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It's been over a year since I've had to reload any 223. I'm down to my last 200 rounds, so thought I'd load 1K or so. I'm' using a Hornady AP LnL press, and 223 was what I last loaded on that sucker. I figured everything would be awfully close to dialed in, with only minor adjustments needed.
Holy crud, what a PITA!
  1. The primer feed pusher would not line up, 1 hour to fix that.
  2. The case activated powder dispenser was curling the case mouth inward, making bullet seating impossible. 2 hours to adjust and fix;
  3. The seating depth is different. If I'm only feeding one round, it's dead on. If I have a full disk of rounds, it's 7 mils shorter (2.250 vs 2.243). I figure the force from the powder station is causing the ram to tilt a bit. Not solved yet.
  4. After tuning everything, and starting to do production, I forgot to lube my first case, and it got stuck, right out of the gate. 30 minutes to fix that.
  5. My first 2 rounds had powder, but the powder drop linkage came out of alignment and the next 10 did not have any. Duh, da duh, da duh...
Ah, it'll get there, just needed to beotch. The wife doesn't understand....
 
Good luck with it, you've had enough issues already! Must be hard to trust the darned thing now.

Thanks @Sgt Nambu - the tool works fine, it's the idiot pulling the lever that's causing all the problems.
After writing the above, went and did another 150 rounds. Everything was in a groove humming along, every round I checked had 2.246 OAL. I was thinking, "cool!"
Then a round hit the tray and I noted it had no primer in the pocket. Went to dump the powder back and noted no powder in the bullet. ARRGGHHH!
Looked at the press, the powder dispenser was stuck in the charging position.
No, I do not have a powder cop....
A stronger spring fixed that problem.

Weighing them out, (~153 grains empty, 178 grains with powder) my last 27 rounds were empty. Have a lot of bullets to pull....
 
No the wife doesn't understand...she always wanted to talk. I showed her a video of a guy who double charged a round, and then asked her if she wanted me to load for her guns while we chat. She decided, "well no I guess not." I get to finish the round and back away from the press now before we chat lol.

I have a turret press and find it's easy to get knocked out of my groove. Can't imagine the progressive as there's so much to watch.

I've had haywire sessions like that where nothing goes right. I usually just stop and take 5 and start all over again methodically checking everything.
 

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