As a novice shooter I've been able to get a lot of help from the good people on CGN. I thought I'd give some back by reviewing the Lee reloading kit.
First off let me say that I normally buy top of the line items as my experiences with bargain or moderately priced merchandise has been pretty lousy. For that matter I've had troubles with top of the line items as well. I bought the Lee kit because I didn't plan to load in high volumes and just couldn't justify the recommended RCBS kit at foiur times the price. I was more than a little skeptical though. The price of the Lee kit just seemed too low.
Purchased: Lee Anniversary Reloading kit, RCBS dies and shell holders in .243 and .223, loading tray, powder trickler, case trimmers, Hornady reloading manual, ammo boxes, powders etc.
Kit cost: $129 CDN
Upon opening and inspecting the kit I was very surprised to find out how much was included. The first thing I did was read the Lee manual, twice. The manual was a very entertaining read and was very concise. It answered almost all my questions and allayed a lot of my (justifiable) fear of reloading.
After breaking in the Lee powder measure I weighed out about 50 varying charges on the Lee beam scale. I was quite surprised to find that both were extremely consistant. I estimate both to be accurate to about 1/10 of a grain.
Time to start reloading then.
On my first attempt I was loading 85 grain Sierra HPBT for my Browing A-bolt. Initially I found lubing the cases to be a tiresome chore. After some advice here on CGN I squeezed the tube of Lee case lube into a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and poured it into a mister. My wife is still wondering who used all of her hairspray. This made the lubing process extremely simple.
Setting up the sizing die and (full length) resizing my cases proved to be very easy by following the instructions included with the dies.
Priming the cases is a little bit of work using the Lee Auto-prime but I would expect this to be similar to other priming tools. One note. Lee recommends NOT to use Federal primers with this tool. This was a disappointment as the loads I had selected all called for Federal primers. Winchester primers were to be limited to 20 in the tray. Lee only recommends completely filling the tray with CCI primers. I decided to go ahead and use the Federal primers but I only loaded one at a time in the tool.
After priming the cases it was time to charge them. After my practice and testing early on I was very confidant. I loaded 50 rounds of .243, checking the charge on every fifth load. No problems.
Seating the bullets proved to be very simple. I set up the die exactly as per the instructions but was a bit concerned about the COL being consistant. I measured every one of my first 50 cases using a quality set of calipers. I found that through the 50 rounds my COL never varied by more than +/- .002".
A trip to the range with my first loads left me very happy. On a gusty day my group size was cut in half. Very impressive. I was now shooting my 100 yard groups at 200 yards. I should also mention that I had forgot my rest and bags at home and was shooting off a wobbly bipod.
Overall I am very impressed with the Lee Anniversary Reloading Kit. At $129 it is a bargain and performs much better than I would have expected. Also surprising was the completeness of the kit.
Likes:
-Works great and is very consistant.
-Kit completeness.
-Low cost.
Dislikes:
-The primer catcher has about a 60% success rate
-The scale takes a little bit to settle down.
-The graduations on the scale can sometimes be hard to read, especially the 1/10 grain scale.
-It takes a bit of time to get the powder measure set correctly.
First off let me say that I normally buy top of the line items as my experiences with bargain or moderately priced merchandise has been pretty lousy. For that matter I've had troubles with top of the line items as well. I bought the Lee kit because I didn't plan to load in high volumes and just couldn't justify the recommended RCBS kit at foiur times the price. I was more than a little skeptical though. The price of the Lee kit just seemed too low.
Purchased: Lee Anniversary Reloading kit, RCBS dies and shell holders in .243 and .223, loading tray, powder trickler, case trimmers, Hornady reloading manual, ammo boxes, powders etc.
Kit cost: $129 CDN
Upon opening and inspecting the kit I was very surprised to find out how much was included. The first thing I did was read the Lee manual, twice. The manual was a very entertaining read and was very concise. It answered almost all my questions and allayed a lot of my (justifiable) fear of reloading.
After breaking in the Lee powder measure I weighed out about 50 varying charges on the Lee beam scale. I was quite surprised to find that both were extremely consistant. I estimate both to be accurate to about 1/10 of a grain.
Time to start reloading then.
On my first attempt I was loading 85 grain Sierra HPBT for my Browing A-bolt. Initially I found lubing the cases to be a tiresome chore. After some advice here on CGN I squeezed the tube of Lee case lube into a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and poured it into a mister. My wife is still wondering who used all of her hairspray. This made the lubing process extremely simple.
Setting up the sizing die and (full length) resizing my cases proved to be very easy by following the instructions included with the dies.
Priming the cases is a little bit of work using the Lee Auto-prime but I would expect this to be similar to other priming tools. One note. Lee recommends NOT to use Federal primers with this tool. This was a disappointment as the loads I had selected all called for Federal primers. Winchester primers were to be limited to 20 in the tray. Lee only recommends completely filling the tray with CCI primers. I decided to go ahead and use the Federal primers but I only loaded one at a time in the tool.
After priming the cases it was time to charge them. After my practice and testing early on I was very confidant. I loaded 50 rounds of .243, checking the charge on every fifth load. No problems.
Seating the bullets proved to be very simple. I set up the die exactly as per the instructions but was a bit concerned about the COL being consistant. I measured every one of my first 50 cases using a quality set of calipers. I found that through the 50 rounds my COL never varied by more than +/- .002".
A trip to the range with my first loads left me very happy. On a gusty day my group size was cut in half. Very impressive. I was now shooting my 100 yard groups at 200 yards. I should also mention that I had forgot my rest and bags at home and was shooting off a wobbly bipod.
Overall I am very impressed with the Lee Anniversary Reloading Kit. At $129 it is a bargain and performs much better than I would have expected. Also surprising was the completeness of the kit.
Likes:
-Works great and is very consistant.
-Kit completeness.
-Low cost.
Dislikes:
-The primer catcher has about a 60% success rate
-The scale takes a little bit to settle down.
-The graduations on the scale can sometimes be hard to read, especially the 1/10 grain scale.
-It takes a bit of time to get the powder measure set correctly.
