One year review of the LEE APP and ACP

[Led]

The bad:

1. Both are fidgety to setup and caliber change over requires adjustments.
2. They are LEE products and while the quality is decent it's not RCBS or Dillon.
3. The ACP will let the user prime too fast in my opinion. I have trained myself while priming to slow down. One slightly misaligned primer getting pinched with a fast pull of the lever could very easily cause a detonation.
4. The feed system will jam up from time to time if not lined up exactly.
5. The APP has to have the LEE X series dies. Not a big deal as their inexpensive.

The good:

1. Speed, blistering speed especially for case sizing. No kidding, I can hit 1000's of cases an hour on size/deprime once dialed in.
2. Changing sizing dies is fast thanks to the breach lock system.
3. Feed system with the four drop tubes works really well. Sporadicly I'll get a case flipped backwards. The smaller the case the more this happens. It's not a big problem as it's easy to clear..
4. The ACP has excellent primer seating feel. I can feel the difference in case makes as I prime. It also has plenty of leverage for tighter primer pockets and the feed system works well. It's honestly the best automated primer tool I've ever used.
5. The four tube magazine with the sorting tray (don't remember what LEE calls it) is a must have addition.

Conclusion:

If you load ammo in batch's buy them. The speed advantage they offer is just amazing.

Thanks,
Stephen

[Glwenzl]

I only have the APP and it has more than paid for itself. I bought it to only deprime but use it for bullet sizing and have swaged primer pockets although I prefer the Hornady AP swager…

[cwtebay]

I appreciate your effort in the review!
What were you reloading in this platform LED?

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[gpidaho]

I just bought my second APP and I agree they aren't RCBS or Dillon. That said, for the money, They are one of the best reloading investments on my bench. The swaging tooling is a step up from The RCBS and the addition of the Noe bushing adapter is a real plus. I agree that the set up is fiddly especially if the four tube system isn't added. I have the new APP set up with the collator for knocking the primers out and the first to size bullets and just hand feed it one bullet at a time. For under $100 delivered they are well worth the cost. Gp

[Rcmaveric]

I have been wanting one since it came out.

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[sukivel]

I have looked at these as well, but not sure what it could do for me. I load 9/45/223/300 on a 550, and everything else on a single stage.

How well does the swager work? Faster or easier than a Dillon 600 SS?

Does it size cast bullets alot faster than the push thru’s?

I guess it would prime faster than a handheld priming tool.


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[Evoken]

I do not use mine to it's full potential and thus far only use it for boolit sizing.

When you say you need the lee x series dies, do you mean the double slotted shell holders? I thought that you do not want to use those for sizing brass??

[Cosmic_Charlie]

I do not use mine to it's full potential and thus far only use it for boolit sizing.

When you say you need the lee x series dies, do you mean the double slotted shell holders? I thought that you do not want to use those for sizing brass??

I have had no trouble sizing and depriming .357/38 on my APP.

[Led]

32acp, 357mag and 44spl.

[Led]

You have to use the xseries dies for sizing on the APP. That’s what their designed for.

[Evoken]

Are these x series dies also called something else? I cannot seem to find them. I have a few deluxe and pacesetter set and have seen the ultimate and rgb dies, but not x series??

[reedap1]

Thanks for that review, Stephen. I have had mine for about 3 months and concur with your review. In my experiences:

Bad

1. Agree that the overall quality is not a long-life product but I just expect to replace it again and at the selling price of around $80 it is just the cost of doing business
2. I don't particularly like some of the plastic parts and can already see them start to wear but again they are cheap and as we have seen others offer 3D printed parts.
3. Can be finicky to set up agreed, trying to recently get it set up to resize 38 Special cases for over an hour almost had me switching to my single stage press. Once set up though very fast
4. The case feeder works generally well but I have had cases where it does not drop the brass case correctly and I could not for the life of me figure out why.
5. Really it is limited to pistol cases. Tried to resize a .223/5.56 case and it was real work and I worried that I would prematurely wear the press.

Good

1. For sizing powder coated bullets there is no competition with the bullet feeder in use. I can size so fast that I could hire an assistant just to keep the feeder full. I wonder if the press arm activation can be easily motorized because I could then just stand there and feed the tube.
2. I find using a little bit of Hex Boron Nitride (Hbn) Nano Powder Dry Lube on my PC'ed bullets really speeds things up. They size beautifully and I could swear that I even get a bit more velocity with that lube. Amazing stuff.
3. Resizing pistol cases work really well and fast with carbide dies and a little bit of spray lube or even HBN lube on the cases. I mix them in a small plastic tube, toss in some HBN, and they size very slickly.
4. I'm considering buying another press to just leave one set up for bullet sizing and use the second for other tasks.

