Well, there I was, minding my own business when suddenly I was drawn irresistibly to an estate sale. I wandered into the garage and the first thing that caught my eye was a fairly large press sitting on a table. I knew it was one of the old ones that used strange dies and wasn't going to mess with it. Instead, I was drawn to a box filled with the glow of Lyman orange! Moments later I was clutching the filled box like a small child with a beloved toy and talking to the woman running the sale. We chatted about the equipment and she said the big one was a Hollywood press and it was missing parts. I was too focused on my Lyman goodies which consisted of, a Tru-Line jr. 310 turret, Ideal measure, Redding scale and several boxes of dies with some other stuff thrown in. I left and continued on with my bride and enjoyed a bite to eat and headed home without giving it a second thought. About an hour later, I finally got to look at what I had and started to inventory. I found the Hollywood fliers and price list and wondered if I should have given that press a closer inspection. A quick peek around the interwebs, made me decide to take a second look. I ran back to the sale as they were closing up and saw it had 5 inserts installed to accept standard 7/8"-14 dies in the larger holes and three holes already threaded for the standard dies. It also had a powder measure attached. It turns out the missing parts were the 3 handles for the turret. As it was time to wrap up, I asked her for a best price and she said $75! The deal done, I lugged it to the truck and headed home. It was covered with grease and in perfect condition, the attached photo looks like rust on the post, but it's fossilized grease and the paint around the mounting bolts doesn't appear like it was mounted.
Here is my confusion: this thing is steel, it has 5 holes bored for the original large die thread size, only 3 for todays common pattern. I saw reference to an 8x4 which sounds like 8 holes and half of them the smaller diameter? I read an article dredged up from the search function here, which said this model was aluminum, mine is definitely not. Lastly, how late did they produce this model, the paperwork (seen behind the press) looks like early 1970's? I have tried to search here thoroughly, before exposing my ignorance, but I now realize I didn't know squat about these and their history is somewhat muddied. All I know is I have a press that will be going into service on my newly constructed loading bench and I definitely bought it way below market value. If anyone can nail down if this was a normal configuration, or a last shot at marketability before they ceased production, I would definitely appreciate it. While going through the other box from the first purchase, I found a brand new RCBS adapter for the shellholder, so other than recreating some handles, this thing is ready to go into service.
Thanks in advance for any info.
Mark
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Originally Posted by Tracvision
