Rossi Rifleman

So I've had one of these for at least a couple decades and it's always functioned well for me.
A buddy of mine bought one based on my experience about 4-5 months ago.
He calls me up a month and a half ago and tells me he broke the handle on the swager.
My immediate response was 'You're kidding right!'
Nope he says he broke the handle and that it must have not been correctly heat treated. Dillon is sending him a new handle and told him how to disassemble the rest as the handle chunk that broke off was seized up in the body with the other small parts. A little later he calls me back and says the handle was aluminum and he'd had to order another pin that got bent.

Long story short he's busted 3 (or maybe 4) of those aluminum handles. Apparently some yahoo convinced the company to swap out the steel handle for aluminum around 8 months ago and they've been breaking ever since they got out to the public. The last person he talked to at Dillon said he was filing a complaint report and sending my bud yet another aluminum handle.

I suspect it won't be long before they swap production back over to steel. Even the reps at Dillon mostly weren't aware it was aluminum and kept telling my bud it was steel until they actually checked it out. The last one broke after less than 100 cycles. I can't see any way they actually TESTED this before sending them out and as an engineer I would be surprised at anyone actually doing the math and thinking aluminum would work. They can't be saving any money sending out 4 replacements already. My bud isn't using them commercially but he was given a couple five gallon buckets of brass including 1.5 or so of range pickups and another half bucket of stuff from his nephew's wife's grandfather and a half case of brass 7.62x39.

That ain't good. I've heard of busted handles being reported as of late on other forums.

That is sad as I have always put off buying one and now if I do I am gonna get this no way.

I did a couple searches when he broke the first one and didn't find much of anything but it's been a few months so I expect they may be turning up more by now. I know he posted to the Dillon forum.

If I hear they've gone back to steel for the handle I'll post that fact.
Mine has been pretty awesome.

Update,
He broke another one and the Dillon rep 'Steve' was argumentative accused him of abusing the equipment and told him the no BS warranty didn't cover abuse. (Steve was the rep who told him the handles had NEVER been made out of aluminum when the second one broke and then sent him another aluminum one.) My bud was also told he was the only one having this problem to which he referred Steve to the Dillon website where at least a few others have mentioned breaking handles. Steve eventually said he was sending another handle out but that if it broke they'd be asking my bud to send back his swager with broken handles sample brass so they could investigate.

My bud is not using this commercially. He's been processing a 5 gallon bucket or more of brass he got from a nephew some of which was dead guy stuff from his wife's grandfather. He did a lot of it using a RCBS on press swaging die setup but that one is difficult for him to pop the brass off the swager due to back problems. He's using a Ballistics Tools primer pocket go/no go gauge I gave him for Christmas a couple years back and he's even started using a cutter to remove the major part of the primer crimp to make the swager's job easier.

I had been considering picking up another Dillon reloader and quite a few more bits and pieces including conversion kits, tool heads, etc. I've decided not to bother any time soon and to buy aftermarket toolheads if I need some more.

There almost has to be another issue with it....like something was built out of alignment.

GasGuzzler wrote:There almost has to be another issue with it....like something was built out of alignment.

Maybe, but by replacing a steel handle with an aluminum one without any other change you cut the strength of the tool by around 2/3rds. The handle is subject to bending and is milled away at the failure point to something like 1/3rd of the area. (A ~9/16" rod milled down to 1/2" diameter right before it enters the eccentric pin where ~2/3rds of it is milled away for the cross pin.) That's PI*r^2 ~ .2 in^2 for the 1/2" dia handle BEFORE the notch IF we said the notch was only 1/2 the area that's be .1 in^2 area and I think more is removed for the notch although it's been a while since I looked at it.

Or to look at it in even simpler terms Assume a bar of .4"x.5" as the normal handle cross section,
Assume the handle necks down at the notch to .2"x.5" in cross section.
Now imagine using a 8" long handle that's .2"x.5" made out of aluminum to shove a steel pin into an undersized primer pocket to bring it up to size...
Since the bending stresses are concentrated at the smallest section of the handle due to the lever arm that's effectively what's happening.

Yet another broke on Friday...

So my friend is disappointed in Dillon after breaking 5 handles and being accused of abusing the equipment.
He's probably going to have a steel handle fabricated. IF he does I may get a spare.
Mine isn't showing any signs of problems but the price for 2 or 3 of the things is probably not much more than for 1.