I purchased a Star lubrisizer 2 years ago on the advise of dozens of postings. I have yet to be able to get it to function as it is supposed to.
I primarily bought it to size large quantities of .452, .358, and .430 SWC's. In addition to these, I also use it to size/lube smaller quantities of various LBT bullets. There are two problems I am encountering and I am curious if anyone familiar with these presses has had similar experiences or, more importantly, knows how to correct them.
First I will state that I use LBT lube (Blue and Commercial, not Soft). The problem is that each bullet collects a little lube on the forward edge of the SWC driving band (3 dots of it generally, which corresponds to the 3 lube ports on the die). It is not as noticable on the LBT bullets as they have a continual radius vs. a pronounced lip as the SWC has. I have tried backing off the pressure until the grooves won't fill, I have tried it with extreme pressure, and I have tried it with all pressures in between. I have tried it with the lube so cold it would barely extrude, I have tried it with the lube so hot it was almost soup, and I have tried it at every temperature in between. I have moved the bullet up/down within the die. I have tried different levels of pressure at the bottom end of the stroke. It does not matter what I do, the result is the same. It almost seems as though the pressure is never shut off completely. If I have no bullet in the die with the handle raised and I turn the piston screw, lube will come out of the die ports. I would think no lube should extrude until I lower the handle and activate the piston at the bottom of the stroke?
The second issue involves the top o-ring. Everytime I remove a die, it completely destroys the o-ring. It has done this since the day it came from the factory. I finally went and bought 150 of them from a distributor.
The first problem is really the vexing one, as you must remove the excess lube from each bullet or it will gum up your reloader. I have spoken with Magma several times and they do not seem to know what the problem is. Based on my experience, I really cannot see why the Star is considered the ultimate lubrisizer.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!