Lee Quality, in steady decline?

Hitzy

Hitzy

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I have a bunch of older Lee dies, trimmers, shell holders etc, and yes while they have never been top shelf gear, it's always been usable out of the box, and additional polishing was optional.
Last few years the stuff I picked up has been rougher and rougher where additional honing/polishing was required and not optional anymore, example was a 6.5x55 die set with a mess of sharp, chipped threads on the FL die, a collet die where the mandrel was full of tool marks, and a soft as butter collet head that expanded from use to the point I could not remove it from the die without serious effort. This was a 2016 set.
As luck would have it, I finally hit the "unuseble" out of the box item, the 6.5CM collet die looked like it was finished with a chisel and would jam solid during use, the shell holder (I don't use them anyway as they always have too much slop for my liking) was full of high speed chatter, case length guage was also chattered up and useless. This was all 2017 made stuff.
I don't know if it's just bad luck, but the Lee dies and stuff I have from 10+ years ago are wayyy better quality then what they are pushing out today.
 
Hmm...can't speak to the quality of dies because I'm new at this game compared to many. I'm likely ignorant of what to expect outside of comparing to some Forster dies and an old RCBS set. However...the new clear plastic mechanism for primer feeding in their bench primer system is really disappointing. That's going backwards in my opinion...

Regards
Ronr
 
I have about 30 sets of Lee dies, but only about 4 sets were bought within the last 2 years. All have been fine. But I'm sure some duds slip through.
 
All my lee dies have been fantastic, but I haven’t bought any in a couple years. Was one of the last American companies selling quality at a great price.
Maybe try support? I’ve had excellent luck with the warranty support.
 
I have a variety of dies and most of them are Lee, but none have been purchased in the past three years. I have yet to run into a Lee die that even required "tuning", so I'm no help. Lee makes many dies that are only available from Lee or only as an expensive custom order elsewhere, and that, as well as their low prices has been their strength.

Your post will attract those who share your experience, but several more examples from among many thousands that have been sold can't serve as solid "proof' that quality has gone down. Maybe you hit the 1-2% of lowest quality product that was made at the end of the life for a tool and it's bad luck, or maybe like so many other places, quality has gone down in stages in order to maintain competitive pricing. I suspect the latter.

That said, if my next Lee purchase was a problem, I'd put them on a short leash and probably only suffer one more poor experience before I went to another manufacturer.
 
Discovered last night my Lee 7.5 swiss resizing die has a one piece expander and decapper. So sizing berdan primed cases is not going to work. Also if i ever break that pin i will need the whole expander replaced. I am use to RCBS. Not sure if that is how all Lee dies are or not. I was pretty disappointed though.
 
rci2950 said:
Discovered last night my Lee 7.5 swiss resizing die has a one piece expander and decapper. So sizing berdan primed cases is not going to work. Also if i ever break that pin i will need the whole expander replaced. I am use to RCBS. Not sure if that is how all Lee dies are or not. I was pretty disappointed though.
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Yes all Lee dies are all like that. I have the very same die and just converted my Swiss GP11 brass to boxer large rifle primer and used the Lee die, berdan sucks anyway :)
 
rci2950 said:
Discovered last night my Lee 7.5 swiss resizing die has a one piece expander and decapper. So sizing berdan primed cases is not going to work. Also if i ever break that pin i will need the whole expander replaced. I am use to RCBS. Not sure if that is how all Lee dies are or not. I was pretty disappointed though.
Click to expand...

This is true of all Lee dies. Luckily the decapper pins are way more resilent than any other maker I've tried. And the decapper/expander are dirt cheap to replace if you ever need to. You might want to try and resize the Berdan cases with the expander/decapper removed. I've done cases that way without issue.
 
RonR said:
Hmm...can't speak to the quality of dies because I'm new at this game compared to many. I'm likely ignorant of what to expect outside of comparing to some Forster dies and an old RCBS set. However...the new clear plastic mechanism for primer feeding in their bench primer system is really disappointing. That's going backwards in my opinion...

Regards
Ronr
Click to expand...

I bought a new Lee auto prime and it sucks. I also bought the shell holder kit and the 45 acp worked ok, but, the 44 magnum is too loose and keeps popping out under pressure. Very disappointing because I am very happy(so far) with my Lee 45 acp dies.
 
No issues with the dies I bought recently, but I don’t know how long they sat on the shelf...
Only ever had 1 warranty die (FL 7mm rem mag) about 10 years ago, the rest all have been good and they were good on the warranty.
 
rci2950 said:
Discovered last night my Lee 7.5 swiss resizing die has a one piece expander and decapper. So sizing berdan primed cases is not going to work. Also if i ever break that pin i will need the whole expander replaced. I am use to RCBS. Not sure if that is how all Lee dies are or not. I was pretty disappointed though.
Click to expand...

One excellent product from Lee is their universal depriming die. Try doing two stages, deprime then run them through the sizer with a empty primer pocket. Saves your depriming rod on military brass.
 
It's like complaining that a Yugo isn't the same quality as a Cadillac. The Yugo is good for what it is, but is not a Cadillac. If you buy a Yugo and expect a Cadillac or compare it to a Cadillac... well, let's just leave it at that without any name calling.
 
I have lots of old Lee stuff that is the bomb...Classic Cast from the days they were $90CAD, and I tried to upgrade from powder measure to a Frankford it was a a huge disappointment, thing was massive and wouldn't meter for #### lol. Still run an old standard Turret press for pistol loading and it works great. Really like the case length gauge and cutter as the cut is very precise from one to the next. Have a Lyman manual accutrim for cartridges that Lee doesn't make them for, and because it uses shell holders to hold the case, any cuts will be based on rim thickness which varies slightly.
I may not give up on them yet...just some bad luck I suppose
 
Ridersfan said:
It's like complaining that a Yugo isn't the same quality as a Cadillac. The Yugo is good for what it is, but is not a Cadillac. If you buy a Yugo and expect a Cadillac or compare it to a Cadillac... well, let's just leave it at that without any name calling.
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I don't think it's quite like that, I've always had decent usable dies from Lee. This is more like how Fords use to be good solid steel trucks, now they are making them out of "Military Grade Aluminum" and now they suck lol
 
I just got dies in 32-20 and 41mag. Both seem to be good quality. Hard to know if a few problem sets indicate a decline in overall quality, or just the inevitable lemons amongst anything mass produced.
 
Never had a problem with Lee Pistol dies in my Dillons - work great!

Now those progressive presses...you can't say something that started out at the bottom is on the decline...;)
 
All my lee dies have been great, i’ve also had really good luck with Hornaday dies. RCBS has sold me two dud sets in the past five years, I don’t buy their dies anymore. I have one set of Reading dies that I paid quite a bit of money for in 338 federal and while they are OK m,they do a very poor job of expanding the neck from 308 brass to 338, it’s not very clean. I’ve never had problems expanding necks on cases before. The Redding dies score the neck on initial expansion. My preferred die is Hornady.
 
Potato boy said:
All my lee dies have been great, i’ve also had really good luck with Hornaday dies. RCBS has sold me two dud sets in the past five years, I don’t buy their dies anymore. I have one set of Reading dies that I paid quite a bit of money for in 338 federal and while they are OK m,they do a very poor job of expanding the neck from 308 brass to 338, it’s not very clean. I’ve never had problems expanding necks on cases before. The Redding dies score the neck on initial expansion. My preferred die is Hornady.
Click to expand...

You need a Redding tapered size button for that...
h ttps://www.brownells.com/reloading/reloading-dies/replacement-parts-upgrades/tapered-sizing-buttons-prod40788.aspx
 
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