Attitude at Dillon

[Just Duke]

Quote:
Elord told me once that at the height they were turning out 500 a year. Exactly when that started I don't know but it went on for decades.

For a considerable period Star had large standing orders for their machines. Thus they didn't have to advertise. If you found them, they would sell you a machine. All the rest went to a few very big customers.

Star help Mike Dillon get started. Mike's first product was the so-called Super Star kit which converted a Star Universal into a machine capable of reloading 223's. Elord helped Mike develop that.

Mike's first machine, the Dillon RL1050, was meant to be a Super Star kit built from the ground up. Financially it was a blop. That forced Mike into machine machines like his current line. When Mike became the leading progressive manufacturer, he specifically set out to destroy Star. I never understood why.

The Wilkinson family, two generations of which worked for Star, would probably know more. The elder Wilkinson retired to somewhere in the Phoenix area. God only know where. There are about a dozen towns down there. His son, Rob I think, might have gone there too. Might be worth a search to see if there is a Rob Wilkinson in the phone book somewhere.

One last thought. For a long time Star Universals sold for $450 I think. That was a lot more than they cost to make. Star was getting so many orders, however, that they raised the price to $950 to cut interest. It had just the opposite effect.

http://www.starreloaders.com/forum/i...opic,22.0.html

[Just Duke]

Quote:
Star73,

I don't claim to be an expert on Star history, but the Super Star Conversions was Dillons first entry into the reloading business, and my understanding is that he was on friendly terms with Star at the time. The conversions was a group of parts that converted a Star Universal to load .223. According to Dillon's website, he sold less than 100 of them. I have a partial set of the parts. I keep looking for the rest, but haven't made much progress.

The following is from Dillon's website:

The Highly Irregular and Somewhat Improbable
History of Dillon Precision Products
By Mike Dillon

I got into the reloading equipment business purely by accident. It started when a friend of mine died in an airplane crash – MY airplane. A few other friends of his and I spent four or five months closing up his machine shop business and selling off all the tools for his widow. When we were finished, she said, “I guess I owe you an airplane.” I answered, “No you don’t. I didn’t lend it to you. I lent it to your husband. That was between him and me. But I WOULD like his Thompson submachine gun.” The Tommy gun came with a star loading tool, so I became a progressive reloader.

Shortly thereafter, I bought an M-16, and wanted to load .223 ammo progressively, but Star said it wasn’t possible to do it with their tool. They said, “If you want to try it, we’ll sell you a .380 shellplate and you can try to make it work.” So I went to a machinist and cut down an RCBS die, ground the hardcoat off of the outside and had him thread it to the weird thread size that Star dies used and I made the damn thing work. I changed the link-arms to give it a little more stroke and came up with a kit so my friends could convert their machines.

My friend Peter Kokalis was ridiculing me and sarcastically suggested marketing my kit as the “Superstar Conversion,” which I did. Maybe 100 or so kits were sold, but soon people started asking me for a conversion to load .30-06 rifle ammunition on the Star machine. That’s when I decided to make my own reloader. The RL-1000 was the first full-fledged Dillon Precision product. Manufacture started out in my garage, then we moved into a small shop. We started the company on a $30,000 loan against our house.

http://www.starreloaders.com/forum/i...pic,618.0.html

[Just Duke]

I have never heard anything bad from the Dillon employees besmearching another manufactures product. I do know from having a couple of buddies that worked at Dillon the products that come back as seconds are promptly fought over by the employees for purchase. Most guys that answer the phone at Dillon have been there for years and reload for alot of real odd ball cartridges (including main steam one) and are really good at what they know.
Most Dillon employees are not there for the money, but are there because they LOVE the products. I myself have been to their first facillity dozens of times and chatted quite heavilly with the owner (mostly about choppers) and find him to be a facinating intelligent fella.
I was however informed by several employees that their chief engineer was causing turmoil within the said company "mid 90's) and he was said to be so "highly valued" that he could do know wrong and if for some reason he didn't like another employee for any reason, had that employee, by the power that be "packing and on his way. That did leave a sour taste in my mouth for years but later that said engineer must have been found out about because he is no longer there and now makes some sort of a bullet feeder/case feeder.
After his egressing I promptly picked up the Dillon line again.

