New to reloading - Lee 4 hole turret press?

[easyrider604]

In my opinion, Lee's best products are:

Collet dies
Turret Press
Pistol Carbide dies
Classic Cast / Breech lock challenger press
Hand prime device

............I don't know how their molds are, because I don't cast.

I agree. The Loadmaster progressive can be a good machine if set up properly by a patient, meticulous and mechanically inclined operator.

Ok so I cast and can say that for own use, Lee 6-cavity bullet molds work good enough for me. My 9mm mold has produced just shy of 10,000 bullets. Still works like new and I estimate economic life at 30K bullets. I got .357 SWC and RN, .40S&W TC, .45 acp TC as well and they are all in good shape after more than 6-7 thousand bullets each.

 

[Skyhawk]

For 500 rounds/month a Lee Classic Turret is more than enough, especially if you load 3 calibers as mentioned. This will at the most take a total of 3 or maybe 4 hours out of your life to do reloading each month. With that amount, even if you bought a Dillon XL650, you'll spend more time changing calibers than you will making ammo, especially when changing to calibers that require a different sized primer.

Get 3 turrets for your press, and set the 3 different caliber dies on each of them. Then changing them out takes about 2 seconds. Changing the primer thingy takes about 2 seconds too. It becomes even faster if you buy extra "ProAuto Disk Powder Measures" for the 3. I tried the adjustable charge bar, but it sits in my drawer. It just wasn't consistent enough for my needs, even with more expensive powders I use like N320. I prefer the disks for consistency.

 

[wkoop]

Bought my 4 hole classic turret this spring from factory sales and used it to crank out 2500 rounds of .223 for this years gopher shoot.

All brass was decapped and full length sized on a single stage then trimmed and run through the tumbler to get rid of the lube.

The classic turret press was set up as follows:
Hole 1 - Universal decapping die. This made sure the flash-hole was clear of any tumbler media and also made sure the case was fully inserted into the shell holder.

Prime on press using safety prime at the bottom of the stroke. This system worked great for me. Take the time to get the angle of the safety prime bracket correct and you won't have any problems. The only priming issues I ran into were due to primer pocket crimps and that's not the presses fault.

Hole 2- Charge case. I used the Auto Disk Pro (worth the upgrade over the old Auto Disk). For larger cases make sure you get the double disk kit. Also make sure you get the auto disk riser to get the powder measure up out of the way of the safety prime. The pistol dies seat through the expanding die, for rifle you need the rifle charging die.

The auto disk pro consistantly dropped charges that were +/- .1 grn with the flake powder I was using. The key for me was to keep the powder hopper full. I topped it up every 50 cases. In 2500 rounds it didn't have one hiccup.

Hole 3 - "do it yourself" powder check die made from spare die body.

Hole 4 - Bullet seating die.

With this setup I was able to prime, charge and seat bullets at 200 rounds per hour if I was trying to make time. 150 rounds per hour was easy to do.

The ammo made shoots consistant under MOA 5 shot groups at 100 in a Tikka T3 varmint with the smallest groups in the .2s. It shoots right around MOA in a Stevens 200.

Overall I was very impressed with the Classic turret press. The keys are the auto indexing and reliable priming on the press which shaves a lot of time over other turret presses. 100 rounds an hour was my max with a single stage and weighing every charge to +/- .2 gr. This press doubled my output, gave me more accurate ammo and didn't cost me a whole lot. For the guy who is looking to make 100-200 rounds a week, this is the perfect press.