Recent threads on progressive presses…

[AnthonyB]

…made me realize I don’t use mine very much.

I am OCD on some parts of loading. All brass gets de-primed and cleaned before sizing. Anything requiring lube gets cleaned again before loading. Slows down loading on a progressive, but still possible.

Powder charges can be dropped and not weighed. No problem there.

Bullets get seated halfway, then I lower the ram, spin the cartridge 180 degrees in the shell holder and finish seating. Not possible on a progressive. Crimping is always done separately.

But the primers…. I hate losing primers. There is nothing worse than 99 loaded rounds and a primer that has disappeared. Primers that get damaged by the press are worse than lost primers. Willie Nelson’s Rule is that a lost golf ball eventually become a stolen golf ball, and the same should apply to primers, so I can get over the lost ones. But the damaged ones taunt me forever.

Reading the recent threads taught me that others have the same primer problems with progressives. I thought it was just me.

I am going to try to use the progressives more this year. I know I can learn and do better.
Tony

[dverna]

I would never have got into competitive pistol shooting without depending on progressives

You need to ignore guys with equipment that does not work or who cannot set up their presses. I have owned a Star, every Dillon model, and a Green Machine. The Green Machine cannot work reliably...it was dropped by RCBS for a reason.

If you have a Star or Dillon, all you need to do to load straight wall pistol is tumble your cases, spray a bit of case lube on them and load them.

[Winger Ed.]

I only load straight wall handgun ammo on mine, and am quite content with it.
I wash, dry, tumble, and run the cases through using a carbide sizer die.

Rifle ammo is all done on a single stage.
I also rotate them on seating.
Full stroke, lower the ram enough to rotate the round 180 degrees, then run the ram back up.
I never did a run out test to see if it made a difference or not. It's just a habit.

[Three44s]

I only load straight wall handgun ammo on mine, and am quite content with it.
I wash, dry, tumble, and run the cases through using a carbide sizer die.

Rifle ammo is all done on a single stage.
I also rotate them on seating.
Full stroke, lower the ram enough to rotate the round 180 degrees, then run the ram back up.
I never did a run out test to see if it made a difference or not. It's just a habit.

I have tested that.

What I find is that one needs to do the initial seating very short, like just started into the case then rotate. I like about 120 degrees times a couple or three mini pushes, then finalize the seating operation.

I found that once a bullet is significantly seated (depth wise) it did not straighten out by the spin, seat, spin method.

A cartridge spinner with a dial indicator showed me that.

Best regards

Three44s

[Walks]

I've hand primed for 60+yrs. I clean all cases, decap/size and prime before moving straight wall pistol cases to the progressive.

These days all semi-auto rifle brass gets single staged and hand primed. But 35yrs ago I pushed a lot of them thru an RCBS 4X4.

Load what ever way you prefer.

[414gates]

The progressive press is capable of reliably loading precision rifle ammunition. Not all, but some are.

There are progressive presses, and progressive presses that work properly.

An aside on precision : my son is using Staball 6.5 to load 260 Remington on a Hornady LnL in full progressive mode. There is a shot to shot velocity variation in the single digits. He went this route because he shoots PRS and some months goes through several hundred rounds. He just doesn't have the time to to reload otherwise.

All operations are on the press. Charges are not weighed, just dropped from a Hornady powder measure. The variation is mostly 0 with the odd 0.1 grain. Not that the Hornady measure is anything special, it's the Staball 6.5 that's fantastic.

The Hornady LnL has a completely reliable primer feed system. Lee does not. I've never owned a Dillon, so I can't comment. I do have a RCBS Pro 2000 that I picked up recently with the primer tube conversion, and once the priming system is tuned, it seems to hold steady, but it is not regularly used just yet.

The LnL primer punch assembly has to be kept clean. Should you spill powder on the shellplate, you should remove the primer punch assembly and make sure there are no powder granules in it, as this causes the priming to be unreliable. The old Pro-Jector doesn't have this problem, but it has others.

You can't reliably reload bottleneck rifle cases on a progressive press in full progressive mode unless you use ball powder.