[Just Duke]

The only LEE product I use is their 500 S&W dies only because Dillon does not make any.
I will however, never buy another LEE product.

[j4570]

I think you should wirte Mike Dillon and explain what happened and why you chose another press. I encountered no such attitude but my press was bought from a local dealer. When I went to buy additional items, all the guys have been straightforward, only once did they snafu on an order and was willing to accomodate me to fix it. They also asked me what kind of dies I was using and they cautioned me about some other brands with their equipment may not worked and when I inquired further, they stated for example, LEE dies may be too short. I explained I had mostly RCBS & Lyman, and that the LEE dies I had was for something I probably wouldn't load on the Dillon. And he replied I should be ok.

Now, there is one Dillon product, the universal decap die, that I think in junk. The decap pins aren't warranted by Dillon. They did ask me if I was decapping berdan brass and I told them no. It was crimped 223 Sellier & Belliot case. I bought a couple pins and bent another one. At $3 each that was crazy. I had paid like $9 for a Lyman that I broke after thousands of rounds. I since bought an RCBS that has the small replaceable pins (The Lyman didn't, it was going to cost almost as much as the die with shipping because I could only get the part from Lyman), and have been happy ever since. And guess what, not a broken or bent pin finishing those 200 or so cases that bent the Dillon Pin. So I tell everyone not to buy the Dillon Universal Decap Die.

As for the Hornady Progressive, I looked seriously at it back then in 1996 when I got my press. I'm glad I didn't purchase it at that time. Since then, they have made some notable upgrades, one being a case activated powder drop (previously the press actuated it and dumped powder there even if a case wasn't present unless you disconnected the rod) and the press didn't have the bushings to interchange the dies. These are very good improvements. I had a friend that had a Hornady Progressive given to him, and he upgraded the powder drop and it made the press soooo much better. And with the bushings to interchange dies, that's great too along with 5 die stations over the 4 on the Dillon 550.

Will I get rid of my 550? No, I am familiar with it and it works well. But I might would buy a used Hornady for the right money too!!!

I really think you should write Mike Dillon and explain it. Tell him you're not asking for anything as you have spent your money elsewhere. The way the salesman handled himself is completey wrong. I mean this bozo is trashing other companies dies. Suppose you were loading something Dillion doesn't sell dies for (and guess what, it's a lot of calibers)? I think a warning is fair enough concerning some other makes of dies may or may not work, but trashing the other companies, not good business in my experience.

Give us a review of the Hornady when you get it.

JW

[Lloyd Smale]

ive got an occasional crappy service man on the phone but over the years have gotten to know most of them and there all great people that for the most part will bend over backwards for you. I think what happens is when they get a new guy they tell them what is covered and what is not and until they get a little time in there not flexable. Ive found if you get one of them on the phone just hang up and call later in the day and youll get a differnt person. As to longevity i cant comment on a lock and load because ive havent seen one with any serious ammount of rounds but ive got 5 square deals and id bet my house that 4 of them and my 550 have each loaded over a million rounds of ammo. Sure stuff has broke and sure i could give dillon so thoughts on how to improve them but then theyd be more expensive. You can have a 1050 for square deal prices. Nice thing with the dillons is a guy can load a couple hundred thousand rounds box them up and send them in and it will come back like new and ready to go again. Knowing hornady they would probably do the same though. Bottom line is in my opinion when you factor the cost and reliablility between a lock and load and a 650 and all there features its about a toss up. A square deal isnt quite as good but its faster and cheaper. A 1050 is in a league of its own and has no competition in the market place and never did. The stars i loaded on were nothing but a pain in the ass.

[AzShooter]

Unfortunately the salesman didn't use the right terms to suggest his dies or the RCBS that they sell. There is a big difference in dies. Lee work but do not work as well as some other dies.

On my Dillon 650 I use only Dillon dies.

