44 Magnum Lee Loader effort?

[aephilli822]

I just tried my new (to me, actually used) Lee Loader in 44 Mag. My opinion of "considerable effort" and Lee's must be very different. Really chewed up a piece of pine baluster trying to get a case driven "flush" with the die. (using Imperial sizing die wax) Then using lanolin and an eight ounce brass hammer, almost completely obliterated the headstamp on the case by the time it got to within 1/8 of an inch of being "flush with the die." Finished destroying the pine trying RCBS spray lube. So I'm guessing it isn't just the type of lube I'm using.
Tried case on table hitting die as well as the normal method of die down and striking the case.
Had used Ed's red and steel wool to make sure it was clean inside before trying it. This much effort would have sized 100 cases on the Rockchucker thru the carbide die.
Guess I should try polishing the inside of the die? I have some 3 micron (5000 grit?) diamond powder I could make into a paste and spin on a tight patch using a drill.
Anybody else have this much trouble?

[GhostHawk]

I have loaded 7.62x54r brass with a lee loader but I think I used a bigger hammer.
I have a pretty hefty rubber mallet that drove them home in one shot. Bout 2" in diameter and 4 inches long.
This was before I knew about imperial sizing wax or lanolin.

I do know that different brands of brass can vary greatly in size.

Is this brass fired in your gun? Range pickups? Possible oversize chamber?
The devil is in the details.

[Mk42gunner]

Stupid question time. Did you drive the brass into the sizing side or the crimping side of the die?

Reason I ask is I remember seeing a picture in one of Dean Grinnell's books of when he did that to a .38 Special case.

I have never used a pound the case in sizer, but in Elmer Keith's "Sixgun Cartridges and Loads" he says to use a heavy mallet that will drive the case in with one blow. He was using Lyman dies, but the same principal applies.

Robert

[aephilli822]

My guns. Fired in either S&W 29 or Ruger Bisley Vaquero. Fairly certain not oversized chambers.

The side shown in the instructions. (non-knurled end, just to be sure, I did crimp one case, definite difference. crimping shoulder also easily seen by looking into the die)

[243winxb]

Use a large plastic hammer. It takes many wacks. When you buy lee, trouble comes with it at no extra charge. http://leeprecision.net/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/13/product-support

[SweetMk]

I started with Lee,,, I think they are in business so that people will get an RCBS RockChucker within a week,,,,

I can still remember the horror,, then the pleasure,,, smiling is so much more fun!!

[singleshot]

Straight wall cases are tougher to resize than bottleneck cases. That being said, I have sized thousands of straight walled cases with the Lee "whack-a-mole". For size, weight, and simplicity, it can't be beat.

[singleshot]

And yes, pine will get chewed up pretty quick. I use a piece of hardwood and a rubber mallet.

[singleshot]

I suppose you could use an Arbor press instead.

[aephilli822]

And yes, pine will get chewed up pretty quick. I use a piece of hardwood and a rubber mallet.
Cypress two by four under and persimmon or mulberry 'punch' and bigger hammer, will try that next

[aephilli822]

I suppose you could use an Arbor press instead.

Might as well use the Rockchucker. I guess with all the above needed, not gonna do 'em while watching TV anyway...
Thank you all for the input

[aephilli822]

Maybe a hammer poured from lead with a copper face :-)

[aephilli822]

Or a dead blow with a copper pipe cap?

[aephilli822]

3/4 iron pipe T with bronze disc brazed on and filled with lead shot?

[Skipper]

I had the same problem with their 30 carbine set...took three men and a boy to pound it flush. Lube the case, shield it with a piece of hardwood and screw it down in a bench vise.
Use a plastic mallet to finish it.
When you realize what your time is worth like I did, get one of these from Titan Reloading:
http://www.titanreloading.com/image/cache/data/Products/90588-600x600.jpg

[Bmi48219]

I've sized lots of .30 carbine brass from various sources in my Lee Loader. Lubed them with lanolin & pounded them in with a 14 ounce ball peen hammer and a piece of 1 by 2" poplar. Not really swinging that hard. Usually 2 to 4 wacks to get them all the way in. Without the lanolin they'd never go. After resizing I check for case length. Usually 10 to 15% have to be trimmed.

