UPDATE: Post #50 including videos
Version 2 with bushings, thrust washers, adjustable linkage, and adjustable handle.
A number of months back, there was discussion in a couple threads regarding purpose built presses to accept lee bullet sizing dies. Some of us have flipped a cheap lee press and even made brackets to mount them like a traditional press. These are popular with PC or powder coating, but they would likely work if pan or tumble lubing as well.
I mentioned that I thought I could build such an animal, after seeing one that someone else made and sold a few of (but non longer offers them). There was talk about lee building an upside down press, but I don't know any of the details on it.
After a little tinkering, cutting, welding, and grinding, tonight I was able to pull mine out of the powder coating oven. Yep......I powder coated my powder coated boolit sizing press.
Now it is time to cast more boolits and try a few sizes to ensure it work well on everything. It sizes 40 cal on the low force setting, through a clean and dry die. Boolits vary in size, for others, so I may have to cast some real fat ones to try it out. One shot case lube makes it very easy to size boolits but I know some don't like using lube. The handle seems plenty long, but I can make it any length for more or less leverage.
There is relief for your fingers when dropping boolits in and the handle is a roller style. The purple is transparent so I had to polish the parts with a surface prep disc before coating. It would have looked better with blemish free steel and a real polish job, but it just needed to work. The body is silver vein powder, which is textured. That steel was also blemished when I started. Oak or mahogany would have been nicer for the handle, but poplar was in stock at depot and I didn't want to hit up a wood supplier.
The base is 3/8" steel plate, 1/4" steel plate for the vertical, linkage, and main arm with the handle frame being 1/8". I like small neat welds, and they are quite strong. I set my tig machine to the middle range with the dial at 100 percent (250 amps) and feathered it until it was almost floored, for the bottom welds. While top range would have given me up to 460 amps to weld that out, it just doesn't have as much force on it as you would think. Even the tack welds on the prototypes held easily.
This one was made with my CNC plasma table, but the manual lathe and mill. If I make a bunch of them, it might be worth using the CNC mill. The thought was to keep this stupid simple, so I didn't even bother adding any kind of logo, engraving, or fancy edges.
Would you have designed or built it differently? Any input is appreciated.
If there is enough interest from people who think they would like a copy of this press, or another variation, I would consider putting some in the for sale section. I still need to test this one more, get feedback, and decide on a price, before I get into that. While this press looks simple, there is a bunch of labor in building it and I'm not sure how much people would be willing to spend on a specialized press.
Anyway, it was a very fun project and I couldn't wait to share my solution to an upside down single stage.