Today I was kinda bored and sittin' in my shop wanting something to do. I had processed a bunch of 45 ACP, 9mm, 30-06 and 308 brass in the last couple weeks and have a whole lot of reloads waiting to be tried when I thought of a couple threads I've seen on different forums about getting started reloading, and thought about Lee Loaders. I dug out my old pal, a Lee Loader in .44 Magnum. I thought about batch loading with a Lee Loader and worked out a somewhat workable process. I had about a dozen fired .44 Mags with mixed headstamps and started; I tapped the empty in the die, then decapped over the "stand off". Then I punched the case out of the die. I started to prime with my bench prime, but decided to use the Lee Loader instead, then I just placed the case over the priming tool w/o the die and tapped the primers home. Then I charged the cases w/a dipper to give me 14.5 gr, of Blue Dot. Since the Lee Loader die is sized for jacketed bullets my RD 240 RBFP at .231" are too tight, so I sat the bullet in the case mouth (which I had flared with the included tool) and set the die over the case and seated the bullet with the seating tool. Flipped the die over and tapped a crimp on them. The only tool I used not in the kit was a Lyman chamfer tool and a brass hammer, ands I used a lead ingot for an anvil. It wasn't fast, as I was going slow on purpose and noting what I was doing, and thinkin', but with a bit of practice It would go quicker. Loads of fun today...
BTW; the .44 set is the only Lee Loader I've popped primers in so I used my Lyman chamfer tool to put a chamfer in the primer pocket mouth, just like I decrimp military brass and all primers slipped right in, no surprises...
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