thinking about getting a new press

[ten_ji]

hello all,

I am thinking of getting a turret press for loading handgun ammo. i have a RCBS parter and a MEC 650 jr. i am thinking about getting the turret for pistol and using the single stage for my rifle ammo. the question is, I am on a verry limited budget to get the press and dies with, what I am looking at is the LEE turret press and 45acp dies to go with it, would the lee be ok for my 2000-4000 rounds a year or so? I already have the dies for 38/357 so with my current battery i would only need the 45 for the pistols.

nest question, does any one still make dies for 35 remington?

thanx in advance

alex

[cadet3]

Originally Posted by ten_ji

hello all,

I am thinking of getting a turret press for loading handgun ammo. i have a RCBS parter and a MEC 650 jr. i am thinking about getting the turret for pistol and using the single stage for my rifle ammo. the question is, I am on a verry limited budget to get the press and dies with, what I am looking at is the LEE turret press and 45acp dies to go with it, would the lee be ok for my 2000-4000 rounds a year or so? I already have the dies for 38/357 so with my current battery i would only need the 45 for the pistols.

nest question, does any one still make dies for 35 remington?

thanx in advance

alex

I started out on a Lee Turret and it has held up ok. Don't know how many rounds that I have through it , but I've owned it since 2002. It has produced good reliable ammo and I have never had any problems with it. It can handle 2-4k rounds per year easily. The next question you want to ask yourself is how much time do you want to spend reloading. I got rid of the autoindex on my press so my max load rate is about 100-130/rds hr. That gets pretty slow after a while. If you get the Lee you will definitely upgrade at a later point if you load enough pistol rounds. Most people on here will suggest that you get whatever they have..ie. Dillon, Hornady, etc. Here are you choices.

Dillon SDB/550/650
Hornady Lock-N-Load AP
RCBS Pro 2000

These are pretty much THE presses for loading pistol ammo. Keep the single stage for working up loads and Rifle stuff. If you're into the Dillon presses, check out the Dillon Reloading FAQ's over at brianenos.com.

[hack]

Cadet is faster than I am. I normally run about 80 rds an hour out of my Lee 4-hole turret press. I've only had it two months now, but I've already loaded almost 3,000 rounds. Overall, I'm very pleased with it, especially considering the cost. Once the dies are set up I only need to worry about them when I'm trying out a new bullet shape or weight (I reload 45 acp only).

The biggest downside I see to the unit is the powder feeder. It uses a cavity system that loads a predetermined volume of powder with each pull. Lee includes a chart that converts their volume steps to grain weights for all of the most popular powders. It's a very consistent system but it lacks a little bit of flexibility I sometimes want. For example, I shoot a lot of 230gr LRN bullets loaded with 4.4 gr of Titegroup (I use them mostly for IPSC but also practice). If I step up just one size on the Lee volume dispenser I go to 4.7 gr. If I wanted to try a load with 4.5 or 4.6 gr I'd have to hand load the powder for each case... which of course, slows me down considerably.


Of course, I'm pretty happy with the 4.4 gr load, but if I wasn't I'd be having a hard time.

Overall, I'm a very satisfied customer and I'd recommend the Lee turret loader to anyone, as long as they understand some of the unit's limitations.

[cadet3]

You can get the Lee adjustable charge bar and you can set your powder charge to whatever you want. Its pretty good, but I think the powder disks are more consistent in my experience.

C3

[m.o.b.45]

Alex
The press will work fine for what you need and for the cost of another head ( about nine bucks ) and another set of dies and you can load another caliber. As far as small incremental changes in powder charges on the disk system Lee sells a piggy-back system with much smaller cylinders. That makes it easy to add tenths of grains to a specific charge you may be looking for. My bench has three presses on it and one is the self-indexing 4 hole turret and for the price you can't beat it. Hope this helps you making that purchase.

[ten_ji]

thanks a lot guys, that was helpful.

alex