If you have to rotate your rifle case in any operation because of runout, remove the decapping pin assembly from the full length sizer when sizing, and size the neck separately with a mandrel. The sizing ball is probably not correctly angled and centered in the die, and when the ball comes through the neck, it imparts a proportional angle. The new style Lee decapping pins should reduce that problem. And don't bother measuring runout if your necks are not turned, you could just be measuring the neck thickness variation of the case.

Keep in mind that although progressive presses can reload bottleneck rifle cases, they are not designed to. Sizing bottleneck cases put a tensile stress on the shellplate bolt and related parts, which none of the progressives are designed for, and part breakages eventually occur. Frequently being a relative term, considering that with pistol brass those parts never break.

If your progressive has enough stations, you can reduce the wear on it due to bottleneck case sizing by using two sizing dies - one for the body size, one for the shoulder bump.

This LnL has done a few thousand rifle cartridges now, and after stripping down, cleaning and greasing, I found just a bit of wear in the linkages so it will be retired from rifle case sizing, while it's still in reasonably good shape.

[Lloyd Smale]

I would never have got into competitive pistol shooting without depending on progressives

You need to ignore guys with equipment that does not work or who cannot set up their presses. I have owned a Star, every Dillon model, and a Green Machine. The Green Machine cannot work reliably...it was dropped by RCBS for a reason.

If you have a Star or Dillon, all you need to do to load straight wall pistol is tumble your cases, spray a bit of case lube on them and load them.

i even stuggled some with the star i had. I havent owned a 1050 but loaded thousands on my buddys and its about as good as it gets. Ive owned 550s and 650s and yup you can pick them apart but there so far ahead of the competition its like bashing a Ferrari because it doesnt have a visor mirror. Bottom line for me and ive been loading for over 50 years is if today I couldnt at least afford a square deal or 550 id stick with a single stage press or maybe something like a lyman t mag turnent. Heck even lee makes a decent single stage.

[Blindshooter]

When competing in Highpower rifle I used two Hornady Projectors. Prepped on one and loaded on the other.

Used a Dillon power trimmer with modified die followed with M die. Universal decap first.

Tumbled then loaded on the other one.

They worked well enough to make HM.

Processed LR cases on a RCBS Ammomaster and loaded those single stage. Again good enough to make HM.

Highpower is not bench rest. For myself I had to speed up the process as much as I could. I had a job and a family taking most of my time.

Now I load pistol mostly on one 1050 and a LnL. Still have one Projector got getting much use.

Progressives allowed me to have time for family and competing.

[georgerkahn]

I only load straight wall handgun ammo on mine, and am quite content with it.
I wash, dry, tumble, and run the cases through using a carbide sizer die.

Rifle ammo is all done on a single stage.
I also rotate them on seating.
Full stroke, lower the ram enough to rotate the round 180 degrees, then run the ram back up.
I never did a run out test to see if it made a difference or not. It's just a habit.

This is pretty much exactly what I do. For ALL rifle calibres, I have a separate (old Pacific) single stage I do ALL decapping on; use RCBS-type bench priming tool for all priming; and two single-stage (MEC Marksman & Forster CoAx) presses for TIFLE seating.
For all pistol calibres -- the Dillon 550b progressive is the press to do all!
As a notable (?) btw -- the MAIN reason I switched to the single stage presses for rifle calibres was/is none other than run-out! Using the MEC / Forster, concentricity has gone down to well-better than factory-loaded ammo! As much as I love the speed, etc., on the Dillon, 0.008" seemed to be a modal result. Rare, indeed, is run-out greater than 0.002" with the single stage presses I have.
geo

[jmorris]

As they say in the used car business, “there is a butt for every seat”. Single stage, turret presses and even factory ammunition exists for people that feel the way you do or want to further distance themselves from production of any kind.

I have, have had or loaded on just about every progressive one can pull the handle on and anyone that claims to have never had a problem isn’t telling the truth or hasn’t used it much.

If you #1 objective is to never loose a primer, go find you a Pro 2000 and only buy CCI primers that come in the APS strips.

[Finster101]

I de-prime on the progressive with a Lee universal de-capper. Tumble and then do everything else on the progressive. I am certainly not going to give up the ease and speed of the case feeder for de-priming. The alcohol/lanolin lube spray makes sizing an easy task and if you don't put it on too heavy there is no need for removal afterwards. This works for me. Your mileage may vary.