progressive press sugestions

Get a Dillon. Blue Kool-Aid is good Kool-Aid. The long run costs of components will dwarf your fixed equipment cost. The extra cost for the Dillon over Lee is not much in the scheme of things.

Which one to get depends on your capacity wants/needs. The 550 is better if you don't plan on getting a case feeder; with a 650, the case feeder is a must. For either press, I would strongly recommend upgrading the powder measure with the Uniquetek micrometer adjustment.
 
Buy a Dillon. I bought a Dillon 550B many years ago and never regretted it. I reload many different pistol and revolver calibers and also .223 rifle caliber. I purchased a second 550B two years ago, so now I have one for large primers and one for small primers, so I don't have to change the set up all the time.(Just a time saver.) You can buy directly from Dillon, and they ship to Canada. Also the Dillon dies are fantastic.
 
The one thing that I do not like about the Lee 1000 is you seat the primers at the station the powder measure is on top of. Don't like the idea of a primer going off below the powder measure. A friend had a Lee 1000 years ago he loaded 1000s and 1000s of 38 and 45 rounds
with his they were quality reloads. I did like the guy s pictures of his loading room with five of them. Really handy to just start loading and cartridge you shoot. I don't care which press you have they are all a pain to switch cartridge s. If you are loading rifle cartridge s I would look at a redding t7 or a CH 444. Personally I like either of them better than a full progressive for bottle neck cases. The full progressive s are the way to go for pistol cases.
 
I see a Dillon 550B in my future, just flared 600 9mm rounds in 1 hour on my RCBS Primerchucker, and thought about how nice it would have been to have finished rounds instead lol.
 
When I was looking at a progressive choice I watched a lot of videos on You Tube to get a feel for the setups.

I quickly noted that a bigger portion of the videos on the Lee 1000 were related to mods and fixing things than any other brand. I went "blue" as a result. My 550b is the last progressive I will need. I actually prefer the manual indexing and removable retention buttons because it allows me to more easily clear away any foul ups. In addition it allows me to interrupt the progressive work path at any point to do partial processing. I can remove or replace casings at any point. So I find I also use the 550b as a sort of single stage as well as full progressive.

For anyone that doesn't mind tinkering to get the press running right I can see the Lee being attractive. But not everyone is able to do the tweaks that well.

It's interesting to read that a few that replied encountered such issue.
 
Have used Dillon equipment for 24yrs now. Square Deal was in a house fire, sent it to them, they rebuilt it, no bs warranty is great!!

Upgraded to 650 22yrs ago and it's an awesome press. Use it to reload for a family of 4 shooters. Have an RCBS A2 for doing the less shot and much bigger calibers.

Everyone at my gun club that shoots quite a bit uses: Square Deal, 550 or 650, there might be a 1050 hiding somewhere.

My .02
 
BCRider said:
When I was looking at a progressive choice I watched a lot of videos on You Tube to get a feel for the setups.

I quickly noted that a bigger portion of the videos on the Lee 1000 were related to mods and fixing things than any other brand. I went "blue" as a result. My 550b is the last progressive I will need. I actually prefer the manual indexing and removable retention buttons because it allows me to more easily clear away any foul ups. In addition it allows me to interrupt the progressive work path at any point to do partial processing. I can remove or replace casings at any point. So I find I also use the 550b as a sort of single stage as well as full progressive.

For anyone that doesn't mind tinkering to get the press running right I can see the Lee being attractive. But not everyone is able to do the tweaks that well.

It's interesting to read that a few that replied encountered such issue.
Click to expand...

The 650 can be used as such also, just remove the advancing lever spring or advance slider post, 20 seconds either way, and you have a single stage press.
 
Been using a Lee Classic Turret press, for a while , works great, priced right. Can load 250ish an hour , of 9mm. Not really going all out, just a nice pace.
You can uses it as a "single stage" just remove the selector bar ( the piece that moves your top turret) , about a 2 second job ( not kidding) or run it as an auto indexing turret press.
For the money, you will NOT find a better press. I run my press for 2 years and about 5000 rounds of 9mm and about 100 rounds of 7.5x55.
I have the safety primer and pro auto powder attachment, make life a little easier.
Cheers
Brian
 
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BCRider said:
When I was looking at a progressive choice I watched a lot of videos on You Tube to get a feel for the setups.

I quickly noted that a bigger portion of the videos on the Lee 1000 were related to mods and fixing things than any other brand. I went "blue" as a result. My 550b is the last progressive I will need. I actually prefer the manual indexing and removable retention buttons because it allows me to more easily clear away any foul ups. In addition it allows me to interrupt the progressive work path at any point to do partial processing. I can remove or replace casings at any point. So I find I also use the 550b as a sort of single stage as well as full progressive.

For anyone that doesn't mind tinkering to get the press running right I can see the Lee being attractive. But not everyone is able to do the tweaks that well.

It's interesting to read that a few that replied encountered such issue.
Click to expand...
:dancingbanana::agree::dancingbanana:
 
I'm running a 1050 with Forcht Autodrive - and that is a machine for really churning out ammo quality ammo. However if you are going to load 1 or 2 calibers a Super 1050 is not so much more expensive than a 650 (optioned out ) when you buy it. When you start adding calibers though it adds up quickly.
 
I'm running a lee loadmaster with bullet feeder for 9mm and soon to be 45acp.

It's fantastic on the 9mm but did benefit from a bit of tuning here and there. Nothing over the top but I did extend the finished round chute with some cardboard and needed a bit of tape to tune up the bullet feeder. Case feeder works great and hasn't given me issues. Never used the primer though, I hand prime while watching tv. I also did deburr a lot of the moving parts, but that's only because I was bored and like to tinker.
 
I have a loadmaster and can do 700+ rounds per hour at an easy pace. That includes adding more brass and primers. It required a little "massaging" at first lol but I love it now. One of the biggest factors is having a rock solid mount. I decap as a single stage with a universal decapper, then clean the brass. After that, I resize, prime, flare and powder charge, seat, factory crimp all at the same time with the 5 position press. Changing calibers takes 5 minutes max. I reload 9,40,45,44,38,357,223 and .308. The rifle calibers are a little slower than the pistol calibers due to the second cleaning needed after resizing.

I've had mine for a little more than a year and I've probably loaded 10k so far.

I could probably do 1200 per hour if I had my son top up the brass for me lol.
 
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