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Showing results for tags 'press decisions'.
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Greetings, My birthday present to me is going to be a reloading press. I do not shoot a great deal. Typically I shoot a box of 50 at an indoor range each week. Occasionally I will go to an outdoor range for a day. Cost and availability of ammo controls things. So my desire to reload is to control those two items. So with my best guess I can figure 100 rounds per week average if I double my current level. This is a low production level. So technically a single stage and spending an evening would work to satisfy my needs. But it will require diligence to spending an evening to stay supplied. So i looked at turret presses. The Lee Cast Turret is 150-200 per hour. So I can crank out 300 in an evening and be good for couple weeks. Of course... that is 1,200 pulls. Cost is low to get set up in my two pistol calibers. So that is attractive. I watched numerous videos on how to get your Hornady AP to work and realized how it will always be chasing down issues to get thru a session. It seems very hit and miss on how it will work when you unbox it. It would bother me to have be concerned about the press so much. So I decided no to the Red One. RCBS is a bump up in price that I cannot justify. So I ruled out their Progressive ones as being far to much press for me. So I said No to the Green One. Then there is the Blue One. I can't justify more than a 550's level of production. So at 400 per hour I would only load a caliber every other month. That seems like more press than I could ever need. I found a common thread in various locations on the internet. I see " Buy more press than you think you need " as a common piece of sage advice. It seems everybody has a collection of presses as they progressed from one end to their present one. The 550 will produce 3-4x the ammo of an LCT based on (4) cases being worked on with each lever pull. So I ran some numbers. I took into consideration the future value of a Dillon 550 vs a LCT. I looked at ten years down the road. I figured that inflation would bump new prices by 1.5% each year. I conservatively estimated a used 550 to have 75% of new retail if I wanted to sell over night. I see some say 80-85% is typical. But I wanted to be conservative. I put the LCT at 50% resale and that could be high. This could be as low as 33%. But I wanted to be conservative. Well... Over a 10 year time the Lee Cast Turret press would cost about $40 more to own. I included nothing for replacement parts on the Lee. I also negated the interest income on the initial purchase of Dillion over Lee as the money sits in the bank. So then it comes down to which press will be more pleasurable for those ten years ? I think even the Green & other Red Press folks would say Dillon 550 over Lee Cast Turret. I notice many have a second single stage press for depriming and other case prep work. The LCT would be excellent repurposed for this. So I am back to thinking the LCT would serve all my needs now and in the future should I decide to buy it. Or am I going to be staring at a press I rationalize having instead of a spare toolhead on my Dillon 550 ? I am seeing that a good case prep session with a dedicated toolhead creates a reason to clean the Dillon good so when I seat primers during loading it works flawless. Your thoughts ?