On my 550 I used Lees until the guarenteed for life decaping pin broke the first day of use. I needed the ammo and no one had a replacement pin. I bought a set of RCBS dies and have been happy with them every since.

I also tried Lee in my .303 British and the neck only die doesn't size the neck correctly. I should have bought the RCBS again.

I'm not saying Lee's don't work. On my single stage Lee press they work fine but they don't work real well on my progressives.

[rockrat]

I load 9mm on my 650 with Lee dies and haven't had any trouble with it. Also loaded 44mag on my other 650 using lee dies and also, no problems. I have had Lee 1000's and all are in a corner except one, the 45 colt one, it works well. Had a "Green Machine"--talk about priming nightmares eventually.

Bought a 1050 used, from the Leverguns board, thinking I could load .308, but once I got it in, I remembered that it took the Super 1050 for that. Dillon told me the same thing. All I need to do is get me a crimp die and cut it off for bullet clearance and I think I will be good to go. .223 and 7.62 x 39 should be no problem. Just a pain to change calibers

Only problem I had with Dillon, was I called to order parts for the 1050, and the guy I talked to, you could tell he really didn't want to talk to me, as I didn't have a manual and could'nt tell him the part numbers. You could just hear it from him over the phone. He kept saying 550 and I would say "no, a 1050". I was lucky I called back a few minutes later and asked if I could add another part to the order, as the other guy looked at my order and wondered why I ordered 550 shellplates. Told him I ordered 1050 shellplates. He corrected everything for me and sounded like he was glad to have helped me, unlike the first guy.

Got my Grafs catalog in two days later and found I could have ordered a complete conversion kit for what Dillon directly charged me for just the shellplate!!

Live and learn, I guess.

By the way, I have Dillon 450, 650 (2) and now a 1050. I also use a RCBS Rockchuck and have 310 tools I use and Lee hand presses I sometimes use. Now that I am not single, I can't get away with loading with the hand stuff in front of the TV, especially since the significant other sucked a live primer into her vacumn and it went off. BANNED to loading room.

Enjoy your Lock n load, but if you ever do get to where you want to buy a Dillon, check out Grafs first.

By the way, when I got the used 1050 in, the guy had been loading 38 supers with it and was using a lee crimp die, but he had wrapped the upper part of the die with teflon plumbers tape instead of a lock ring. Must have worded well.

[stargzer]

Hey, that reminds me of a shoe salesman I ran cross several years ago. Picked out a pair of Davenport loafers. When we went to the counter to check out, he asked me if I had any shoe trees. What the H E double toothpicks is a shoe tree I asked. He showed me a shoe tree and I said no thanks. "Id rather not sell you these shoes if you're not going to take care of them" he said. I just walked off without a word.
If you talk to that guy again ask him if he use to sell shoes. Maybe hes made his way to Dillion after all these years.

Marc

Hey I think I got that same saleman at Dillion a couple of months ago, he was a really "dirt bag".

Stargzer
USAF Retired
NRA Life Member

[stargzer]

I am always suprised when I hear such poor salemanship. Dillon lost a sale, because some guy should not be working the phones in the first place. I agree there is nothing so insulting than that kind of pitch. Maybe Dillon should know that it did happen.

I agree, although this seems to be a trend with almost all big companies (anyone call AT&T lately) in the last couple of years.....extremely poor salesmanship and customer service.

Stargzer
USAF Retired
NRA Life Member

[stargzer]

[QUOTE=PatMarlin;430930]All I have is LEE and Dillon dies on my shelves. I use LEE's in my 550b all the time. I use the thinner Dillon nuts on the older lee's. They all work for me, and most of the time I prefer the LEE's for some reason.
QUOTE]

I am using Lee 9mm dies and taper crimp on my rl550b and have never had any problems with it. I also have RCBS and Dillion dies.....they all work for me. All three companies dies work on my press, the dillion has only one small advantage, the radius on the die opening is nice....but, they also cost almost twice as much.

