Lyman 4500 die retaining nut is....

[JohnH]

making me nuts. I've replaced this nut 4 times now, twice in the last 2 weeks. What gives???? I'm using the Super Moly, this is a very soft lube, and I'm using dies that are at least .001" larger than bullet diameter. There ain't no pressure on this thing yet it keeps breaking. Is there a solution other than buying more nuts?

[anachronism]

I hesitate to ask, but could you be crossthreading it upon installation? I have the old 450, & have to start the nut by screwing it in backwards
to get the threads to start at the very beginning, in order to keep mine from crossthreading.

Bob

[JohnH]

I've had that trouble too, but go to great lengths to insure it is not crossthreaded before I run it down. The RCBS unit doesn't have this trouble. I'm going to talk to a machinist about the possibility of opening the thread bore and making a nut with more meat in it, the Lyman nut only has .020" of materialfrom the inside wall to the thread root, not a lot of material at all. If making this change is not feasable, I'm gonna save my pennies, get the RCBS tool, and at every opportunity tell folks how displeased I am with the Lyman tool.

[44 WCF]

I have had same problem, to keep from cross threading, I place nut on the die with die about 1/2" out, then place nut wrench across top of sizing die, so the ram pushes on the wrench not the die, and gently lower handle to square nut with threads, just till it makes contact, then usually it will start square with threads. If I wipe extra lube from inside of nut and outside of die, it seems to help a bunch.

[JohnH]

Just so we are clear, the nut is not breaking because of being cross threaded, that is a seperate problem. The nut has been breaking at the jucture of the nut hex and the threaded shank. It simply breakswith no warning. I may get 50 bullets, I may several die changes and 300 bullets, but for no good reason the nut simply breaks. It is almost as if it is too hardas the shank that is left in the tool body is very brittle and snaps up into tiny peices if one is not careful. Aggravating.

[crazy mark]

Lyman could be heat treating them too hard. You could try getting one cherry hot and then putting it in hot sand or something like that so it is covered and let it cool slowly. That will take some of the temper out of it and make it less brittle. Have you aksed Lyman about this problem. There is some pressure on the upstroke but it shouldn't break the nut like that. I've never broken a nut in my many years of casting. Mark

[Willbird]

If they are using a straight carbon steel or case hardening the nuts heathing them cherry red and cooling them in sand will take ALL the temper out of them. It is known as annealing.

Bill

[44man]

If the nut is too hard, set it on your lead pot set on about 600 degrees or just drop it in the molten lead for a half hour or so. Fish it out and set it on the edge of the pot and unplug the pot. Let the pot and nut cool down before messing with it. This will make the nut spring temper.

[Willbird]

It would be nice if we could set up a sticky post on heat treating, drawing, and tempering .

[shooter575]

Willbird, That is a good idea to have a thread on heat treatment,annealing etc. Probly do it in the gunsmithing section. Do we have "stickys" on this BB ?

[45nut]

Do we have "stickys" on this BB ?

Yes indeed. I would encourage a real article however. Much easier to read,print and such.

Printing threads is a extreme waste of paper in my experience.

And articles are easy to keep track of for the host

[waksupi]

Ken, are you having any luck putting together the mish-mash I sent you into readable form?

[JohnH]

I sent Lyman a fax this morning explaining the problem. Haven't heard back as yet, I'll wait till Wednesday then I'm calling. I'm going back to pan lubing, I can do more in less time with less hassle, I'll probably get a few more nuts and simply use the machine to set gas checks as I only really need a few hundred of those a year. What a drag.

[C1PNR]

Man, I thought I was the only one that couldn't thread that thing! I always have, and probably always will, HATE having to change sizing dies!

I keep looking for another Lyman 450 or RCBS lubrisizer. Maybe someday I'll have what I need.

[klw]

As I recall their answer they use to heat treat this part but if they didn't get that exactly right it actually made breaking this part worse. So newer ones are NOT heat treated.

One other thing. Somewhere during the life of the 450, the preceeding model, Lyman really tightened up the specs on the outside diameter of their sizing dies. That means that the newest machines will not be able to handle all the older sizing dies. Just have to try it and see. I don't know if this could be adding to your problem or not.

I do know that I broke one of these parts and asked Lyman for a replacement. That replacement has been in the machine ever since.

[wills]

It would be nice if we could set up a sticky post on heat treating, drawing, and tempering .

Could post it as a file on the yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/castbullets/

[NVcurmudgeon]

A defective die retaining nut is a problem I fortunately have not seen. The other thng that is wrong with Lyman die retaining nuts is the fine thread. So far, going back to the middle 1960s, my Lyman 450s have not yet been crossthreaded. I always gently lower the ram onto the nut to push it square before attempting to tighten the nut. If there happens to be a top punch already installed, I put the Lyman wrench between the top punch and the nut.

[fourarmed]

My 4500 will not allow the nut to screw all the way down. It stops a thread or two short. I quit worrying about it after a while, and have sized lots of bullets without breaking the nut. Yours may have the same problem, and forcing it clear down could be damaging the nut. Something to check.

[chromecrow]

I use the wrench across the nut and lightly press down the ram method. It seems to work better than anything else. How about the other day I was doing some experimenting, I left the sizer in the basement and went to the garage to fetch my caliper when I returned the top had popped off the nut. No excessive pressure on the lube or anything out of the ordinary. Looks like this may be an ongoing problem? At least Im glad to find out that the problem is common and not something I have brought on myself.

[lmcollins]

I just got a new 4500 from Midway last week with the heater. Its on sale for all of this month. In the past I've been using a friends late model 450. Outside of the thicker base to house the heater I can see no difference in the two units but for the fact that the surface that the die retaining nut screws into has been machined flat on my new 4500. the old 450 has this surface left as cast. I think that the 4500 is an improvement since the flat surfacee allows the angled bottom of the die to be seated to the bottom of the lube reservoir which is machined to the same angle: thereby better sealing it from leaking lube while lubing under pressure.

The old 450 leaks at the bottom where the knockout pin comes up to the bottom of the die on the up stroke. I too have noticed that the die retaining nut does not seat to the underside of its hex head. I figured that this was an improvement - since it permitted the bottom of the siziing die to seat snug and tight into the bottom of the unit. I get almost no leakage out of the bottom of my new machine. I would say that if you are getting dienut breakage that you are over tightening the nut. The Lyman wrench stinks. Don't botter to use it. Instead use any open end 7/8's inch wrench, and when you tighten the nut down be very careful to just bottom the bottom of the sizing die to the bottom of its seat in the resivoir. I use the ram without a nose punch installed to hold the locknut true to the axis of its threads when I tighten it.

If you are getting nut breakage: are you using a hard lube and not letting the sizer get good and hot before tring to remove or seat dies? I wouldn't doubt that you could break retaining nuts working against "cold" "hard lubes" like the Thompson Apache Blue lube that I'm using.

Whatever, when you install a die just tighten up the nut so as to bottom the die in the bottom of it's resivoir! The job of the nut is to seat the die and hold it in place... not lock it against volcanic eruptions.

Just my 2 cents....