[aephilli822]

I had the same problem with their 30 carbine set...took three men and a boy to pound it flush. Lube the case, shield it with a piece of hardwood and screw it down in a bench vise.
Use a plastic mallet to finish it.
When you realize what your time is worth like I did, get one of these from Titan Reloading:
http://www.titanreloading.com/image/cache/data/Products/90588-600x600.jpg
I have a Rockchucker. Just had crazy idea to do some during 'idle time'

[725]

Use your lube and a two face type hammer (Sears). Rubber head on one side and a plastic head on the other. Like so many other aspects to life, bigger is better. Using a correct tool makes a big difference. I load the Lee Loader in .45-70 and don't experience any trouble.

In a related vain, search this site for an article by one of our lost members on the .45-70 & his Lee Loader. junior1942 was his handle. He did a nice job of story telling and loading tutorials on the subject. Well worth your effort to find it.

[mdi]

Wow, bunch of "answers"(?). I got my 2nd Lee Loader in .44 Magnum, first was a 38 Special in '69. Perhaps being a lifelong machinist/mechanic I could figger things out differently than most. Yep the .44 Magnum loader is more difficult to size than other Lee Loaders but, far from impossible. From the description from the OP, I would guess at other reasons for his problem; pine ballister?, Eight ounce brass hammer? My first use of the .44 reloader I decided to use a section of 4x4, on end, as an anvil. The "log" was soft enough not to damage the loader, but solid enough to not deaden the blow. I used a mallet, plastic, prolly 12 oz., and it did take some whacking. I went to a larger mallet. (A small, light hammer will tap, tap, tap and not give as much "push" as a heavier hammer and have more a tendency to distort the item struck, hence the damage the OP stated). Perhaps polishing the interior of the loader will help, but I have no idea what is difficult for the OP which I'm sure will be different than my "difficult".Today I have an ingot of lead I use for an anvil, 2"x4"x12" that I use instead of a chunk of wood, quieter and works very well.

To discredit every tool because one user finds it difficult for him is just plain wrong (and it feeds the Lee Hater frenzy). I have 5 Lee Loaders along with several years of accumulated reloading tools, presses, and literature and have found no fault with any of my Lee equipment and I think the Lee Loaders are the best thing since smokeless powder...

[gwpercle]

44 magnum brass is tough to resize . I started with the lowly 38 special and a plastic mallet , it isn't too hard to "resize" , but those magnum straight wall cases were another story ! It takes some whacking to get them done. Lube well and hit them straight and do not use a brass or steel hammer.
A much "quieter" , easier to use alternative, is the Lee Hand Press. I can reload with them in the house or my office and not disturb a soul. I bought two hand presses and use them a lot .
Gary

[aephilli822]

44 magnum brass is tough to resize . I started with the lowly 38 special and a plastic mallet , it isn't too hard to "resize" , but those magnum straight wall cases were another story ! It takes some whacking to get them done. Lube well and hit them straight and do not use a brass or steel hammer.
A much "quieter" , easier to use alternative, is the Lee Hand Press. I can reload with them in the house or my office and not disturb a soul. I bought two hand presses and use them a lot .
Gary
Hand press may be the answer to "idle time" use. (or choose another caliber to work on during "down time" - or both)

[MT Chambers]

I'm surprised that you had enough time left to post.......keep hammerin'

[ironhead7544]

I started out reloading in 1972 with a 44 Magnum Lee Loader. Loaded about 300 rounds a week. Used a plastic headed hammer. A couple of whacks was all that was needed. Used candle wax for lube as the instructions said. Never had any damage to the cases.

I would send it to Lee to get it checked out. Better yet, get a single stage or turret press.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Or you could buy one of my new BPM Hand Presses and enjoy life totally. Today I sized and deprimed 50 .44 mag cases with a C&H Carbide Die in My Tool in about 12 minutes, and yes I lubed them with Dillon Case lube too..

