RCBS has done nothing innovative in a long time. When it comes to progressives I will take Dillon's engineering over RCBS's all day long. This isn't taking away anything from the company. But take away their warranty and their is nothing special.
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RCBS has done nothing innovative in a long time. When it comes to progressives I will take Dillon's engineering over RCBS's all day long. This isn't taking away anything from the company. But take away their warranty and their is nothing special.
Yup, those lee zamac c press are just as good as a rockchucker.
I see this is just a lee / Dillon lovefest, with no respect for solid rcbs machines.
Oh well.. I've seen plenty of liberals on gun forums too, so nothing surprises me anymore ;)
Off to a different thread.
My bench color is Rainbow. I do not discriminate by color, if it works I keep it, if it doesn't I replace it with something else. I have Dillon. RCBS, Lee, Hornady, Redding, Pacific,
C&H, Lyman, Herter's, and probably several more if I went out to the shop and took inventory. Love them all.
Just observations. I see it struck a nerve, must have some inconvenient truth to it ;)
Mine is as well. I have just about everything except Dillon. That's why my comments aren't biased. Lee is cheap, AND economical. I have plenty of it. Rcbs is solid with great warranties. ( lee warranties ? Good luck ). Lyman, but mostly older stuff., then a mix of herters, hornady, c&h, pacific, etc.
So who compared a Lee C press to a Rockchucker? No one did. And as far as solid progressives go I will give the nod to the Pro2000. Their latest offerings were released to early and have been plagued w/ problems they still haven't fixed. The Summit press is a copy of one from decades ago, the name escapes me at the moment.
If you didn't realize this is a thread about Lee. It's not about other brands. But people bring them into it for some reason. And what's that saying about people who resort to insults when challenged?
Some here have been at this much longer than I have and load tons more than I do. The only real complaint that I have is that I wish I had more opportunity to shoot what I load. The nearest range to me is about 1/2hr away and having limited mobility this has restricted the amount I can go. Also in the area of SE Wisconsin which I live there are no open spaces to go out and set up a home range. Even all the old gravel pits that we used to shoot in are gone.
I have 2 presses an old RCBS JR3 and a Lee Pro 1000. Between these 2 presses there is nothing that I own that I can't hand load on these presses. They may not be fast and they may not be slick but they both work. In the limited time I've used the Pro 1000 I have had no issues with it and I bought it used. MAYBE I'm in the rare minority and being new to progressive presses I would suppose that puts me in a super minority that I've had no issues with it.
Right now as I am still learning this press and the 9mm cartridge I am only turning out about 50 per hour. But I am taking my time and am still checking every primer and hand weighing every powder charge and finished case length with each stroke of the handle. I have found that on the down stroke of the ram I can rotate the shell plate just far enough that I can remove any case and check it before the case moves to the next position. It may be slow but it has built confidence in what I'm doing and confidence in the tooling. Primers have all been seated properly, powder charge has been to the target weight and the case length variation has been within .003". I also am not using the case feeder and am hand placing each case into the shell plate.
Lee has a good solid offering in the classic O press, and the Lee Classic Cast turret is a solid "do it all" solution for most reloaders. If asked I would say and have said buy a Lee 4 hole turret press. No one has come back and said they were disappointed with the purchase.
A new reloader can pull the index rod and learn using it as a single stage. Doing the same step repeatedly develops a feel for that step and allows focus on how that single thing is done while learning. For autoloader ammo such as 9mm or .223 the auto indexing turret gives good production capacity with less complexity than progressive.
The inexpensive Lee C press is enough to get someone reloading revolver or rifle ammo for under $140 including dies, powder measure, scale and a trim tool. At around $250 they will be set up to cast with a lee mold and load on a turret. And have equipment able to support their reloading for decades.
There are things I would tend to not buy from Lee. The scoops are fine but the scale is sort of cheesy, but works well enough for general use. The molds are ok and a good value at their price point but NOE or Accurate are much better quality. Want to drop $80 to find out if your firearm likes a heavier or lighter bullet or would the $20 Lee be a better choice? Want to drop large quantity of plinking ammo for a revolver? Why not the 6 cavity at $40. Over time I may end up moving up from Lee 2 cavity to NOE or Accurate 4 or 5 cavity but feel no urgency to do so. Little round holes seem to happen down range from a $20 Lee mold well enough to keep me happy.
There is a lot of good equipment out there, some pricey and some not expensive but innovative. NOE base chamfer tool or expander plugs come to mind. But Lee has some darn good ideas too such as universal flaring tool or their case trimmers. And unless your an anal retentive machinist the Lee dies are acceptable quality and very good value for your hard earned money. Bashing Lee makes no sense, liking other stuff is not the issue, it is bashing Lee. Frankly I think bashing Lee is just plain silly, says more about the basher than it does about Lee.
