Ahhh, my vacation has begun. OK, so it is really only a week off that took two weeks to prepare for, but any time not spent at work is good time, right?
Let’s see, today is Pumpkin Shoot Prep and shopping with the Analog Wife. Tomorrow is the Pumpkin Shoot.
After that, not a whole lot is planned, just the way I like it.
As an exercise in public opinion, I would like to ask everyone their opinions on single stage reloading presses. As I made mention of a week or so ago, I have gotten he green light to set up a reloading bench and I’ll be out looking this week.
I’m leaning towards the Rockchucker but Lee’s prices are hard to ignore.
I’ll be reloading precision rifle ammo in two calibers and will expand to three calibers in a year or so, so quantity will take a back seat to accuracy per shot.
Anyway, let me know what you think.
You won’t get any argument from me about RCBS.
A roommate had a Lee Turret press, and I had gotten some RCBS carbide dies to reload for a pistol I had at the time. The pin that pushes out the primer in the one die was a small rifle pin instead of a small pistol pin. I called them up, and they sent me a set of 10 of those pins, gratis. Over a decade later, I stil remember this event, and would not hesitate to buy RCBS because of it.
On the gripping hand, my roommates Lee turret press was very nice, and it was nice to be able to have all the dies set in the removable turret and just switch to whichever die you needed at that moment. Then, if you wanted to reload another cartridge, all you needed to do was pop out that turret, put it into it’s case, pull the other turret out with the ‘new’ cartridge’s dies already set up, and away you go. Extra turrets were pretty inexpensive as I remember, and he had one for most of the cartridges he reloaded, and a few extra…
I’d go for the Lee Classic Cast press. It’s every bit as good as the Rockchucker for a lot less loot. If time’s not a large consideration, check out MidwayUSA’s website for price and availability. It’s on sale now for $60.00, beat that. Another benefit to buying remote is avoiding the Wa State sales tax. Any opportunity to starve the beast, don’tcha know.
I’ve been handloading for over 40 years and for the last 20 I’ve bought almost nothing but Lee equipment. I’m also very fond of their collet dies for precision loading.
You will want a powder scale. The best deal I’ve seen in years is Cabela’s house brand digital scale. At around $80.00, it’s nearly as cheap as a decent mechanical scale and so much faster to use as to boggle the mind. Avoid Lee’s powder scale, it’s about the only iffy product they sell.
Gerry
I’ve got one of those Lee Turret presses. All in all I like it, though I’m using it for pistol reloading and for 7.62x54R (and, yes, it does cost more than surplus ammo), and not for precision ammo. But the turret does seem to have a little wiggle in it, so I don’t know how much that might effect concentricity or overall length on match grade ammo. (I dont’ have the tools to measure concentricity, but the ammo shoots well.)
If time is secondary to precision, you might want to skip the turret press (though I like mine–bought it for 20 bucks off ebay). There are more variables with a turret, and precision is all about reducing the effect of variables.