Texan goes Hollywood

[SlimTim]

Caught a glimpse of a metallic cartridge reloading press reported to be a Texan Loadmaster, but all the google-fu I can come up with only turns up shotshell presses under that name. What caught my eye was that it looked like a Hollywood, or so I thought.

Just found the reference again, here it is: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v6...%20Loadmaster/

This guy a member here? The presses look vaguely familiar. In any event, I'm interested in learning about the Texan metallic cartridge loaders. Can someone point me to past threads (I searched and found little) or pontificate about the virtues or lack thereof of these presses?

TIA,
SlimTim

[Pressman]

The pictured press is made by Rotex, Sovergien Industries (SI) also made Texan tools along with a couple other companies. Texan never was financially stable.
The turret presses are well thought out and strong. They bring big $$$ on eBay today. You will find them red or black in color.
Their scales were made by Webster and are good.
The powder measure is unique to the Texan brand. It uses a horizontial rotating plate with a micrometer adjustable powder cavity. It also has a built in trickler. How well it works with various powder shapes is not known. At least no other manufacture has picked up on the design.

As for their single stage presses, they were all aluminum. That alone scares many reloaders away. Why buy aluminum when you can have stronger cast iron for the samew money.

Two styles were offered over time. They were marked with a sticker that may come off leaving no markings and an apparently unknown press. Those made by SI were often marked with SI on the frame along with a Texan sticker, or no sticker.
Designs used the same offset handle of the Cobra press on one model while the SI marked presses used a short, stout handle. All were open front C designs.
All single stage presses I have found were painted black wrinkle. The exception is the SI, it was black wrinkle or a tan, smooth finish. This color stands up well, the black flakes off.

They also offered a three station H frame press. Again with an aluminum frame painted black.

Another Texan distinction was the shovel handle. Some turrets and H frames use it.

There dies look to have been made by C-H.

Ken

[LUBEDUDE]

Sure looks nice and beefy.

I've seen those on fleabay and had no idea that there Texans.

[SlimTim]

Thanks for the info, I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for one of these. In fact, I thought I had one treed, but got the call earlier this a.m. that it had been sold: http://kalamazoo.craigslist.org/spo/2566324660.html

I was really wanting this one. Hope perhaps a member scored it since I didn't.

SlimTim

[LUBEDUDE]

Sorry you missed out Slim, I'm sure another one will come along soon.

Keep the faith!

[Kevin Rohrer]

There's one of these (maybe the same one) on EBay right now. It looks really nice.

[SlimTim]

Likely is the same, it's located in the same state as the one I was trying to buy.

SlimTim

[NoDakJak]

I have been using mine since 1963 and it is still almost new condition. Good machine. Mine is red and had the sticker that eventually fell off. If I remember correctly it said Soviergn. The early versioons as pictured had the front of the base at a verticle angle. A later version had the front of the base sloped back at the top. My press was purchased new in 1963 and is the later version. Neil