I have owned Star Reloaders for something over 20 years now. The single, biggest problem I have with them is with the priming system. Recently, I got a sleeve of the new style Winchester large pistol primers--the ones which are not nickel plated. These primers tended to leave slivers of brass in the priming area, both causing the punch to stick in the slide and the slide to bind. I had to disassemble and clean the system about every 25 rounds.
I am now using Federal large pistol primers in the .45 ACP machine and the problem has gone back to "normal" levels. I have to clean out the priming system every 100-200 rounds. While giving the machine a through cleaning, I replaced the old primer slide with a new one and cleaned the primer seating punch throughly.
Both of the Star Universals I am currently running (one for .45 ACP and one for the .357 Magnum) have always had a problem with shavings falling into the primer slide area and binding up the machine. All of the Star machines I have seen have had a similar problem.
Has anyone discovered the root cause of this problem? Does anyone have a method or modification that will keep this from happening? I like my Star machines, but my Dillon RL 550 will load hundreds of shells with no problems with the priming system. My C-H AutoChamp would do the same. I reload to shoot rather than enjoying reloading as a process in itself. Hence, I am interested in troublefree operation which will allow me to load up several hundreds of rounds without constant problems.
If anyone has any ideas on what may be wrong and what can be done to correct it, I would appreciate their advice. Thanks, Les