Stargzer
USAF Retired
NRA Life Member

[Crash_Corrigan]

Marc 2:

My dad showed me by example the value of shoe trees. Whenever he bought a pair of shoes, he bought two pairs of the same style and color. He would never wear the same shoes two days in a row; he would always wear the second pair. When not worn ALL HIS SHOES WERE ON SHOE TREES. He must have had twenty sets of wooden shoe trees he bought many years ago.

He was born in 1909 and his dad was a country Doctor. He would have been considered wealthy {granddad} but he did not waste money. All his children went to college and my Dad also was afforded that opportunity. However he could not hack the autopsy part of medical school and gave it up after 3 years of it. My grandpa passed in 1924 at the age of 44. My Dad was only 15 at the time but there was enough money for him to get a BS from the University of Rochester and go on to medical school. There was some serious money in the Corrigan family away back then. Grandpap Daniel was one of 10 children. Amongst them were 4 Doctors, 3 Nuns 2 Nurses and a Priest who later on was elevated to Bishop. Most of my Paternal family was based in Webster NY or Kingston, Ontario. The original Patriarch, my great great Grandad was born in Kingston Ontario in 1831. Somebody a couple of years ago paid some serious money to a Geneologist to have a family tree researched. {see link http://familytrees.genopro.com/Corrigan-Family-Tree/}.

I was goofing on the internet one day and Googled my grandpa's name, and this silly geneology came up. What astounded me was that a fella by the name of George Nagle married my dad's sister Margarete and his Maternal side of the family goes way back to about 768 AD and she is directly related to the royal family of England. If you pull up this family tree thing you will find Prince Charles, Lady Dianah and all the of Windsors and such going back to before the middle ages.

I dont know if all of them dudes used shoe trees but I shure do. I have some shoes that are over 30 years old which I still wear daily. If you use saddle soap and polish and take care of your shoes they will outlast you. I am a very fussy buyer of shoes. I have about 18 pairs of them now. I seldom buy new ones and when I do I am not afraid to spend money to buy two pairs. I bought a motorcycle last spring and that required some heavy duty leather boots. Each pair cost $175 and I bought two pair. As I ride every day {50 MPG} they have shoe trees.

As far as Dillon....they are cool...helpfull....experienced....knowledgeable and very courteous. They are proud of their company but most of them do not denegrate the competition. One a few occasions I have found a less than decent person on the phone....when that happens I ask to speak to another rep as "the chemistry is not working". On those days I have never been refused and I am always happy with the results. Dillon is a class company and they will pretty much do anything possible to make the customer happy and thier attitude reflects that in most cases. If you get a dud, pull the trigger again and get somebody else.

[kimber 40]

I have nothing but good to say about Dillon.. I own a 550 B and have loaded thousands of rounds with it. I like the idea of being able to phone them up while i am at the loading bench and encounter a problem or being my fault or not break a part on the press or strip a lock nut on the dies which i have done and phone them up and they replace it no questions asked. Which i have done twice. I agree that the dies are a little on the pricey side, but i am sure you have all heard the old saying you "get what you pay for". Does Lee or RCBS or any other manufacturer for that matter offer the same no BS warranty as Dillon? NO. To me its like buying a used Dillon press at a garage sale that has been abused and mistreated and then phoning Dillon up saying this broke and that broke can you replace it ! Come on where is the loyalty here Dillon is willing to back up their product no questions asked, but in return is it too much to ask for a little customer Loyalty ???

I also agree, as a customer no one wants to or should be treated like that. I should also say the chap at Dillon needs a lesson in customer relations and it would be in Dillons best interest to make sure he gets it or keep him in the back filling boxes !!!

[Shiloh]

Well Said Kimber40

Shiloh

[flutedchamber]

Dillon for the most part does make a quality product, but it seems that the people that you get on the phone can be hit or miss the last 5 or so years, as I have written in a previous post about Dillon customer service.

I did call Dillon once with a problem concerning variable weights of small charges of flake powder (red dot) in my pistol loads. I was given a few hints, tried them and it didn't help very much if at all. I learned on my own to keep the hopper at least half full of powder to keep the weight variation the lowest possible.

