Lee products, The good, the bad, the ugly.

Greetings
I want to know what you guys thinks of Lee products. This subject has been brought up before on many hunting chat room and maybe this on as well. I will state that if it were not for Lee products I would have never started hand loading years ago. My first hand loading tool was a Lee loader for a 30-30. The rifle was a Savage model 340 bolt action. I now have an Auto prime, Ram Prime, a Hand Press, and two Lee loaders and a set of 308 win dies. I had a Challenger press but gave it to a neighbor so he could learn to hand load. I use an RC now.

I know that there are better quality tools but Lee has made it possible for many to get into casting and hand loading who would otherwise just went to the factory loaded stuff and never gotten into the hobby. We may graduate to better equipment later on when the kids move out and all our resources are freed up but Lee made it possible for me to start and I think many others also. And for that, I am grateful to Richard Lee. And I still use some of his products. What say you folks, good and bad.

Tracker

Yeah, my first loader was a lee and a hammer. For $50.00 I had dies, and what I needed to load for my 357. My first mold was a lee too.

My dad has the Pro 1000. Nice machine, so when I bought a progressive in 45 ACP, I got the "better" one, the loadmaster. I am not happy with it at all. It has been sent back many times. Loading is supposed to be relaxing, not frustrating. I did buy one of the first models so that explains some of it.

I love their cast trimmer system and use some of their molds. For a few $s, you can reload. They keep it simple. The Lee hand prime is the only way I prime all my cases that I don't do on the progressive press. Yes I still use it, but....

I also have one of the group buy molds on order.

One time when I was having trouble with the Loadmaster, I called their phone #. I talked to a guy for a long time. Wen I was done, I asked him his name. He said Richard. I said Richard who? He said Lee.

I think their stuff serves a purpose, some of it is excellent in it's own right, some of it is merely well worth the purchase price.

I think they did blow the lid off the price of carbide sizers to the point that big green and the others lowered their prices, or rather didnt let them rise with inflation.


Bill

One of the very first tools that I had was a Lee hand priming tool which is what most benchrest shooters used then. I use the AutoPrime for hand priming when I need to do this -- a truly great tool. I also had the depriming tool which was great for those military crimped in primers.

Have several friends who have the Lee 1000 progressives. Someone gave me one but I have not been able to get it to work satisfactorily. One of those friends had set it up for me and has promised to come back and check it out again.

I read about the Lee Cast Press and bought one. This is a great single stage press with a hollow ram for primers to fall thru into a long plastic tube which is either capped or put into a large primer catch can or waste basket. The priming system works good too, but needs the primer feeder, due out this Summer according to the catalog.

FWIW, I understand that some of Lee’s patents are used under license by Dillon on his equipment. I have had Dillon presses for 20 years and use the Square Deal for my .45 acp loading, as many as 300 to 500 per week.

Bottom line is that I do like most of the Lee stuff, but not the progressive presses.

Love their case trimmers, best thing since sliced bread! Most of my reloading equipment is green, but their seater dies leave something to be desired, I have several sets RCBS,Redding,Lee dies that I purchased a seperate Hornady seater die for. All in all, I think you get you money worth from their products! My 2 cents
Scooter

I have a number of Lee products and like them all. Good value for the money. I use their factory crimp die for just about all my cast bullet stuff as I like to crimp as a separate step. About a half dozen sets of Lee dies that work fine. Except when I load for pistol on my Dillon 550, the Lee hand priming tool is all I use. It has a good feel to it. All in all, I am happy with what I have. For progressives, it is hard to beat Dillon.

I would echo most of the above. I have only a few complaints, which are:

The Perfect powder measure is a bit imperfect, as some types of fine ball powder makes the drum bind. Great with extruded powders.

My Pro 1000 is a fair press, has loaded many rounds. The primer feed is spotty, and I need to order a new one. Occasionally gets out of time, but it is easy to make right. A heavy user of pistol ammo should get a Dillon, but the Lee is okay for the 5-8,000 rounds I shoot per year in 45 ACP.

The Safety Powder scale is easy to bump out of adjustment. If you're not looking, your setting of, say, 58.5 grains can be easily bumped to 58.8 or some such. It needs notches to hold the setting.

45 caliber rifle moulds that produce only .457" bullets, which are worthless for any .45 caliber rifle. I've had to get Lee to special select those that produce oversize bullets, which is worth the extra cost (25 bucks). I asked for .460" in wheelweights, and that's what I got.

Some very good products, which tend to be simple ones:

Priming tool
Inexpensive C frame presses with compound leverage-cheap enough that I've got two that I bolt to the benches at the range so I can reload there.

Their push through sizing dies. Hand press. Collet dies. Factory crimp die. Powder through expand die. Small rifle charging die, Auto disk kit.
Generally low cost dies that produce good ammo. I like the shellholder and dipper that come with the three die set. Case trimmer (the simple one), specific for each caliber. Sometimes these need to be shortened a little, but that's easily done.

