My Hornady LNL AP has now been in service for a year, and I thought I would give you an update. This is a down in the weeds blog entry. If you have no interest in progressive reloaders, I would not mind if you skipped it. However, for those of you who have written me, asking for my opinion on the Hornady LNL AP, this entry is a compilation of a year’s worth of experience.

All told, I have loaded close to 2000 rounds in the following chamberings:

357 Magnum
9mm Luger
223 Remington
45 ACP

Overall, I think I made a good choice. I do not regret spending the extra money and getting a Dillon. I do not feel I did wrong shying away from the Lee. Spending $100 more for a Dillon would have bought me a press that would have to be indexed manually. From looking at all the reviews and Youtubes, the Lee LoadMaster would have required a bunch more tinkering. I think I got a good deal. There was a special running last year that included a $80 Hornady stool and 500 rounds of bullets thrown in for free. It just so happened I needed a new stool, and it just so happened that one of the choices for bullets was the Hornady .308  150 grain Spirepoint. I’ve got deer bullets for life.

Let me run down a list of virtues I have encountered:

1) Once you get it running, the Hornady LNL AP is good for 500 rounds without a stop. That’s not as good as a Dillon, but 500 rounds is a big run for me. You might get more, but I haven’t tried
2) Changeover between chamberings is not a big deal. I had a lot of first-time setup issues to complicate things, but going back to a chambering previously loaded was a breeze.
3) The LNL bushings are great. I now have 4 sets of dies in these bushings and they are dedicated to the press. I can switch them in and out without losing settings. This is as good a solution as having dedicated plates and takes up far less room and costs less.
4) When things have gone wrong Hornady Customer Service has been great at sending me parts. I gave them my name the first time, and they already had me in the system from my warranty registration.
5) The Youtube videos that are out there are really good– both the ones that Hornady produced as well as a good number of the others.
6) Having five stations is cool. Here is my setup:

1) Resize and De-cap and Prime
2) Powder and Expansion
3) Powder Cop
4) Bullet Seating
5) Lee Factory Crimp and Resize

Now let me give you my bitch list (It’s remarkably short)

1) Until I mastered it, the adjustments for using the Powder Through Expander (PTX) die were inscruitible. No matter how hard I tried, something was always going wrong. There is an insert that goes in the powder measure that allows you to expand the case mouth at the same time you are filling the case with powder. For some folks they never get the hang of it, and I’ve seen cases were a fellow sold off the LNL AP because of it. I will say this: it’s not easy, but once I got the setup figured out, it works just fine. At one point I was having really dark thoughts about the press– gone two weekends unable to load a single round of 9mm. It turned out I had inserted the .358 PTX die (used for 357 Magnum) instead of the .356 PTX die for the 9mm. Ol’ Shaman had a huge palm-to-face moment and moved on.

2) The adjustments of the two pawls at the bottom of the press related to auto advancement are equally confusing. However, I will say that the instructions (page 18 of the manual) are consise and accurate. It may take you a while to wrap your head around it, but it’s all there. There is no mystery.

3) The action of the press as it adavances will occasionally cause a flake or two of powder to jump out of the case. This needs to be cleaned up. It’s not enough to effect the loads, but If you don’t watch it, the excess powder will build up in places like the primer feed assembly and cause trouble. I keep an air hose handy.

4) This press does not replace my RCBS Rock Chucker single stage press. I will still do most of my rifle ammo on it, but these are smaller batches and they show appreciable benefits in holding to tight tolerances that only a single stage press can give you. I load 223 Rem on the LNL AP, but it is blasting ammo. If I want sub-MOA results, I’ll still use the Rock Chucker.

Things I learned along the way:

1) Buy the Hornady One Shot Lube that is recommended. I tried other lubes, but this stuff works. I had a problem with the primer feed at one point. Nothing worked. One little spritz of One Shot took care of it permanently.

2) Watch the screw that holds the shell-plate to the press. It needs to be kept tight, but not too tight. The best tension is just a hair more than what you can get before the plate advances. Do not over-tighten. When things stop working most common casue is a loose shell plate screw.

3) My hardest task using the Hornady LNL AP was trying to get tumble-lubed cast lead bullets to work. The waxy lubricant (Lee Alox) builds up in the dies and elsewhere, and really caused a trouble. For this reason, I’m going to do my next lead bullet run with different a lube method. The bottom line was that I was being too generous with the tumble lube, but I had never had problems with it previous to this. Once I switched to loading jacketed bullets, a huge cloud evaporated from over my reloading bench.