On my return call to Dillon about the powder weight variance problem that I was having the rep told me that I was asking too much from a powder measure in the way of accuracy. I don't consider .3 to .4 grains too much to ask on a 5 grain or so load. Almost 10% is nothing to sneeze at.

I told the rep that I had used the Lee swivel adapter and riser on my Dillon 1050 along with the auto disk powder measure and was getting consistant .2 grain or less variance in weight and he had a fit. I was "putting trash on a fine press, Dillons finest." I told him that the Lee auto disk measure may be trash in his eyes, but it's twice as accurate and consistent as the "fine Dillon powder measure."

Sometimes I think Dillon gets a bit too full of itself. Sort of like the blue Koolaid.

They do make a good product, but the price and attitude could use an adjustment.

[stargzer]

Dillon for the most part does make a quality product, but it seems that the people that you get on the phone can be hit or miss the last 5 or so years, as I have written in a previous post about Dillon customer service.

Sometimes I think Dillon gets a bit too full of itself. Sort of like the blue Koolaid.
They do make a good product, but the price and attitude could use an adjustment.

I have to agree with Flutedchamber. I have tried several times to let Dillion Customer Service make amends to their ways.....to no avail. Just called the other day....AMOF, day after Christmas for a replacement to a broken piece of equipment and maybe the rep was not happy to be working on the day after Christmas. I had to work, like most of us, so didn't know what his problem was. I think it is mostly "MISS" instead of "HIT" with Dillion Reps. Almost everyone of them seems to be either annoyed or too busy to want to help. The last four or five calls to Dillion was not a very good experience. I will say that the equipment is great...too bad they can get the human part RIGHT! Yes, and pricey. BTW, I don't think they use Caller ID....they ask for your customer number or Zip Code, I'm sure they put remarks into your profile, so you are immediately singled out even if the agent you get has never spoken to you. Its a common practice in many service industries.

Additional edit: as I lay waiting for sleep to take over, I realized one thing I forgot. As one who has previously and currently working in the Service industry, this type of "profiling" is NOT EXCEPTABLE, no matter what the servicing agent perceives or feels. If my manager suspects any of these to be going on where I work , the person or persons involved are severely reprimanded and the profiling is immediately removed. I think Dillions Manager or Managers of applicable departments are failing to take care of this. I have spoken to their manager and still not felt great about Dillion Service (I felt he was also annoyed with me or I interrupted something he was doing). Heck, maybe he read my "PROFILE". Sure there may not seem to be very many who are dissatisfied (not with the product) with customer service, ONE PERSON....should be all it takes for them to look in to the problem and correct it. Instead of being annoyed at the customer, the agent should be asking questions, like "HOW CAN I, HELP YOU? WHAT DO YOU THINK THE PROBLEM IS? WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP YOU FIX THIS PROBLEM? SEND YOU A SPRING, LOCATOR BUTTON, SET SCREW, WHATEVER? If you are in the Manufacturing and service industry.....bottom line is "The Customer should be treated with respect and is usually 99% of the time, RIGHT.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY.......even to the folks at DILLION. Maybe they will get it together in 2009.

[Castoff]

While it is not my intent to Bash" Dillon, the truth of the matter is reflected in my greater than 12 year experience with them.
I feel Dillon products are over engineered and therefore overly complicated.
The two problems I have found are.
1)- the powder measures are inaccurate.
Dillon employees have said to me their powder measure will only meter to +/- 1.5 grains per charge.
This is totally unacceptable .In the final analysis, I do not believe I can trust a Dillon powder measure to safely throw a charge.
2)- their primer system allows primers to shake and flip over, thus jamming the machine. This is a frequent occurrence, no matter how careful the operator is not to allow any vibrations during the operation of the press.

I have been thought about these problems many times and have talked to Dillon many, many times about how to solve them.
There is no way to solve them as there are inherent in the design of the product.
My Dillon presses are "high maintainence "items.This means a lot of down time with adjustments and repairs.

Laugh as may at Lee products, Lee products work well and are reliabe; and are less costly in both dollars and time.
That is the bottom line.

