Here is a little trick I just learned that really turns the LEE case trimmer into a speed machine. Probably some of you clever guys already do this but it was new to me.
I needed to trim five hundred 32-20 brass about 0.30" inches each as part of the process to make 8mm Lebel Revolver brass. That would be a lot of work on my Lyman hand trimmer.
The Lee trimmer is made to have the shell holder mounted in the drill chuck. You still have to hold the cutter by hand if you do that and it's tiring and not real fast. I decided to try something different. I put the cutter in my drill press chuck and mounted the shell holder on the table like this:
The cutter fits in the chuck nicely and is suprisingly concentric with decent run out.
The shellholder lock nut is fixed to a piece of flat iron clamped to the drill press table. It worked like a charm and I trimmed 500 brass in less than 2.5 hours. That is smoking fast.
Here are some closeups of the shell holder mounting. It is bolted to a piece of 1" x 6" x 1/8" flat iron.
I threaded the shellholder shank to 1/4" x 20 TPI (1/4" National Coarse). The shank was slightly oversize and had to be filed down some to allow the threading die to work on it. The hole in the flat iron is 1/4". You need to use a 3/8" flat washer as shown to make the holder sit flat and straight.
For setting the cutting depth you would normally go with the length of the pilot, but LEE does not make a pilot for the 8mm Lebel Revolver cartridge so I cut off a 32-20 pilot and set the depth by adjusting the table height with the drill fully extended. Then I centered the shellholder / flat iron on the table and clamped it down. Then I made the final depth adjustments by moving the cutter in the chuck so that with the drill fully extended it was set to cut the brass to the right length.
It works pretty smooth. The shell holder is fast release and fairly easy to do 3-4 brass per minute once you have everything set up. I tried various speeds - 1100-1200 RPM cut the cleanest. The cutter still looks good after cutting 150 inches of brass.
Total cost:
Flat iron: $6 for a 3 ft long piece at canadian Tire
LEE cutter and shellholder lock: $6
LEE shellholder and pilot: $6
The drill press itself is a $80 mini press from Canadian Tire a couple years ago. Every hardware store on the planet sells the same machine with their own decal on it.
Each new caliber would cost $6 for a shellholder and pilot.
