I was decapping a load of 9mm last night and I had done maybe 100 pieces of brass when the press totally locked up. The ram was all the way down and I could not get it to budge. I pulled the die plate out and then removed the shell plate, and then the shell plate carrier...so there's nothing on the top of the ram to be an impediment...and I still cant get the thing to budge. So I unmounted the press from my bench and flipped it over. And there, at the bottom of the spent-primer track, is a primer wedged to the rim of the press. Removing it cleared the problem.
What I'm trying to figure out now is how this happened. Primers are ejected at the top of the stroke. So the primer would have had to have fallen down the spent-primer track, but not fall into the primer catch area so it's sitting at the bottom of the ramp. Then at the bottom of the down stoke the primer slides, just slightly, off of the ramp (if it had fallen to the floor it wouldn't be a problem) so that on the next up stoke it gets pinched between the ram and the press.
Is there another possible\plausible explanation?
Do I just need to keep the bottom of the spent-primer track clean of debris so primers bounce out as they are supposed to do?
P.S. while the press is disassembled I intend to do a thorough cleaning. So if anybody has any tips\tricks on cleaning a Pro 1000 I'll gladly take those as well.
What I'm trying to figure out now is how this happened. Primers are ejected at the top of the stroke. So the primer would have had to have fallen down the spent-primer track, but not fall into the primer catch area so it's sitting at the bottom of the ramp. Then at the bottom of the down stoke the primer slides, just slightly, off of the ramp (if it had fallen to the floor it wouldn't be a problem) so that on the next up stoke it gets pinched between the ram and the press.
Is there another possible\plausible explanation?
Do I just need to keep the bottom of the spent-primer track clean of debris so primers bounce out as they are supposed to do?
P.S. while the press is disassembled I intend to do a thorough cleaning. So if anybody has any tips\tricks on cleaning a Pro 1000 I'll gladly take those as well.