But another way to go is to use your Drill Press as an Arbor Press and shove the cases in the die with that.

I never had any problems sizing cases in my .44 Mag Lee Loader when I had it. I used a nice Snap On Plastic Mallet to drive the cases and I still have what's left of it after 30 years beating stuff in my Machine Shop with it.

If you are sitting down while doing this you might try using a 3' long piece of 4x4 on end as a base for the die. That way all your effort goes into moving the case and not absorbed by your hand or arms.

If the die is unusually rough on the inside send it back to Lee and let them to smooth it out.

Randy

[mdi]

Jes a thought. Measure a case that's been resized in your Lee Loader. Actual, real life measurements trump "difficult" or "hard for me" everytime...

[aephilli822]

Forgot to measure last nite, but the 2 pound dead blow still couldn't get it.

[smkummer]

This takes me back almost 40 years ago to the date of 1976. Dirty Harry was the rage. I could not afford a Smith 29 for the jacked up price of $400 (retail was something like $259). So I settled on a Ruger SBH that had to be ordered. I believe about $156 bought that. My dad of course had to buy it as I was 15. Never bought factory ammo. Lee loader, lee mold, powder and primers. Used a 2X2 with a steel plate screw to one side. It really was a friggen pain but the ammo worked. Later when we started loading for 30-06, 223 and 30 carbine: our xmas present was a RCBS rock chucker. Heaven opened its doors.

Yes, the bottleneck Lee loader dies only neck size so they are a treat compared to 44 magnum and 45 Colt.

[triggerhappy243]

That much effort to resize 44 mag brass is not what I call reloading. I call it demolition. I see RCBS non-carbide reloading die sets all the time for 15 to 20 bucks. you are already using sizing lube, so in the infamous words of hillery(im goin to jail) clinton............ what difference does it make?

[mdi]

Much ado 'bout nuttin". The OP merely mentioned he has trouble sizing a case in the tool of his choice, not what tool would be better...

[lightload]

I re-read the thread and noticed that the op said that the Lee tool was new to him. I comprehended that to mean that someone else had owned it previously. Maybe it's damaged or rough to start with. Anybody got instructions for him on polishing the interior? Before many here were born, I used to experiment with Lee Loaders and don't remember any difficulty requiring a sledge hammer. I was loading .357's and soon bought a Lyman Spartan C press and still have it.
That was in 1970.

[mdi]

Either the OP found a solution and was embarrassed at the simplicity, or gave up...:mrgreen:

[EDG]

Full length sizing as .44 magnum or any rifle round with a hand tool is a joke and Lee's instructions hint at it with the .44 Mag and .30 carbine. You would need some sort of press or a good bench vise.
By contrast the .45-70 only has the case mouth sized and is easy to size.

[mdi]

Full length sizing as .44 magnum or any rifle round with a hand tool is a joke and Lee's instructions hint at it with the .44 Mag and .30 carbine. You would need some sort of press or a good bench vise.
By contrast the .45-70 only has the case mouth sized and is easy to size.

FWIW; I have reloaded (including F/L sizing) .44 Magnum for several years with a Lee Loader when I felt "retro" or had nothing better to do. I also have a Lee Hand press and if my turret or other presses are set up I'll run some .44 Magnums through it. Nothing extraordinary about sizing effort with either tool. Yes the .44 Magnum takes more effort, but no more than many other cartridges, and not all that difficult. Either the OP has a "bad" tool or his methods may be off.

[triggerhappy243]

You know, it just dawned on me. perhaps the spent cases are blown out further than from a normal revolver. maybe these chambers are cut just a little over sized. that would make sizing anything like hammering nails.

[RogerDat]

Use your lube and a two face type hammer (Sears). Rubber head on one side and a plastic head on the other. Like so many other aspects to life, bigger is better. Using a correct tool makes a big difference.........

The two faced hammer is what I went with, I was using a rubber mallet and it absorbed too much of the blow. Tried wooden mallet better but not getting it done.