Moulds-I haven't had the trouble some have had with their moulds. I baby mine, lubricate them well, and they produce good bullets. Handled carefully, they are well worth the low price in terms of value. Generally accurate designs. I especially like the C113F, their 148 grain .38 wadcutter, their .45 caliber 200 grain Hensley and Gibbs 68 copy, the .312" 160 grain, and my custom .45 405 grain that casts .460" bullets.

I have a 10 lb bottom pour furnace that I purchased in 1986 that is still working and has melted tons of lead. This weekend I used it to make 50 lbs. of .25 caliber bullets from my two Lee six cavity moulds that were a group buy on CastBoolits. The six cavity are their best moulds. I also have their 20 lb furnace.

A great deal of my loading equipment is Lee.

35 Remington, on the Safety Powder Scale beam arm slider that allows you to set fractions of a grain, there is a little button located to the lower right hand corner of the Lee logo. When you push that in it locks the slider to the beam and holds your setting...Ray

...............I have some of their dies, and they work fine. I bought a Perfect powder measure and other then as 35 Remington mentioned binding with fine gain powder (can you say WC820? :-) it's worked as advertised. Have their powder dippers (rarely used), push through sizers, Ram Prime (rarely used) buncha boolit moulds (baby them) and their lead furnace. Currently a 20# but had a 10 for a boggle of years. Gave it to a buddy and he used it and then handed it to a freind of his.

I haven't had to send a Lee product back to Lee yet, but the above are the only ones I've ever used.

Willbird is right in that Lee forced RCBS to do several things besides lower thier carbide size die prices. I'd bought a set of RCBS 45ACP carbide dies from RCBS in 1967 and they were $78!!!

..............Buckshot

Price differences can be astounding. A set of Lyman .45-3.25" dies can be had for about forty bucks. RCBS dies for the same cartridge are well over $200. Something tells me RCBS really doesn't want to be bothered with us small-market niche shooters. My .404 Jeffery dies were made by RCBS, and to replace them from Midway will run $234.00, which is sixty bucks more than I paid for the Cogswell & Harrison rifle in 1970!

On topic, I have quite a few Lee moulds, and have gotten very decent results from many of them. My .338s seem to like the 220-grain Lee bullet a whole lot, better to date than the two Lyman .338 moulds I've recently acquired. Another good one is their .30-180 semi-pointed design, which works well in many of my rifles.

You get what you pay for is an old axum that still holds true today.

However, Lee dies are hard to beat for their low price, as is their moulds.

The only Lee press I have is the Classic cast iron job.


Swagerman

Ray, thanks for the tip. I have examined a friend's Lee scale, but did not buy one myself due to the reason mentioned. Since that doesn't hold true, I need to reconsider, especially since they are on sale at one of the big distributors. An extra scale or three never hurt anything.

I have returned a mold that was out of round and a safety scale that had the arm broken after 10 years of use. the charge for the scale was 1/2 new list and the mold was replaced free. Their safety scale holds true with weight checks from .10 to 100 gr but is good for powder only because of the 100 gr max. I have a turret press and some dies that I have no real complaints with. Gianni.

35Rem,
Once you've found the lock on the Lee scale, I'm sure you'll be happy with it. I've used one for years now with no problem, VERY sensitive.
The limitation as Gianni points out is the 100gr limit, but I got a Lyman 500gr recently for brass and boolits, not nearly as precise IMHO for powder charges as the Lee.
I've got the Lee 4 hole turret, and love it. Changing calibers is a twist and snap. Yeah, there's better built stuff on the market, but I've always found the Lee stuff to have the precision where needed. And their Factory Crimp dies are the best thing going in my experience. The sizing/check dies are another moneysaver, so far I've managed to avoid the lubrisizer approach.
Cheers,
R*2

I sent my first 6 cavity mold back, with a note saying the tumble lube idea was lame, for the usual reasons people don't like it, lube buildup in the dies, PITA etc. (ya I know some folks like them,find ways to deal with it, thats cool) and for a 45 acp boolit it cast about .456

they were happy to replace it with one for a real boolit with lube grooves.

I also had a 357 hollowpoint mold that the HP pin was wayyyyyy off center, they replaced that with a new mold, the old style wasnt made anymore.


I think Redding are the nicest dies made for rifle stuff, and they don't seem to hold semi-special and specials quite so dear as big green does...I think their comp seaters and bushing dies are without parallal, I do not care for the comp bushing neck sizer. I prefer the plain old bushing neck die to it.

Bill

I guess I'll go against the grain here. I've had bad experiences with Lee products. I don't like them at all.

I realize that many people would not be reloading if it were not for Lee, and the shooting community owes him a debt of gratitude for that. I will also admit that Lee products will load acceptable ammunition most of the time.

But to answer the question as originally asked: No, I don't like them, and won't ever buy them again.

I started out with a Lee Loader in .22 Hornet. When I graduated to a Pacific press and RCBS dies a few years later, it took about 9 months of load development to get back to the accuracy that I was getting from the Lee Loader.

