16ga.com ~ View topic - DR-16 GREAT LOADS

Please describe this modification. I dont use the dr-16 but I am curious

Joined: 26 Apr 2010 Posts: 3177 Location: NCWa

So is the drought of DR16s over? so I can check 16ga society with hearing a bunch of belly-aching about those that don't have any and want to blame the supplier.

Member Joined: 16 Nov 2006 Posts: 1338

can the drop tube be raised on this machine?

Plus 1 for what Mr. Campbell posted..........if you raise the drop tube, you don't seat the wad. Yes the drop tube is adjustable on a 9000 series reloader.

I spoke with Kevin Pearce at the Ohio State trap shoot this past weekend , picked up some DR16 samples-I've never used them- and he said they should have shipped to Recob's last Friday (06/26) or possibly Monday (06/29). Whether this occurred remains to be seen

MEC Drop Tube Adjustment --

First of all, the drop tube is the black one with the cone at the top. The drop tube fits inside the wad ram -- the wad ram is the chrome one that pushes the wad into the shell. You must have the wad ram low enough to seat the wad on the powder. If you want to give the wad a little pre-crush (with some wads it works and others not), you can lower the wad ram a bit more -- an eighth inch plus a little more maybe. No real wad pressure is needed, by the way, on modern powders. You can raise the wad ram only so much, however, until the choked down portion of it starts to raise the drop tube -- look at the parts diagram if you can't visualize this. Of course you can trim the black drop tube so it won't be raised by a high-positioned wad ram, but then it might become disengaged from the wad ram if the wad ram ever gets adjusted to a low position again. For extreme situations, I have those black drop tubes in a couple of different lengths. In the vast majority of situations, you will never need to do this, but when your drop tube starts to push the charge bar assembly up, you'll know what's going on. Anyway, there's a limit to this wad ram adjustment, and Mike's modification to the wad guide is a solution, perhaps the only one.

Wad Pre-Crush -- This is easy to do on a single stage MEC, and you can quickly move the shell to the crimp station before the wad springs back. You can also squeeze the shell with your fingers after wad seating to help hold the wad down until you can do the crimp start. You can also gently massage the crimp in a single stage by holding down the final crimp die with your fingers during the early part of the final crimp stroke, so that a crush-able wad gets crushed. By the way, that is what the knurled band on the old chromed metal crimp dies was for! With the black plastic crimp die, you can push down on the top where the cam roller is. However, on progressive reloaders you can't do this, and it is very difficult for most hulls to hold the pre-crushed wad down for the time it takes to cycle the reloader again. This produces one of the reloading problems with the DR-16 in some hulls -- wad springback. It leaves the shot too high in the shell at the crimp start and crimp closing stations, leading to shot on top of the crimp and bad crimps. It is easier to load DR-16's on single stage MEC reloaders. I'm guessing it would probably be more difficult in some situations with a PW375 or the like -- haven't tried it.