Frankford Arsenal M-Press, immediate return

[big5ifty]

Bought an M-Press today. The plan was to use it as a dedicated bullet seating press.

Watched a few reviews on it, and was happy that the general opinion was that it could produce accurate enough ammo.

Out of the box, I tested the jaws, changing the sizes, cycling the press. On one setting it worked. On the next setting, the one jaw remained retracted.

Not a train smash, I told myself, obviously a clearance issue that I could fix.

A bit of jiggling to get the retracted jaw free, I put a case in it and raised the ram.

I then pushed down with my finger on the open case mouth with the handle part-way down. It held firm, then a bit more force, and it moved down, it felt like over 1mm. So the case bottom is not sitting on the press, it's in the air, gripped by the jaws.

I stopped there, re-boxed and took it back for a refund.

The jaws I could probably have fixed so they don't bind up. The mid-air brass, I dunno how that would work.

The impression I got from it was that it was a good visual copy, but not a good functional copy. Whoever designed and made it knew how it should look, but didn't know how it should work.