This guy isn't going to be whacking the press for each shell to get it to work reliably. I concluded the shot bridging was in the "bottleneck" at the bottom of the wad seating tube (not the shot drop tube) and modified mine this morning by cutting off the bottleneck part on the lathe, turning the OD very slightly and silver brazing a steel extension that's now the same ID and OD as the bottom end of the wad seating tube. In other words the wad seating tube no longer has a bottleneck at its bottom end. Also, I added an extra 1/16" to its length so I can deep seat wads if necessary. Afterwards I loaded (50) Remington STS hulls without any shot bridging/hangup problems.
First pic shows the wad seating tube with bottleneck as supplied by MEC
Second pic - rough turning the attached extension on the lathe
Third and fourth are supermacros of the extension, see the yellowish silver braze lines
Two reloaded shells in the fifth one
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Threaded Mode