4) Youtube is your friend. If you have a problem there is probably a Youtube that shows you how to deal with it. The only trick is watching out for the ones that have you doing massive modifications to the press. A little tweak makes sense. Many of the videos that show big mods were put there by people who did not understand the working of the press. Believe me. After a year, I’m still impressed with how well this press is designed.

5) Of all the Youtube-inspired tricks I learned, the one that helped me out the most was honing the surfaces of the primer slide. We’re not talking about changing the dimensions of the part, just smoothing things out a bit. There is a funky assembly that holds the Primer Breakaway Cam Wire in place. Basically it was forever letting the Cam Wire slip out. I was sure there was something wrong with the assembly. It turns out the primer slide just needed some smoothing. That and a spritz of One Shot lube was all it took.

6) I had a major part break on me early on. I broke the front of the primer slide. The root cause of the failure was a buildup of gunk in the channel, particularly in the front end. The gunk was excess lube (what I was using instead of One Shot) bullet lube, and powder. Failure came fast. Your ram assembly applies a lot of force, and when it is focused all on the front of the primer slide, it snaps off rather smartly without any forcing. It’s okay. Hornday replaced it without a hitch. I make sure to hit that spot with a toothbrush at each changeover. As mentioned previously, I’ve stopped using Alox lube on the bullets and now spritz air to blow any loose powder away.

7) The other part that has broken outright was one of the auto-advance pawls. They give you a spare one, and Hornady was fast in sending a replacement. If you are not paying attention when the auto-advance goes haywire, the pawl will snap off in a hurry. Since I got a grip on the adjustments, I’ve not had trouble. This is a learning curve thing. It is solveable.

8) I lost the Return Spring on the powder measure. It was forever coming off. It was hard to put on. One day, it went flying into space and I could not find it. Again, Hornady sent me one for free on Monday morning, and I had it by Wednesday. No big deal. I will say that now that I have my PTX die issues, the spring has caused me far fewer problems.

9) My two biggest bugaboos regarding cases are getting small primer 45 ACP cases mixed in with large primer cases and 380 cases mixed in with 9mm. Both were easy to catch when loading with a single-stage press. They are easy to miss with a progressive. 38 SPC in 357 Mag would probably be another one, but I almost never shoot 38 SPC anymore. I’m mostly reloading mixed cases with all this bulk ammo. I have had to learn to be vigilant.

Bottom Line:

My reason for buying a progressive press was that I wanted to reduce the effort to load my most common chamberings. For me, an hour in the basement will yield 20-25 rounds of deer ammo. It is a pleasant operation. I look forward to it. However, 50 rounds of 9mm on a single-stage press was agony– 4 times the number of operations, and it might take all day to load it. I want a loading session to last an hour or two, and I do not want to feel drained when it’s over. A progressive press offered the idea of 100-200 rounds in a couple of hours.

• Has the investment been worth it? I have to say that of all the candidates, the Hornady LNL AP does what I wanted it to do probably better than all the candidate presses close to this price point.
• 5 stations lets me add a Lee Factory Crimp die to the end of the process. Even if I do not crimp, it does a final resizing that ensures a good feed.
• When all goes well, I’m able to do 100-200 rounds an hour. For what I do, that’s a reasonable duty cycle.
• The learning curve was steeper than I expected, but that’s me. That wasn’t the press.
• I had other options available that would have been worse, and I still might not be satisfied. Yes, I’m satisfied. I don’t feel I that I did myself wrong not spending the money for a Dillon. By this time, I would be replacing some of the plastic parts on the Lee.

Parting Thoughts:

At all times, remember the Hornady LNL AP is well designed, and well executed. It is made from good materials. If you are having trouble, it is probably not the press. There are presses out there that are hard to get working without numerous modifcations. This model is not one of them. Every problem I had came from misinterpreting the instructions, or making an error judgement error, or introducing something like excess bullet lube into the system that should not have been there.

My other thought goes all the way back 20 years, when I started to think about reloading, I was unsure whether to start with a single-stage press or go all-the-way and by a progressive for my first press.  I felt a little pushed, picking the RCBS Rockchucker Master Reloading Kit. Looking back on it, I see my friends were pushing me right.  The LNL AP is a great press, but I would not have wanted to tackle it as a beginner.

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