Lee Reloading Presses

[silvervette]

SkyRock,

For the love of all that is holy...don't get rid of the 650.  Send the whole thing to Dillon (for them to fix) if you have to, but don't get rid of it.

Get rid of the Dillon 650 and go for the Hornady. I'll give you my address so you can sent that unwanted POS Dillon to me. I have a spot all picked out and ready to put it right next to my other Dillon 650 . That way I can leave one set up for .45ACP and use the other for change overs to less used calibers. I love my Dillon so I can make you happy by getting rid of it and I will be very happy to own another 650.

[Vlad]

DON'T GET A LEE PRESS OF ANY KIND!  At minimum get a 550.  I own 2 and love them.  I haven't loaded on a 650 so I can't comment on it.  Just don't get a LEE!  You will be sorry!  TXAG

I suspect that you are right about the progressives but their single stages presses are ok. A Chalanger press is right next to my 550B and I use it quite a bit for .308, which I hand trim, trickle charge, and so on. Sometimes a progressive just doesn't make sense and the Lee singles work and are cheap.

I also use one of their hand presses for necksizing and depriming .308 while watching TV in the comfort of my living room. I have a feeling the wife would be ... uh .. distraught if I decided to mount a dillon on the coffee table.

However having seen the he cheap quality of their plastic bits I suspect anything with plastic moving parts would be a disaster waiting to happen. If money is an issue, do what I did. Buy a 500AT and slowly upgrade it to a 550B. It is worth using at every stage of the upgrade, and every addition makes you appreciate what you were missing

Vlad

[SkyRock]

SkyRock,

For the love of all that is holy...don't get rid of the 650.  Send the whole thing to Dillon (for them to fix) if you have to, but don't get rid of it.

Get rid of the Dillon 650 and go for the Hornady. I'll give you my address so you can sent that unwanted POS Dillon to me. I have a spot all picked out and ready to put it right next to my other Dillon 650 . That way I can leave one set up for .45ACP and use the other for change overs to less used calibers. I love my Dillon so I can make you happy by getting rid of it and I will be very happy to own another 650.

Gee, I'm getting all warm and fuzzy inside!

[BLISH LOCK]

voice of experience , get the Dillon and be happy reloading

i am so happy with my 1st 650, i got a 2nd

[jef]

My first press was a Lee Loadmaster which I purchased from Midway. It worked fine for the first four thousand or so rounds, but everything went down hill from there! Pretty soon, I found myself doing voodoo rituals, like holding up and shakeing the primer feeding case/disk with my thumb as I cycled the handle on the down stroke. It was ludicrous, soon the aluminum ribs on the press body wore out and the press wouldn't automatically index without more voodoo antics!

I suppose I got the $200 it cost initially out of it, but overall it was a pain in the ass, particularly the adjustable powder bar, which caused squib loads, especially with Hogden Clays (which meters like granite boulders, Ca Ca, IMHO)!

I only load 45ACP, so might I suggest a Dillon SQB?! It hasn't failed me yet and requires no ritualistic contortions! After all was said and done, I traded the Lee for a brand new 10/22, I guess it was worth it, but I'm not exacty a big Ruger fan either! The old addage applies, you get what you pay for and blue is better than red!

[joelaw99]

im considering buying a lee 1000, i already have a lee turret i have several die sets set up and extra shell plates.

anybody loading on one of these?

i can get it fully set up and ready to load 40 for 125.00

[.40AET]

I reloaded on a Pro 1000 for years in .38 special and never had any problems. When I started loading for .40 I had a lot of inconsistancy. I gave up and bought a Dillon XL 650 from Brian. It was the best thing I ever did. There is a big price difference, but the Dillon is 10 times better. The Lee doesn't have a single safety measure, and the Dillon has 3 with audible alarms. Save your money, the Dillon will pay for itself quickly.

[JFD]

I still load the occasional .38/.357 on my 1000, but I praise the god of handloading that I now have Dillon conversions (SDB) for everything else. The press is frustrating to use and that's about the best that can be said for it.

While the turret press (I've used one too) is a bit slow compared to a true progressive, as long as you either don't care if you have to handle each and every individual primer (prime on the press), or use a hand tool for priming, the machine has always been a solid performer for me.

When I tried a Pro 1000 with all the bells and whistles, my loading rate actually dropped. Too much screwing around with that idiotic priming system. The bullet feeder is basically a joke, don't waste the effort. While the case feeder works pretty well, the .40 is the one caliber that doesn't feed cases that well, although it's not too bad.

Since I'm using a SDB for most everything, but still want to use the FCD, I fill the case feeder tubes with loaded rounds and use the 1000 to quickly run the ammo through the FCD. That's about all I can recommend it for.