[jim4065]

I have a little experience with the Hornady now - reloaded 1500 out of 2000 38 Specials. It's a great machine, and I'm very satisfied.

An interesting thing - the Dillon rep was right (in a way) about the Lee dies. While he chose unfortunate words, which cost the sale, the Lee sizer needs a tapered opening to work with a Progressive loader (or at least with the Hornady machine). A straight wall case can cock just a skosh in the shellplate and sometimes needs to be aligned slightly with the "off side" index finger to run it into the die. Incidentally, this simply never happened with the same die on the Lee Classic Turret. It does slow down production, but that's not a factor in why I bought a Progressive. It may seem odd, but I'm not trying to load "fast". My problem with the turret was simply the number of pulls with rotation required for my right arm - it got so I could only load 100 cases a day. Too much pain in the right elbow. The Hornady helps out a lot - as would any Progressive press.

As a side note for anyone using the Dillon/Hornady case feeder plates, the suggested "Large Pistol" plate is a poor choice for the 38 Special (and probably for the 38 S&W, 357 Magnum and 357 Maximum also but I haven't got around to them yet). The two pistol feeder plates, large and small, handle cases with the axis of the case parallel with the axis of the plate. The opening on the large plate will allow an extra case to sometimes wedge in there which gums up the works very quickly. The small plate is slower to "find" a case in the proper orientation to pick it up, but at least it doesn't jam with two cases in the same hole.

[Uncle Jefro]

Howdy Jim, I started out on a Lee Classic Turret, great little press for what it does. For progressive I went with the Hornady LNL AP, and could not be more satisfied. It will make ammo as fast as I can feed cases and bullets, and pull the handle. I did my home work for over a year before buying a progressive and always came back to the LNL. I checked out Dillon 550 and 650, and heard all about blue, Dillon makes a great press, I just decided on maroon. I preferred the ease of caliber change with about the same features as a 650 for the price of a 550. I had planned on using the Lee factory crimp die, but found I really liked the Hornady seat-crimp die. Even though I bought the powder through expander die, I found it easier to just us the expander die, without it I would have had an empty station anyhow. I set mine up a little different than what I've seen and find it to be very efficient. Station 1 deprime-size, station 2 expander, station 3 powder, station 4 powder cop, station 5 seat-crimp. The powder cop is a must. One thing I knew about from my research, is the primer tube works better with a little pressure to feed smoothly when the primers run low. Some folks use a brass or dowel rod, I made mine from a coat hanger and ground the end flat and smooth. I added a flag to mine to let me know when the primers are running low. I think Dillon makes one for thiers. A case feeder is on the wish list, but don't know if it will really speed things up that much. As soon as I see the powder cop, I have a case and boolit ready. Good Luck

Uncle Jefro

[AZ Pete]

I have a couple of Dillon presses. A 550b and a SDB. I have been to Dillon, at their current location and the one previous. My shooting bud worked for Dillon for several years.

What I can tell you about their service is that they rebuilt my SDB, gratis a couple of years ago. Replaced every small part, including the plastic tube on the powder measure. They have sent me replacement springs, and other small parts based on a phone call. They even sent me a complete priming mechanism for my SDB, because I asked for a spring for the old style primer feed. The guy on the phone said "let me send you a new feed, it has been improved, what primer size do you want?".

I tried RCBS dies in my 550b (in 45acp), because I had them, when I bought the press, (I love RCBS too), however they did not work well, due to the lack of a "funnel" in the carbide sizing ring (because they were designed for a single stage press). Dillon dies are designed for progressive presses, and are easier to work with on a progressive, IMHO, due to the ability to quickly strip them for claeaning and the shape of the carbide sizing ring.

Those among us who will let, what we precieve as, an attitude from a single employee, sour us on a manufacturer, store or whatever, are punishing ourselves. Get over it. That voice on the phone wasn't Mike Dillon, or his son (that now runs the place). It was a guy that rubbed you wrong. Complain to the company about his attitude, then buy what you really wanted.