loading benches

About 14-16" thick, cut with a slightly older Stihl MS260.. I put some foam under it on the floor and there's not much sound when I'm banging rounds out with a rubber mallet. (picture of batch de-capping of fire-formed brass)

can't really compare to what a lot of you guys are doing (I'd love a turret press) but, I have to give some others on my same 'gun budget' some incentive to keep charging forward! $35 worth of 'tooling' on ebay, $5 rubber mallet, on sale $15 powder trickler, used $35 electronic Lyman scale off EE, and I can make enough 'quality controlled Hornaday $0.35 rounds' in 1 evening to go shot out of my bolt action for the weekend! cheers!

 
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As mentioned above with the 3/4" plywood; what i did was pick up a sheet of 3/4 plywood and ripped it down the middle. This gave me a bench that was 24"x 8 feet and 1.5" thick. Glued and screwed the plywood together and built a frame out of 2x4, with 4x4 legs. Used plenty screws and attached to the wall studs where i could. I then used 1/8" oak veneer to dress it up a little.

Mine is pretty much exactly the same. 3/4" birch plywood for a nice smooth surface.
 
I think the sturdiest reloading bench I have seen was made out of a 2'X4' section of bowling lane floor. It was about 3" thick of some kind of hard wood.
The guy had made a 2X4 frame with 4X4 legs just to support the weight of the stupid thing. I helped him move it once and it almost killed us both.
 
GOOD GRIEF CFBMI! ! ! ! ! ! Please tell me you don't reload for THAT many different calibers ! ! ! ! ! ! :sok2


Not all the dies are current and I do have some doubles but I do likely have rifles and/or handguns or both for 80%+ of the 100 and some odd dies in the rack. One must keep in mind that I also have acquired dies for all my old Winchesters and load for them as well. That alone is quite a number of dies when you start buying ones like 38-56, 38-72, 40-72, 40-82, 38-55, 32-40, 32 spl, 30-30, 25-20, 25-35, 218 Bee, 32-20, 38-40, 44-40 and so on, and so on, and so on.......... I have every caliber the 95 was made in and dies for them, I have every caliber the 92 was made in and dies for them, I have every caliber the 94 was made in but 219 Zipper and all those dies, the 348 mod 71 and dies and most but not all the 86 calibers and dies. Plus years of wildcatting and some I just bought cause they were too cheap to turn down and one never knows............When I see a set of RCBS dies for 20 bucks or so I usually buy them just cause it's easier at 10 o'clock at night to have a 20 buck spare set of dies in the rack when I break a decapping stem, and it happens. Hell I even have 2 sets of 270 Win dies and set of 270 Wby and I have never even fired any of these calibers in more than 40 years but they make good intermediate sizers when going down to 6.5 or 25 or smaller, sometimes. Then I have such common and popular numbers like 9.3X74R, 7X64, 8X56 R, 7mm SAUM, 7X68 35 Deg Imp, 6mm Hornet.............but then I have rifles that I do not have dies for and just use different ones to load with or 2 sometimes, like my 375 Wby, just neck size with 375 Ruger dies for now, till I find a set cheap somewhere. Then I have some left overs, but not necessarily "forgotten or will never own again category" like my 222 Rem, 220 Swift, 284 Win, 6.5-284, 375 C-T, 416 Taylor and 450 Ackley dies. Then I have some for which I will never own rifles but see a value to them when designing cartridges and wildcatting like 223 WSSM, 243 WSSM, 25 WSSM and 7 SAUM, these are super handy on cold winter nights when I want to see what a 300 RUM would look like necked to 22 cal and other cool sh!t like that...........
 
OK, now you're just justifying your excess.... :D

I've only been in shooting for a few years now. But in my other hobbies I could list examples comparable to your accumulation of dies. It's surprising how it sneaks up on us isn't it?
 
I think the sturdiest reloading bench I have seen was made out of a 2'X4' section of bowling lane floor. It was about 3" thick of some kind of hard wood.
The guy had made a 2X4 frame with 4X4 legs just to support the weight of the stupid thing. I helped him move it once and it almost killed us both.

One variety of maple is known as "rock maple". That's the one used for all the best bowling alleys. I think the name given to that variety explains it all. I've never worked with it myself but I've read that it's pretty much like working with aluminium in terms of the tools needed to cut it and the wear it produces on the tools.
 
About 14-16" thick, cut with a slightly older Stihl MS260.. I put some foam under it on the floor and there's not much sound when I'm banging rounds out with a rubber mallet. (picture of batch de-capping of fire-formed brass)

can't really compare to what a lot of you guys are doing (I'd love a turret press) but, I have to give some others on my same 'gun budget' some incentive to keep charging forward! $35 worth of 'tooling' on ebay, $5 rubber mallet, on sale $15 powder trickler, used $35 electronic Lyman scale off EE, and I can make enough 'quality controlled Hornaday $0.35 rounds' in 1 evening to go shot out of my bolt action for the weekend! cheers!


It's fancier then mine was when I started. I used a 2x6 about 10 inches long on the kitchen table when I wouldnt get caught
 
I did mine is made from lengths of 2x8, then I went the opposite direct with more 2x8, topped with oak veneer. Almost 3" thick. For my press I mounted and tapped a 1/2" plate that is 12x12 to the bottom lagged in to the wall and floor. Very solid.
 
I picked up an old hardwood school teacher's desk off a local swap/sell board for $75.
Needed some glue and screw's to tighten it up, but work's like a charm.
 
Two layers of 2-by lumber (leftovers), topped with OSB sheathing, topped with roll flooring. Mounted on steel equipment stands, purchased when on sale.
 
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