How To Set Up the Hornady Lock-n-Load Progressive Reloading Press

the Hornady Lock and Load auto progressive press or AP for short it's a fully functional five station progressive press that gives you one loaded round with each pull of the handle today we're going to go through step by step how to set it up so stay tuned let's get started when you get your horn Indy Lock and Load comes in this nice big box fully packed from the factory impervious to shippers abuse and what you want to do is slide off the cover get it right and start taking out the goodies there's a lot of packing in here take your time try not to lose anything here's the actual press and it's a beauty along with that you have some other goodies in here there's our powder measure and priming tools here's some powder measure dye our Lock and Load bushings there and a bracket for our bin there's our ammo bin and it has a drum for our powder measure inside yes when I'm setting one of these up I do read the manual it's absolutely essential so now that we got everything out we can get started the first thing we have to do is bolt the press to the bench and to do that I'm gonna have to drill some new holes in this bench okay now that we got the holes drilled we can go ahead and mount dress up and for this Hornady recommends five sixteenth inch bolts with a washer on them like I've got here the length will vary depending on how thick your bench top is I'm using four inch bolts here they seem to do the trick for me and get a bolt in there tighten them up as you normally would like any other tool of ice or something you tighten down doesn't have to be super tight you just don't want this thing moving around and there we go that's plenty tight this thing is solid as a rock you can pick the bench up with it if I could pick the bench up alright now we've got to install our handles get that on there so now we want to secure the handle by tightening a slop net with a crescent wrench hand the basic press is mounted and ready to go so let's move on to the next step which is mounting the shell plate and before we do that heartediy wants a little bit of grease on the base of the press here there's little indentations here for the ball detent so we're going to put a little grease in those and that'll make the thing ride a lot smoother you want to take this keyed area right here and make sure it fits the corresponding stud on the press nice and easy at that point it's just a matter of putting the screw in place it doesn't have to be super snug and I lift up on the handle create a little friction on it lift it up look there we've got a ratcheting press it is working Hornady sets these up at the factory to ratchet properly if you find that it is not coming all the way around to each station you need to consult your manual to find out how to retirement or call it one of the tech they can walk you through it if they have to so the next thing we want to do is to put the shell retainer spring and this is a spring right here it's a nice coil loop around the shell plate and it goes in place pretty easily but you have to cycle the press a couple times to get it to drop in and there it goes now it's running in its groove here and it'll hold the shells in there stations all the way around at each station check and make sure everything's advancing properly each time you raise the RAM it should be coming up on each station on each die station here there should be a shell holder opposite it this one is working properly horn D sets these up at the factory and if it's not indexing properly there are instructions in your manual on how to fix that or you can call hornaday's tech support they can walk you through it also next we want to install the priming mechanism now this came equipped ready to go for large primers and we're loading 45 ACP but we've decided to take it apart so you could watch how it's put together first thing to do is take the priming Ram here and hook it up to this little spring right here which is hard to reach their district up this puts the tension on your priming and then we place the cover on top that retains it now before you install yours be sure those parts are clean and oil-free no debris no rough edges just double-check it make sure the primers have a nice easy path to follow because unprogressive one of the most important things you can do is make sure that your primers flow properly okay as you see it moves back and forth there it gets cam to back and it goes forward lines up here and you've got a primer in place once there's one to feed so now that we have that in place we can screw the primer shield in place and that's very easy that just screws on those outer threads down there next we want to put the inner tube in and there are two of these so make sure the one you get corresponds to the primers you want to use to see one's got a large hole one's got a small hole we're going to use large primers so we'll go with this one there's a slight rebate here and you want to put that down so it'll go into its recess inside there and nest properly don't go once you have that in place this little guide goes on top that centers everything up so now when you go to feed primers from one of these centers it up for you pull the pin primers fall down you're fully charged so that's the priming setup everything's running smoothly so far so good next we take our Lock and Load powder measure and being careful not to lose any of these levers or anything on the way we're going to put it into the die and we're going to take the activation arm slip it over its locking nut here tighten that in place make sure it's moving freely now this device is called the powder stop or a powder measure stop excuse me and what this does is limits the travel this powder measure so when your case hits the top of the die and hits that expansion point all the pressure is going to be borne by this rather than your mechanism and your powder measure pretty good idea it's all taken up here all the stress so you don't have to worry so we'll put this in place over the two spring points and we'll put our spring first on the top then on the bottom make sure we have good positive return pressure that way when the case backs out this comes down gets another load of powder you don't want your powder measure to jam up now we get to test it take a case loading station one index it over station - there goes our powder measure now we're not feeling a lot of resistance at the end and this isn't bottoming out so we're going to need a little more adjustment here I'm going to tweak that up there's a little bit let's try a bullet in there just a little more just need a little more there [Music] let's see what it looks like they're bullet stays in the case it's gonna stay oriented for the next seating step so we'll call that good pablor measures ready to go we can lock down our adjustments and proceed now that we've got the powder measure installed we can install the Hornady powder cop and what this does is gives you a visual verification of the powder level in the case it'll show you if the case is properly charged it will also show you if there's a double charge in there which can be disastrous so this is a great idea when you're loading on a progressive now to install it again we want to put our Lock and Load bushing on there put it into the press it'll be on Station three right next to your powder measure take a prime case run it through one charge it with powder comes over now the powder calm and you can see the white o-ring just shows above here we can adjust this up just slightly so it with a proper powder charge and I've weighed this already so I know I'm throwing the proper charge it comes up about flush that way every time you put the handle down your eyeball will fall on this whole ring and see that it's at the right level so let's take the same case leave the powder in it and run it through and give it a double charge and see what it looks like there's the second charge and there the O ring comes up twice as far now it's not a huge difference but now there's a gap between the die and the O ring so your eye should pick that up instantly it's right under your nose it's put there right in front of you on purpose so when you see that you know you've got a double charge case next we're going to install the bullets eating die went ahead and installed the sizer die in station one that's pretty easy nothing to figure out there the Cedar die takes a little bit of finagling depending on what unit you have now we're using the horn of the die here which crimps and seats the bullet to proper depth in one motion it's got two adjustment rings for the bullet depth and for the crimp I've got a bushing on it so we're going to lock and load that in place and what we'll do is take an empty case and we'll just run it through without powder or without primer we're just making a dummy test case I've looked in the horn of the manual here our overall length is one point two thirty one inch two hundred thirty thousand for the 230 grain xtp bullet we're going to load so we'll go up the station one size it normally we would prime right here charge with powder next station is the powder cop nothing happening because we have no powder station for take an X T P bullet goes up seats the bullet crimps there it is next station if you wanted to crimp separately there's still one open station so if you want to add a taper crimp die to that you could and just seat with this one some people like to do that especially with cast bullets where you might shave a little red off them but this particular unit works fine just as is so you'd go up to the next station and then it would eject the shell and you're done and from then on each pull the handle will give you one loaded round that's what the AAP is all about okay with the press all set up and our test rounds looking good we're ready to start loading ammo you have any questions on how to use this or set it up give us call in the tech line we'll be glad to help you out thanks for watching see you next time you

Channel: Brownells, Inc.

Views: 130,720

Rating: 4.9210849 out of 5

Keywords: Lock-N-Load AP, Hornady, reloading press setup, progressive reloading press

Id: o-ytPKgII9w

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018