It was a nice day to go shooting. Many of the club members felt the same way and there was quite a crowd out there. It is fun to talk with these guys. They can also help with problems sometimes.

I wanted to get some target practice and ended up troubleshooting as well for both the guns I took along. I am still trying to decide if the 35 year old primers on the shelf are in good shape. I loaded up a hundred with them and had at it with my Model 19, a revolver. I did get some misfires, but upon inspection there seemed to be light primer hits on the misfires. A second go at them caused them to fire. The light hit problem with the 19 has been an underlying confusion to the quality of 35 year old primer considerations.

Then I pulled out my Colt Gold Cup which I had not fired yet during the reincarnation of my shooting hobby. I had some problems with it. The main one was that the slide would not stay back after the last round was fired. One of the locals, Mike, opined that the magazines might be the culprit. The four I brought out were recently purchased and never used before. Unfortunately, I didn't bring out the ones that I had used successfully in the past. Regardless, I got some fun shooting in and had a great time.

Back at the bench, I started reloading some of the .38s I had fired. I do them in 100 round lots because that is how many primers are in a box. The device that you see here is the New Lee Auto-Prime. My old Lee Auto-Prime failed and Lee had withdrawn it from the market for "safety reasons." It worked perfectly. So I figured that the new one should do the same. Not the case. It is extremely fidgity. If you shake it in the slightest, the primer will flip in the seating well. Sometimes it flips 180 degrees and sometimes it flips 90 degrees. You can inspect it before you insert the shell in the holder, but during the short instance of insertion, the primer can flip. The result is a wasted primer and frustration. Additionally, the primer tray is a disaster. It folds. It takes quite a bit of fiddling to get all the primers flipped properly. Large primers are especially difficult. You can't use the whole tray to flip them because when you try to get them into the lower half some will flip while passing over the hinge. Whoever thought this system up had to be on dope. You have to be careful closing it because any little wiggling can flip the primers. There is a little off-lock-feed selector which is dodgy at best. If you are using small primers, the lock position still allows primers to flow into the feed chute. And in the on position, you are not guaranteed the primers will feed. It sometimes takes a little tap to get them going which is exactly what you don't want to do because it can flip the primer in the seating position. One aspect of all these considerations is that priming takes twice as long as before. You have to inspect the primer in the seating area and also inspect the resulting primed cartridge. Additionally, you have to operate the device very carefully to avoid flipping the next primer.

I did go to the web site and look at the FAQs. The bottom line of that exercise is that the problems are all with the customers. All you have to do is hold it at a 45 degree angle. I am not as dumb as I look, guys. It is a poor performing device.

In summary, I wish Lee had fixed the "problem" with the old Auto-Prime. It was a robust and dependable product. I think the new one is unnecessarily complicated and dodgy in operation.

This sounds like a product review. Just sayin'.