Texan press back in use

[Cold Spring]

Here are some pics of a 1960’s Texan M-11 progressive press that’s now back in use. Member Harry G found and advertised it here on the forum and I picked it up for a good price while at Hausmann’s. Thanks again Harry. It’s a heavy duty press made with Timken roller bearings and convertible from 12 to 20-gauge. The 20g parts came with it. I finally had some time to study its operation as designed to load period felt wadding and bare shot, and to make some improvements for modern plastic shotcups. First was to adapt a deprime punch from a MEC 9000 to flare the front end of hulls to facilitate loading shotcups. Also made a bushing on the lathe to increase the diameter of the first stage wad ram to better position the shotcups when starting them into the wad guide. I found a complete set of Texan shot and powder bushings on-line; and for the powder bushings I did a volume conversion spreadsheet from MEC numbers to Texan letters to “get in the ballpark” before weighing the powder drops. That’s because the old Texan powder bushing chart references long obsolete powders. The shot bushings range from 3/4 to 1-3/4 ounce of lead shot and the larger ones will be useful for heavier loads of bare bismuth than I can get into plastic shotcups in my 9000.

The Texan isn’t as fast as the 12-gauge MEC 9000 progressive for my volume practice loads but it’s much faster than using a single-stage press for specialty loads in either paper or plastic hulls. Neat thing about the Texan is that I can load mixed Remington and Winchester HS hulls and get great crimps, something I can’t do with my 9000 without having to fiddle with many adjustments for one maker hull and then revert them for the other brand hull. Next step is to set it up permanently on the press bench for the load I regularly use in my vintage 12-gauge double-guns. That will keep me from switching the 9000 back and forth.

.