( I think that is right) in about 1993. It is a single dies body that uses hardened inserts held in by a thin ring of plastic wrap/plastic bag. It has a ram adapter that has changeable push thru rods. It works well bu you have to pan lube, hand lube, or use liquid alox. I like the thought of applying lube via pressure. I make a big enough mess without having to handle the lube also.

If I get a chance I will post a picture of the push thru die. I originally saw Mr. Woods add in handloader.

..............Someone had posted the address to this before. It's a neat idea. Several of us on the old Aimoo board (or maybe it was last year when we were first hosted here) had kicked aorund some ideas about a nose first lube-sizer. The main concern was that a new incarnation be able to utilize the existing RCBS/Lyman type dies.

There were many good ideas kicked around. I have a rough drawing for one that is used in a reloading press with the 1-1/4-12 thread insert. It would be nice to be able to lube/size as fast as you could set a slug on the ram and lower it. Nose first is the most accurate way to do it, after all.

All it takes is time :-)

...............Buckshot

manleyjt, we had some very old gear pumps on a barge and that was how you lubricated the bearings. The greasers were nothing more than brass hexagons that were filled with little sticks of lube some what like a hot glue gun. The plunger was nothing more than a threaded brass shaft with a "TEE" handle. Think there are some pictures in the book "Pope's Barrels" that show his lubricator. When the greasers were low or empty you unscrewed the shaft, stuffed in some lube and reinserted the handle and cranked it down.
Tried to find out if they were still available (shortcut to making a bullet lubricator) but the pumps were so old the company no longer existed. Frank

Sorry for posting something that had already been brought up, just thought it was pretty interesting.

Buckshot and Frank46

I think both of you had good ideas. Being able to use the existing lyman/rcbs dies would be really cool and the pressured lube vessel is exactly what I had imagined form the picture on their website. I had worked with some really old equipment that had wood pillow block bearings that had a similar lube apparatus but it used a plunger and bearing grease.

I was pondering about how you could make bullet entry into a lyman type die straight each time. would youneed to make some kind of slip collar that was springloaded to guide it? Similar to the primer punch/seater cup. Insert bullet into cup raise ram, enters into die, spring allows cup to to retract, ram pushes bullet through die. Hoping one of you can come up with something.

I like the pushthrough dies but don't like to hand lube and definitely don't like the price of the cadillac push thru sizers. That money is better spent on powder, primers, and more tools to build more toys.

I emailed the company inquiring about prices and availability. They got back to me next day and said that they are not yet "in production", but that they were coming soon. :violin: They asked for my address to send out the flyer when it's ready and I gave it to them. I like the idea of it, but I'm betting Buckshot can come up with something better (as in more versatile) and cheaper. :castmine:

Manleyjt, ok here goes. You have a large round or octagon piece of brass bar stock with threaded tee handle to supply the force for the lube. At the bottom you could silver solder or braze another piece of brass large enough to hold a lyman H&I die and have it held in place with the threaded collar like on the lyman lubricators. One one side you could have a smaller piece of brass also silver soldered with a screw to force the bullet into the H&I die.
And maybe a plunger on the opposite (top of the H&I die to push out the lubed bullet the way it came in. I'm going from memory here and its quite similar to harry pope's lubrisizer.
The brass could be alloy 360 which is easy enough to get in the larger sizes from enco, Msc ortravers tool. Or if you get really lucky your local scrapyard. You never know what will show up in these places. One guy had a pile of coffins. Go figure. Frank

"Sorry for posting something that had already been brought up, just thought it was pretty interesting."

..........Manleyjt, no need to fret over that! If you see somehting interesting, post it by all means 8)

..............Buckshot

I did a quit search. I know there still out there being new made
fo the old engin guys.

http://www.vintagecarparts.co.uk/part.phtml?PartID=1942

Gregg, nice item. But I think what we had in mind was somewhat bigger. Think of something like a grease gun but somewhat smaller. Manleyjt, thats a thought. There are hi pressure grease guns on the market that develope much higher pressures than the ones you would use on a car. This is because the lubricants have a much higher viscosity than a #2 grease(car grease) Some of these are for lubing limitorque valves, and steam joints. They could be adapted to do what you require. They sometimes have a button head fitting but this could be changed to a pipe fitting and screwed into a luber/sizer setup. Just a thought. Frank