Hornady LNL Die Conversion Bushing – Installation

Here is the scenario:  I have a Hornady LNL Progressive Press and a RCBS single stage Rock Chucker.  Interchanging the dies between the two is a pain, since you have to remove them from one press and screw them into another.  This takes time a fiddling to get them adjusted just right each time.

Thanks to some forums, I stumbled across this Hornady product:  Hornady Lock-N-Load Press and Die Conversion Bushing Kit

So I decided to add this to my Christmas wish list and what do you know? …I received this for Christmas.  Totally excited that Santa knew what I wanted, I ran down to my reloading room and installed the new toy.

I love stuff that “just plain works” out of the box.  However this is another one that does not if you intended on sharing your dies between different presses.  The problem was that while the dies worked perfectly in the LNL press the dies extended 0.182″ too far in the Rock Chucker.  Not wanting to adjust my dies every time I switched presses, I came up with the solution of not spinning the new bushing in all the way by adding a collar to create this 0.182″ space between the press and the top of the bushing.  Below are some pictures of my solution:

Unfortunately I didn’t have lathe handy, so I used a drill press, a whole saw and some 0.095″ aluminum plate I had around.  That, a lot of filing, some polishing and “Dremeling” helped make this collar.  Now the reloading dies are truly interchangeable between Hornady and RCBS.  It would have been nice if they included a pre-made collar that just needed to be filed down to match.  That would have saved me a significant amount of time vs. fabricating this nut look-alike from scratch.

Good Luck!