My comparison of the lee and rcbs was an example of why you can't do an across the board comparison of every piece of gear one company makes to every piece of gear another makes.
Most of my loading now is done on a lee 4 hole turret, with the index rod pulled.
Extra large/ leverage stuff like safari calibers I still do on a rockchucker.
I have a deprime station on a lee c press, as well as a sizer for cast boolits station on a older classic lee .
press.
My case trimming is via a older rcbs trimer, and a newer tcbs trim pro motorized unit.
Most of my case prep is a mix of Lyman and rcbs hand tools, plus a Lyman motorized station.
For scales and powder throwing, a rcbs thrower, Lyman digits scale, Lyman 1200? Scale/thrower, as well as a rcbs 505 & one of their newer 2 poise beam scales, number eludes me at the moment.
My dies are probably 40% rcbs, 40% lee, and the balance Lyman, hornady, Ch, some odd pacific fear laying around too, including one very old very heavy press I only use for case forming, can't even see a maker name on it. Pretty sure I have a couple sets of lee scoops too. I know I have a few odds and ends from reading and Frankford arsenal. My neck turning tools and neck teamers are onsies I've collected over the years as needed, couldn't name those if I had to.
Everybody has some good and bad stuff. I'm not gon of rcbs progressive.
Dillon is just too costly and has many parts mot shared by other presses, etc.. Though I hear the 550 is the way to go if I ever did get in. I have a buddy getting into a 550 right now, and he's doing it slow due to cost.
Helped a buddy setup a hornady progressive. He never got it to run good, for long periods and sold it.
As far as dies go, rcbs has been my favorite. However I do shoot son odd calibers infrequently, and many times its cheaper to grab a lee set than rcbs, for some of the odd wildcat stuff I may only load a few rounds a year of.
Hornady American series die are almost as cheap as lee but they have their own issues. I bought a set in 38/357, so I could setup a 4 hole tool head with 2 seaters to accommodate 2 different boolits. Other set was a rcbs. I used the rcbs expander, the h a s expander had too short a taper, and you could go from no case mouth bell to enough to seat a .454 in about 1/8" of lever movement. Rcbs had a much longer taper, better give profile too, the h a s one was almost a squared off leading edge with 1/64" chamfer. If a case mouth had any out of round, it would crush and roll the case mouth. Poor design..
Most of my molds are lee. Rest are older Lyman.
Well, of course but not entirely. I have Hornady, RCBS and Lyman, regular die sets and I have Lee Regular die sets. In the case of regular dies, I don't understand why anyone buys anything but Lee, I don't see anything I got from spending more for the Hornady, RCBS and Lyman dies. Lee priming tools, the first one I had worked great but it did not have a primer feed. Since then I have broken two and my newest hurts my hand. Lee powder measures, I have two that work fine, seem cheap, work fine but my Lyman and C&H are much nicer, worth the extra money. Not all Lee is ****.
Tim
I don't follow you about most people starting with Lee Equipment. I started with Lyman, Scale, Press, Molds, pot, dies, sizer, ladle, manual. It was what the local shop sold and stocked. It all worked flawlessly. I wanted a hand primer and what I read said the little Lee tool of the time was great. It was and I liked it except it did not have a primer feed system. The plating has started to come off some of my Lyman dies and shell holders, I don't think I bought any more Lyman dies since the 80's I have high end dies from Hornady, Redding and RCBS but most of my dies are now Lee. I am sure glad Lee is around, we would be worse off without them.
Tim
I started reloading in the 1980's. I knew no one who did this and therefore couldn't get any advice on what to buy.
Back then I lived in Colorado Springs and bought most of my guns and shooting stuff at Longs Drugs. The store stocked RCBS and Lee. The Lee stuff was so much cheaper I figured it was of inferior quality.
Over the past few years I've found Lee does make some good items. I use push through sizers, shell holders, a universal deprimer and Magnum Melter that I have been happy with.
Sorry, I'm a Redding man.
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Ok Tim. Most people I knew started out with lee stuff.
Tim can't help himself. Tone-deaf, again. Most people not only started off using Lee Precision, but continue to do so. They are the biggest for good reason, in my opinion.
This thread should have died 1/1/12! Is one of you posters getting paid by Lee for advertising? I stopped by just to see if anything new was taking place here, but nope, same whining, same "my toys are better than yours", and Lee is junk. Some fellers need to grow up...
Yeup, 5 years, 16pages, 320posts and still going strong! I find that absolutely amazing. Such a wide array of opinions, suggestions and some completely useless information contained within all this. I actually found this whole thing so intriguing that I spent 3hrs reading every page.