Hammer has to be heavy enough to do the job, force transfer from a heavy object is much better than from a lighter weight object. Those big tent wooden stakes will not go into the ground with a fast moving regular weight hammer even though the force in theory is the same as a slow moving heavier hammer.

I was doing 38 special so not as hard to size as 44 mag but I started out going whack, whack, whack, whack, whack.....whack. Went to harbor freight bought the large soft faced two sided hammer and got it down to whack, WHACK and done. With a press you miss the excitement of setting off the primers from time to time. That said I too picked up the hand press but have never tried it with 44 mag.

[Dave Bulla]

My first thought is to verify that you did in fact receive a 44 magnum die body. If you are pounding with a brass hammer hard enough to obliterate the head stamp I'd almost bet cash money its not the right die body. Could be 44 special or 44 Russian which have a shorter case. I have probably 20 or more of these kits and 44 mag is one I do use. I can hold the die body in my left hand and strike the case with a mallet in my right hand and get it to seat with just a few blows. 44 is one of the tougher ones but nothing like you describe.

Having bought all of mine on line I can tell you that instructions and charge tables are frequently missing and sometimes when a seller picks up several of these from an estate sale to flip (pretty common) they gets parts mixed up between boxes. Wrong scoop in a box is very common as is missing parts. The charge table is the only piece of paper in the kit that states the caliber. I think sometimes a seller sits at their kitchen table and dumps the parts from several kits out to clean them or just to look at them and when putting them back, they get mixed up. Same happens with the papers Couldn't tell you how many times I've messaged sellers to point out errors. Most are grateful, some are real jerks.

Also, which Lee loader did you get? There are several variants. The one marked "Unitized Lee Loader" actually does full length resizing. ALL the others only neck size but a unitized in 44 mag would be probably the one that requires the most force of any they made. A unitized kit would be in a cardboard box and will also have a red hand priming tool. Can't quite go by that though because the "improved" kit also looks identical. It will state Unitized or Improved on the lid but I've also seen sets that had the wrong lid on the box. If you go on ebay and browse for a while you can see examples of the unitized and improved sets.

[Dave Bulla]

Aephilli822,

I decided to get mine out and size a couple cases. It's been sitting for a few months and I wasn't sure I had any fired brass handy but it turned out I did.

As stated, 44's are one of the tougher cases to size and I believe Lee recommends using lube. I thought I'd try one dry first. I was surprised that I got similar results to what you described. I stopped with about 1/4" of case still sticking out and taped the case back out. The case was also not clean so I wiped it off on my jeans and rolled it on my lube pad treated with RCBS case lube. Tried it again and still went in a bit hard but it went. When taped out, it had visible rub marks where it was sized probably 2/3 to 3/4 of the length of the case so I may have to revise my comment of only the unitized loader full length sizing. The standard die is pretty darned close to it. I think I recall comments that this is normal in straight wall cases. Bottle neck cases size pretty easy.

Anyway, I moved on to case #2 and counted the hits needed at 12 which is more than usual. Checked the lube pad and found it pretty dry so flipped it over. Round 3 went in with 4 whacks. That was more normal. The case also came out looking less roughed up by the die. Just a normal amount of visible indication that it was sized.

Point is, might try cleaning both the die and the brass and try again. Also, ditch the little piece of wood and get a proper mallet and some sort of base to set the die on. I use a piece of scrap steel about 1/2" thick cut about 5x7 with foam rubber glued to the bottom. A beer can cozy works great. I have two types of mallets and much prefer the one over the other. The one I prefer I got at a yard sale for. 25 cents. It has a metal head, wood handle and black hard plastic screw on faces. On my food scale it weighs a total of 1 pound, 3.5 ounces. The one I don't care for is a Proto with a plastic head, fiberglass and rubber handle and one red face and one green. The green is the harder side and works better but it still takes more effort. Putting it on the scale it weighs 15.8 ounces so about 3 ounces less. Those couple ounces make a noticeable difference though. A two pound mallet would work even better.