Save your money for anything else, with a Dillon being the best.

[Skywalker]

More info here.

Might be worthy to merge the two threads?

[Flexmoney]

threads merged

[Dead Buff]

After scanning through the thread, here are my 0.02.....

I bought a Lee 1000 to get into progressive loading from a friend, loaded 100 rounds in about 2 hours. The amount of hassles made me sell it the next day. I'm back to my RCBS Reloader 5 single stage and am happy since. If I someday have the money to spend I might consider a Dillon, but till then I'll rather sit a load for longer and be happy than be frustrated by something that sometimes might work....

[r1kk1]

Just my .02 cents.

On lee equipment...

I never had a decapping pin break on their decapping die until recently. That die is easily 10 years old. I have had hornady/rcbs decapping pins break, especially if you don't check for a crimp in primer pocket. But the lee die would power through without failure until recently.

I use a lot of lee case length gauges chucked up to a drill. Very fast to take rifle cases back down to specs.

I have the challenger press, c-frame and hand press. Spent primers are easily dealt with on the challenger, pain on the c-press as a person needs to remove the press to get to the spent primers and can be a bear on the hand press.

I use their molds and sizers with no problems.

On lyman...

Love their molds, lubrisizer and their mdies.

On rcbs...

Great service just like dillon

On hornady...

Have some dies but having problems with their apex parts and service. I am disappointed with them.

On ch4d...

Great dies and so much more!

On dillon...

One phone call takes care of any problem I may have and it's only been two. Both operator error and fixed at their cost.

That's just my opinion and take it for what it's worth,

eric

[Madmark]

I too would advise you to save up and buy a Dillon (from Brian, of course!)

You get what you pay for, and if you ever decide to get out of reloading, you can sell your Dillon for practically the same price you paid for it.

I have 2 RL550's, one set up for 9mm, 38 Super, 9x21, and .40S&W. The other is set up for my 7mm Mag. Absolutely bulletproof. (no pun intended!) Dillons dies are top notch as well.

I had a Lee "pro" turret press with all of the upgrades. Had it for about a month . Being able to set the Lee and the Dillon side by side for comparison really made the Dillon look good. I have had problems with the Lee collet dies, and if their dies require tuning, their presses do too! They are inexpensive, (and cheap), for a reason.

I have a Hornady/Pacific 366 Shotshell press that I bought used, and needed powder throw bushings and a powder dispenser. Hornady replaced them no questions asked, at no charge. I am very happy with the design and construction of Hornady's Products.

But Dillon is still #1 with serious shooters for a reason!

[TLD]

FWIW, I had a Lee 4 hole turret auto indexing for a few years. I had no problems with it. It loaded good pistol ammo at a rate of about 200/hr, which was more than fast enough at the time. I never needed to tweak or adjust, it just worked for about 3000 rounds. It wasn't what I'd call "sturdy," so I got a Redding turret for rifle ammo but now that I'm getting into "massive quantity" pistol shooting, I think a progressive is in order.

I really want to try the Lee Pro 1000. You can get a factory refurb with dies for $80. If it doesn't work it can be sold on e-bay for more than retail like the 4 hole turret I had. Since that's probably where it will end up, I will most likely save myself the trouble and get a Dillon of some kind.

[Tokarev]

I bought a used Hornady Pro-Jector off Ebay a couple years ago and then sold my 650. I like the Pro-Jector so much I bought another one. I leave one setup for .40 and the other for .308. I bought both presses used for under $200 each and also got a variety of shell plates and various other parts.

I haven't used the newer Lock-N-Load but if it's as good a press as the old Pro-Jector, that's the route I'd take.

[Tman33_99]

I too would advise you to save up and buy a Dillon (from Brian, of course!)

You get what you pay for, and if you ever decide to get out of reloading, you can sell your Dillon for practically the same price you paid for it.

I have 2 RL550's, one set up for 9mm, 38 Super, 9x21, and .40S&W. The other is set up for my 7mm Mag. Absolutely bulletproof. (no pun intended!) Dillons dies are top notch as well.

I had a Lee "pro" turret press with all of the upgrades. Had it for about a month . Being able to set the Lee and the Dillon side by side for comparison really made the Dillon look good. I have had problems with the Lee collet dies, and if their dies require tuning, their presses do too! They are inexpensive, (and cheap), for a reason.

I have a Hornady/Pacific 366 Shotshell press that I bought used, and needed powder throw bushings and a powder dispenser. Hornady replaced them no questions asked, at no charge. I am very happy with the design and construction of Hornady's Products.

