If You Built a Reloading Press...

Just buy a Dillon 550. It will load Pistol and rifle and is a four station progressive press. You can buy a conversion kit to make it a center fed single stage press. Once you start loading you will spend more time shooting and will want to spend less time reloading, thus the need for the progressive press. There is absolutely no sense in handling a case three or four different times to get one loaded round. Pull the handle once and every time you do a loaded round falls in the bin. You can attempt to build one and probably will be successful making a single stage press, but the time spent doing it you could have loaded 5-10 thousand rounds on a Dillon. Takes me just over 4 minutes to load a 100 pistol rounds.
 
I always advise against someone starting out reloading metallic with a progressive press. There’s just to much going on for a beginner and to many things that can go very wrong if mistakes are made. Plus I think the op is looking for a bit more precision than the 550 offers out of the box. I’m not saying it can’t be very accurate just not right out of the box.


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Progressives are great for pistols and autoloading rifles, they save time and the variances aren't enough to see in close-up practical shooting. Skills on those platforms are gained by repeated practice and high round count, and accuracy is fine when it's good enough. If you're doing IDPA, IPSC, or USPSA, you could load primers and projectiles without the powder and still have a good day at the range.

Bench rest, F-class, and NRA highpower is a different story. At 1,000 yards, 1 minute of angle is 10". Missing the weight of a powder charge by a tenth of a grain will drop your shot out of the 10-ring and into the 7-ring. Same happens if you fire the heaviest bullet in the box right behind the lightest bullet in the box (which may have 1 grain difference). Whole inches are tightened up with minute changes in reloading. The art in these disciplines is controlling cumulative marginal gains. Most people in this category equate a rock chucker press with tinker toys due to mass-production tolerances and material skimping (just weigh a rock chucker next to a Redding Big Boss- it's like a 10-lb. difference). I understand why it is appealing to design and build your own press. I also know that the juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze unless you were improving upon a commercial product.

I am not sure how this will help, I just had to do some head scratching on this thread. For me, life is just a series of deep rabbitholes. I happen to like my rabbithole for shooting sports, and lament the fact that my nearest 1,000-yard range is now several hours round trip.
 
@pontiac428 , you just called out where I wanted the design to end up. There are three primary categories I'd put shooters into.
  • Hunters
  • Casual (just having fun)
  • Competitors
For the casual, you end up with quite a few people who attempt to reload just to save money. If you reload often enough, it can provide some cost savings, but doesn't always. One of my colleagues always laughs when someone asks him how much money he saves reloading.

For the hunter, reloading works for ensuring you have consistency - but most don't push it much past that initial check point. I mean, if you shot an elk or deer at 1,000 yards, you'd have to go get it. Not many hunters are willing to do that.

My original request was less about wanting to save money on shooting or just getting close enough for the hunt. It was based on seeing a few posts from folks who wondered about upping their game (no pun intended here). With me being the kind who is more competitive (and have had a number of discussions with friends about distance competition), my brain naturally navigates to the competition side of things. I have a few friends who are into the 1,000 yard competition - and I've had numerous conversations with them about the sport. Everyone who is looking into the long range competition is looking for an edge. Most use consumer-friendly hardware, but they've only used one press to do it, limiting feedback on good and bad characteristics.

Is it possible to design something based on community influence? Absolutely. Can you satisfy everyone? Never - too many differences (and I like that - the world would be boring without it). But, it might be simple enough to create a basic design that can, over time, be more and more refined until most people would like it. The human race didn't start out being able to measure thousandths of an inch - it had to develop over time. Can we do that here? Could someone take the design I threw in here and tweak it, making it better? I'd actually LOVE to see that happen. The design I tossed out was intended to be something a person could do without developing iron (or aluminum) castings - something that could make it difficult for most folks to build - but still provide some degree of consistency down range. I wanted it to be constructed from easily-obtained parts and raw stock. If it was possible using a lathe and a drill press, that would be even better. Shoot (again, no pun intended), I'd even love to see a whole set of designs around building your own complete tool set for this.

Am I going to make a press? That still remains to be seen. I'd do it if I had a few folks close by who would be interested in building one and tweaking it. But for me, I just don't know.

Bugger, I'm starting to ramble again.
 
FYI, here is another link to another home-built press over on the homegunsmith that would do quite nicely for others. There IS a ZIP file containing plans on that thread.

At some point, I'll start posting plans for various reloading tools as I design them (next up will be a concentricity tool, since that didn't come with my kit, and looks interesting).
 
I use Lee and other brands and like Lee the best for a press and dies. I have 3 Lee single stage and one Loadmaster progressive. I also have a Lyman turret and I use all the presses for different things. The Loadmaster comes with dies for $260 and does require some tweeking like all presses and you tube is full of ideas. I wet tumble with pins then hand prime and run thru the Loadmaster for the rest, it works for me since I like clean primer pockets. My latest tweek is replacing the chain for the powder drop with a spring as shown. Auto case feeder and bullet feeder (Hornady). This is the best way to go for under $500 in my opinion.
Paul
LOADMASTERSPRING1.jpgLOADMASTERSPRING2.jpg
 
walz10 said:
I always advise against someone starting out reloading metallic with a progressive press. There’s just to much going on for a beginner and to many things that can go very wrong if mistakes are made. Plus I think the op is looking for a bit more precision than the 550 offers out of the box. I’m not saying it can’t be very accurate just not right out of the box.


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I started out with a Dillon 650 and no prior experience. Never a problem. I used to go thru 200 to 400 rounds of .45acp every weekend so that was the only way to make it affordable. :)
 
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