So, hope you get things working. If your site is clean, the brass is clean, lubed and you are using a proper mallet, you should be able to drive the case in with 3 or 4 solid whacks.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Or you could just use your drill press as an Arbor Press and push the case right in, in one swipe. I am currently using my Drill Press to push in the cross pins on my Hand Reloading Press.

It was taking 10 to 15 hits with an 8 oz Ball Peen hammer to drive an 1/8" pin in and then using the roll pin punch I made several more to push the pn below the surface of the plate.

With the Drill Press, it is one continuous push directly to the limit of the punch. Much more focused pressure directly where it is needed.

When sizing .30-06 cases it takes virtually no effort to push the case all the way into the Lee Loader die.

It used to be that you needed the .44 Special Kit that would do both Mags and Specials. The Magnum Die wouldn't close down enough to work for both. I only think they make the Special version now and that works for both and is marked .44 Magnum.

Even so I never had to hit the cases more than a few times to get complete compliance. I gave that kit away and the ingrate managed to loan it to a buddy along with his gun which never returned. Wish I had it back but with my new hand press it isn't really needed any longer.

If you don't have a drill press a small Harbor Freight Arbor Press would work and I just priced them yesterday at $39.95. The press method is the way all these types of die were originally designed to be used. Lee modified this process to use a plastic mallet so that more people could use the tool.

Randy

[victorfox]

quite old post and what i'll say is somewhat off topic.
I have a shotshell hand sizing die that is similar to old time Lyman/Ideal. The usage is not very far from that of Lee Loader.
Well I got a stupid press for 12ga but do all .410 loading by hand alone. Once I tried to resize some brass cases shot in my judge which had the base very expanded and so it wouldn't chamber well in the cylinder, it would only go into the chamber it was fired.
I managed to pound that infamous case as hell inside the die and half way it stuck. Got a wooden piece over the case and pounded with a big hammer. Destroyed the wood and nothing. Now angry I hammered the case until it was flush and had no more head stamps... To remove another PITA pounding a brass rod inside. Well it came out and I had to do a file pass so it would not interfere with cylinder hatchet.
Then I tried the other way. Got other bad cases swiped some motor oil, put a piece of hardwood on the ground, the case standing mouth up on the wood. Slipped the sizer die on the case and pounded the SIZER DIE down the case. BINGO! It went easily (yes still had to pound quite a lot) and came ou shiny and sized. I use a wedge made from a piece of hardwood 2x4 as my mallet for most reloading chores.
Also pounding on the table was a no go but at ground level there was nothing to absorb the pounding but the pieces I was working on.
WR Buchanan nice press! Where I can see your wares sir?

[W.R.Buchanan]

Victorfox: Coming soon to www.buchananprecisionmachine.com (http://www.buchananprecisionmachine.com) ,,, Not up yet, but close, so be patient. We are working on it daily and it should be functional in he very near future.

I will make it known here and elsewhere when the site runs.

Randy

[victorfox]

Very nice sir. We'll keep an eye:bigsmyl2:

[Bmi48219]

Sometimes you have to use a heavier pounder. My personal choice for sizing .30 carbine & .45 acp is a 3 lb. mallet with rawhide tips, a leftover from when I used to earn a living. I lube the carbine brass but the 45's go in dry. Either size is flush with the die with one hit, two max. the rawhide doesn't bounce like rubber or synthetic.

[ironhead7544]

A vice will also work.

[Old Ironsights]

Straight wall cases are tougher to resize than bottleneck cases. That being said, I have sized thousands of straight walled cases with the Lee "whack-a-mole". For size, weight, and simplicity, it can't be beat. ... And yes, pine will get chewed up pretty quick. I use a piece of hardwood and a rubber mallet.

I use a cast "funky alloy" mallet... then re-cast it when it gets too chewed up.

That said, I have done .45Colt, and .44Mag, and regularly use .45ACP, .410, 9mm & .357/.38 (and have each for my BoB) I generally stop using Classic Lee Loaders with straight-wall cases at .357. ... unless there is nothing else available.