Miller, thanks for the explanation. It is appreciated. There's something special, at least to me, about handloading with these vintage tools and using them in the same era guns. Here's a photo of the Ideal's head showing the pins.


The next series shows a Bridgeport (B.G.I.) 12 ga. crimper with an 1891 patent date that I mentioned previously. It has several features which probably made it expensive for the era. In addition to it being capable of reversing from round to square shoulders, it has a "rocking" or pivoting head holder making it more adaptable to varying shell length either on the shell being crimped as it goes into the head or with shorter or longer shells. It also has a metal tube in the crimper's head that is spring loaded to maintain pressure on the OSC and wads at all stages of crimping. It is the bright line circle in a below photo. Another photo shows the screws that are loosened to switch between square or round crimps. It must have taken a special tool to reach the screws as they aren't reachable with a standard screw driver or the head was removed by disassembly of the crimper. Good luck on that. I will leave well enough alone. Gil