Dillon 650 and the 204 Ruger

[Peepsight]

I have recently ordered a Dillon 204 Ruger conversion kit for my XL650 and I am interested in knowing if anyone has this setup. Any things to watch for? I plan to use Varget and am wondering if there will be any issues with flow thru the power tube??

[broncsandwhiskey]

Hi Peepsight,

Well I do not have a 650 but I do have a 550 and the only thing with varget is that sometimes you get a powder hang and that causes a mess. So what I do is i give the handle a bump at the bottom of the stroke so it will ensure that it wont hang up on me when I use varget for any of my loads. I also would suggest to try a ball powder or even shorter cut stick powder, alot of the guys and gals in here like benchmark and I do to. But what ever you do just figure a way to get the powder through that small powder funnel and then make that a routine in your loading and you'll be just fine. I am sure that there are alot of dillon fans out there that have good advice but thats what I do. Ride Up!!!

Shane Gould

[Peepsight]

Thanks Shane,

I noticed that I had to do the same thing with my RCBS powder measure in order to get the drop tube to empty completly. I guess that I need to use up the Varget and switch to some other powder to eliminate the risk of inconsistant loads.

Ken

[Keith in Ga]

I have an "old" Dillon 450 that is set up for handgun, and never loaded any rifle loads on the machine. I use Benchmark for all my .204 loads, as well as for my .223. I tried Varget, but velocity was somewhat slow (compared to Benchmark), very accurate though.
I would try other powders in the Dillon instead of Varget.

[Jim White]

For me (650) Varget and 4895 are about the same. One thing that has helped me is to keep the powder measure level pretty constant. If you think Varget is bad, wait until you try Unique, its defenetly picky in mine. Supposedly, 4064 is a lot worse than Varget/4895.

Anyway, here is something I came across on another site several months ago. I've never tried it but I aim to one of these days.

Link

http://www.co-ar15.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4606

[Peepsight]

Jim,

Thanks for the info. That link is great! I am going to try it and see what happens when I get some spare time to take the power measure out of service.

Ken