But Dillon is still #1 with serious shooters for a reason!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

For just a few $$ more you can get a Lee Loadmaster, which is a 5 station progressive. It is a good press (not a good as dillon) once you learn how to get it setup and learn its quirks.

For only a few more $$ you can get a SDB.

[BigSlick]

.

Edited December 27, 2005 by BigSlick

[ltdhosr]

I have two loadmasters that ive been using for over ten years, they were delivered to my door set up and ready to go for less than $350 each. Between the two of them i have loaded well over 175000 rounds and contrary to popular opinion they rock. The dillon is an excellent press for sure and if the cost doesnt bother you then they are even better, but for the money the lee is outstanding and even has a couple of advantages over the dillon.

[folsoml]

I've had a lee pro 1000 in .45 for about 15 years. The only problem is if you don't manage to get the primer seated and you dump powder in, all the powder leaks out the primer hole and it gums up the primer feed trough. The you invariably haveto break the whole thing down to clean it all out. That's the only problem I've had, and it is so minor that when I started reloading .40, I got another Lee pro 1000. It was cheaper to buy an entire additional reloader ($118) than it would have been to try to get new dies for my other one.

If you learn what it feels like when the primer doesn't seat, you will have no trouble.

[Wim]

I bought a Lee progressive after using a friend's one for ages (to load 9mm) and after going nuts using a single stage. It was a decision based on price.

I am generally a shooting "brand snob" most of the time - I had NO Lee stuff before then, no dies, nothing, but I've been pleasantly surprised.

I now load .40 S&W on the Lee. So far it's doing pretty well. I can go about 500 an hour without problems and giving some attention to what I'm doing. I can't comment on durability for 10's of thousands - not there yet.

You need to:

1. Make some fine tuning adjustements to the angles of the "wire" part of the case feed to get it going perfectly.

2. Know that cases with less powder in them don't spill when the shellplate indexes between stations and that trying to index between stations at warp speed will likely spill powder;

3. Learn to feel primers seating (or at least not seating ) - but generally mine is pretty good. This has to do with the primer feed - keep the tube full and clean. Tie it together with cable ties so that it stays together (the sides can pop apart and then primers get hung up in the feed tube).

4. Watch to see whether the cases are fed right side up - i.e. whether they went into the tubes right side up from the "case collator" (what Lee calls the funnel thingy that you dump empty cases in to feed the case tubes - I think).

5. Refill the primer tray once it empties into the primer feed tube and be more aware once the primer tray is almost empty so that you don't try to charge an unprimed case.

6. Pull an old pillowcase or a plastic bag over the press to keep dust out of the primer feed tube and so on.

Then get your rhythm going and don't try to go flat out - you'll be slower sorting out problems with primer misfeeds and powder spillage etc.

Negatives:

1. I only have the standard cavities for the Autodisk powder measure, don't like stacking cavities and so I'm a bit limited as to the variation on how much powder I can load.

2. As it stands (I don't have a bullet feeder) placing the bullet into the case for seating is a bit awkward around the post position. (I can only imagine that it's worse if you seat on the second station and crimp on the last, but I would need to take a look.

Accuracy seems okay for what I'm doing with the loaded product.

Now I hope that singing the praises of Lee won't be bad luck for my press

[ltdhosr]

Wim,Heres a couple of hints,

Add a couple of rubber bands between your powder feeder arm ( the thing with the chain ) and the place where the chain attaches to the turret. this keeps tension on the powder feeder arm and keeps errant powder from flying about.

Clean the primer trough often.

Dont use the bullet feeder, it obscures your view of the just charged case.

The arm that holds the case in place at the priming station, dont tighten the retaining screw too tight, if a primer goes in sideways ( cause the trough is dirty ) and the case cant give a little the primer might go boom. ive had two blow, neither blew the rest of the tray !! Thank God.

The lee has no powder level check ( caused much heart ache and despair ) so figure out how many tubes of cases you can get out of a fill up of powder then refill the resevoir without fail every so many tubes.

The primer trays will hold 200 primers no problem.

When the shell plate starts jamming at the ind of the stroke, empty the spent primers.

Good shooting,

Chris

I bought a Lee progressive after using a friend's one for ages (to load 9mm) and after going nuts using a single stage. It was a decision based on price.

I am generally a shooting "brand snob" most of the time - I had NO Lee stuff before then, no dies, nothing, but I've been pleasantly surprised.

I now load .40 S&W on the Lee. So far it's doing pretty well. I can go about 500 an hour without problems and giving some attention to what I'm doing. I can't comment on durability for 10's of thousands - not there yet.