Their bullet molds don't stand beating around or abuse, but they generally cast good bullets and are amazingly inexpensive. (I think they should put thicker grease grooves in some of their .45-70 molds, but the Hollow Base Mold is as good as any I've seen.) I bought a series of Lee round ball molds ranging from 0.310" to 0.323" to try to get an ideal diameter for my troublesome .32 cal Pedersoli Squirrel Rifle. Each mold for less money than a couple boxes of bullets of each size would have cost.

I use their Shotshell Loader. The only bad thing about it is that sometimes the crimp loosens up on some plastic shells. I scrounge paper shells when I can, and live with the loose crimps on the plastic. The loader paid for itself when it loaded about three boxes of shells, so it owes me very little, if anything.

I finally burned out their 10-lb melter with the temperature control after 25 years of increasingly deliberate abuse and promptly purchased a 20-lb version of the same melter (ladle casting; none of that newfangled bottom pouring). If I ever have to buy another furnace, I'll be very surprised.

I still use their priming tools. Very good design. Don't have any Lee presses or powder measures, because I got the other brands used for cheap. Somebody starting out who doesn't have the cunning of the born scrounger could do a lot worse than use Lee equipment to get started with.

The one example of their dies I have is in .44-40, and it is as good as any other die. Their "Factory Crimp" dies are the only way to go for those nut cases that insist on loading obsolete calibers like .44-40's, .32-20's and the like in this era of Short-Action Ultra Mags.

I can't fathom the obloquy about Lee products that I sometimes hear. They make good stuff, and amazingly inexpensively. On the other hand, I was able to make a Lyman plastic dial caliper work adequately for 10 years before I finally wore it out. So maybe it takes a certain touch to get Lee stuff to work at its optimum level.

I have mostly Redding and RCBS and Lyman loading stuff. But I can't really see any basic inferiority in Lee loading equipment.

I have mostly RCBS stuff. But I do use some Lee stuff.

Things I like from Lee-
Their case trimmer is simple and ingenious. But noone likes to hear how my $10 setup will trim 30-06 cases just as well as their $100 case trimmer. :grin:
My RCBS trimmer hasn't been used in about 5 years

Production pot IV- works great for me. If I had to buy a $200 RCBS or Lyman pot, I wouldn't have tried casting at all.

Moulds- I'm 2 for 3 on those. 2 of them make good accurate bullets, the third I'm going to try to 'Beagle'

Collet dies- yet another ingenious Lee product that does a lot and costs very little.

Challenger press- I bought one for about $20 a few years ago. I use it for decapping and as a stand for my RCBS Uniflow measure, much more versatility than a RCBS uniflow stand which costs about the same.

Bullet sizing dies- a no brainer.

Lee Liquid Alox- I bought a used Lyman 450 sizer that I haven't used yet, because the Lee lube has worked for me so far.

Misses:

Lee lead dipper- I tried pouring exactly 5 bullets before I gave up on it, worksgreat for scraping the pot though.


Also- I just found out that my neighbor's dad who's always over there watching his grandkids and who I talk to often works for Lee, so I see myself buying alot of Lee stuff in the future :grin:

From your post, it would seem you already have firm opinion about Lee and it's place in the market.

There are some products that Lee makes that are very, useful and well worth the money. Their crimp dies, 6 hole molds and push through sizing dies come to mind. There other products vary from usable to ***.

I got started in handloading in the days when a dollar was a big as a wagon wheel. Lee was not around and I bought good equipment, much of which I still use today. I have never been a believer is starting cheap and trading up. You save money by buying good stuff in the first place. You also get the pleasure of working with quality tools, that last and last and last.

Maybe Lee got some newbies into loading and maybe those newbies would just have saved a little longer if Lee was not around. I for one don't know and really don't care.

I think Lee should just triple their prices, and not change anything else. Then all the people who just HATE Lee products would start to love them. The main problem with Lee is that they don't overcharge.

Lee dies are at least as good as any other dies, and I prefer them to RCBS. With the exception of their 1 and 2 cavity molds, I've never used any Lee products (and I have a lot of them) that weren't well made for their intended purpose.

I have some high dollar stuff from other companies (Dillon, RCBS, Redding, etc) that's just fine, but few items are superior to anything I have from Lee, and if Lyman is included in the comparison, I MUCH prefer Lee.

I keep hearing talk about "quality" tools. Maybe I need some explanation of the term "quality." To me, if things are dimensionally correct, do the job properly, and last a long time, I consider that good quality. But then, I'm just an old country boy, and maybe I don't understand the true meaning of the word.

I expect to be lambasted with examples of how some particular product is better than a Lee (like, f'instance, a Dillon progressive being better than a Lee progressive, or a RCBS lead pot better than a Lee pot), and if you compare ALL brands against Lee, some items may come up superior. But, in a head-to-head comparison of Lee products against any other single manufacturer's products, you'll find that Lee will be very competitive, even before pricing enters into the comparison.

With Lee, you get what you pay for. With other brands, you get a lot less.