You need to:

1. Make some fine tuning adjustements to the angles of the "wire" part of the case feed to get it going perfectly.

2. Know that cases with less powder in them don't spill when the shellplate indexes between stations and that trying to index between stations at warp speed will likely spill powder;

3. Learn to feel primers seating (or at least not seating  ) - but generally mine is pretty good. This has to do with the primer feed - keep the tube full and clean. Tie it together with cable ties so that it stays together (the sides can pop apart and then primers get hung up in the feed tube).

4. Watch to see whether the cases are fed right side up - i.e. whether they went into the tubes right side up from the "case collator" (what Lee calls the funnel thingy that you dump empty cases in to feed the case tubes - I think).

5. Refill the primer tray once it empties into the primer feed tube and be more aware once the primer tray is almost empty so that you don't try to charge an unprimed case.

6. Pull an old pillowcase or a plastic bag over the press to keep dust out of the primer feed tube and so on.

Then get your rhythm going and don't try to go flat out - you'll be slower sorting out problems with primer misfeeds and powder spillage etc.

Negatives:

1. I only have the standard cavities for the Autodisk powder measure, don't like stacking cavities and so I'm a bit limited as to the variation on how much powder I can load.

2. As it stands (I don't have a bullet feeder) placing the bullet into the case for seating is a bit awkward around the post position. (I can only imagine that it's worse if you seat on the second station and crimp on the last, but I would need to take a look.

Accuracy seems okay for what I'm doing with the loaded product.

Now I hope that singing the praises of Lee won't be bad luck for my press 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Wim]

Thanks, Chris.

A few good ideas that I'll give a try. Thank you for sharing them.

I must say I've been pretty happy (and I'm cranky about my gadgets).

Wim

[Rico567]

For a thread I thought was supposed to be about non-Dillon reloading equipment, this one's sure got a lot of that same old "Blue Religion" I've come to know & avoid, but, -sigh- here goes anyway.

To say "you get what you pay for" means I ought to ditch my car and buy a Mercedes-Benz. But life's not quite that simple. If you're on this forum in the first place, the chances are you're into reloading a lot of ammo, and you want to do it fast. And if you can afford the ammo (even as components) to shoot a couple thousand rounds a month, then you can afford a Dillon 550, or 650, or 1050, or whatever. It isn't an issue, so why discuss it?

But someone who's only interested in reloading and shooting a couple hundred rounds a month of pistol ammo (like me) can get along, and get along for many years very well (like me) with a Lee Pro 1000. Well, actually, I have two, one set up for large primers, one for small.

And when I discovered that I was shooting more .223 than I cared to load on my Rock Chucker, I went out and bought a Dillon XL 650. It's kind of overkill for the quantities I shoot, so I compensated for that by also doing my .45 ACP on it.

It's hard for me to believe that some people have all this terrible trouble with Lee, while some other people seem to get along with the brand just fine. I have had my Lee presses for a long time, the oldest goes back nearly to when the Pro 1000 was introduced, which has to be around 20 years ago. My costs over the years to maintain these presses, added to their price, add up to only about half of the cost of a Dillon 650, so, once again, all the carryings-on about Dillon's warranty applies mostly to people who are loading thousands of rounds a month. If the Pro 1000 (the only Lee press with which I am experienced) is kept clean and lubricated, it is perfectly capable of turning out many thousands of reloads that are every bit as good as those assembled on a Dillon 650.

[mikesrc]

Well I must be the odd ball out here. I have a Lee 1000 and have been using it for about 20 years. Think I paid about 80 bucks at a gun show. It will only do about 200-300 rnds per hour, but thats all I need most of the time. If I need any more I just set the wife down and get her started while I'm at the range. In the 20 or so years I've used this thing I've replaced about $ 5.00 in parts and so far EVER round has gone bang. Is it perfect, Hell no, I'm I going to spend the big bucks to get something else, Hell no.

Mike in OKC

[P+P]

buy the lee and tell us what  you think about it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I bought a Loadmaster in 1997 it flipped primers from the start and set them in sideways at a rate of 6 per 100 .. The indexer was inconsistent at about the same rate ...A call to the factory was no help ..... I think they will fix it for the cost of parts and shipping only???

That said I still like Lee dies and won't load without a Lee factory crimp die in my tool head ...

I just got a 550B from Chad at Egun.. Great press ,Great service ( Chad and Dillon)

I wish I didn't go the cheep route in 97 .. Dillon stuff is pricey, but I think it worth every cent in saved time and eliminating set up and operating frustration.. Check resale prices on Ebay some stuff has gone for more than retail.... That's as good as a money back guarantee with no time limit ....

That's a liile more than my 2 cents worth.... Thanks,Randy