Overall I consider the Lee APP press to be a good purchase.

[redriverhunter]

Are these x series dies also called something else? I cannot seem to find them. I have a few deluxe and pacesetter set and have seen the ultimate and rgb dies, but not x series??

I think they are talking about sell holders https://leeprecision.com/x-press-sh-1.html

[Stewbaby]

I wish I could pay $100 more and lose some of the plastic. Overall pleased though.

[hporter]

I don't particularly like some of the plastic parts and can already see them start to wear but again they are cheap

I de-primed a bunch of brass a few weeks ago on mine. I was a bit ham handed and didn't double check when I changed the tube feed case height to the next batch and something went "crunch". Nothing broke, but it was a good reminder to order spares.

So off to the Lee website I went. I ordered spares for the sliding mechanism and some other stuff. When I went to the cart, they gave half the cart to me for free. This isn't the first time that has happened. Lee really stands behind their customers and their product in my experience. And it is comforting to have spares on hand for the moving parts that do occasionally go "crunch".

I don't resize brass on mine, though I tried it and it worked fine for smaller cases.

But I do de-prime my brass before it goes into the stainless steel pin tumble wash. It works great for that.

I bought the box of x-case holders, but it didn't have one for 44-40. So a couple weeks ago I used a regular Lee case holder and loaded them one at a time with the opening facing the ejection path. Worked great and was surprisingly fast. Might have to do all my rifle brass that way in the future. The positive stop of the normal Lee case holders makes feeding them singly very easy. I know you can adjust the feeder to do rifle brass, but if I only have 20-40 cases, it will take longer to tinker with the tube drop setting than to just single feed them. But when doing 500 38 special cases - the tube feeder system is a little bit of heaven.

I bought the NOE sizing adapter for the LEE bullet sizing kit. Now I can use all my NOE sizing bushings when sizing bullets. I never thought it could get faster than pumping bullets down through my Star sizer, but I was really impressed at how fast the APP is at sizing bullets. It also works out well, because you have to stop pulling the handle to fill the tube - so alternating the pulling and filling keeps it from tiring a person out.

I am supposed to receive my Inline Fabrication bracket to hold Akro bins under the APP quick change plate on my Ultra Mount today. I was very pleased when I saw that it was available. That has been my only issue, a method to catch brass under my Ultra Mount. I have been using a quart yogurt container. This should work better.

And I have a question for other APP users. Has anyone bought or made an adapter kit to use your Dillon case feeder on your APP? I have a Dillon 650 case feeder right next to the APP, and it would seem like it would be the cats meow to be able to feed cases from the Dillon case feeder rather than loading the Lee tubes? I have the 4 tube and collator thing around here somewhere for when I used to have a Lee progressive press. But I haven't ran into it yet. There is a fellow on eBay selling a kit to use the Dillon for around $50. But I would love to hear any feedback from someone who has tried it, before I plunk the money down.

Bottom line for me is that this is a great piece of kit. You have to tinker with it and it can be a bit fiddly, but anyone who has used a Lee progressive press knows that drill.

[dverna]

I have looked at these as well, but not sure what it could do for me. I load 9/45/223/300 on a 550, and everything else on a single stage.

How well does the swager work? Faster or easier than a Dillon 600 SS?

Does it size cast bullets alot faster than the push thru’s?

I guess it would prime faster than a handheld priming tool.


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I cannot see a use for it as I reload pistol rounds on progressives. I have a Star for lubing/sizing. If I did not have the Star I can see it being a nice addition.

[GWS]

I also don't see the point if you have other stouter progressive presses for sizing and loading anything, except that because it's the ONLY single station press that has a case and/or bullet feeder, it can size pistol very well, and much faster than any other single station press, period, and it's way cheaper than any progressive and most single stage presses. Wouldn't it be neat if a strong "O" press, say like the new beefy RCBS Rebel could be modified to use "X" style shell holders on a case/bullet fed runway like the APP!!

Even as light as the APP is, its forte is removing bottlenecks by automating the other "processing" procedures we often want to do .... again because of the "fed runway" and pass through shellholders. I'm ecstatic with it's ability to deprime rifle or pistol, or swage them as fast as you can stroke the press. Depriming before wet tumbling use to be a pesky bottleneck. Swaging too, even on Dillon's or RCBS's bench swagers. The APP can do it 5 times faster at least. That said there are easy mods that help it achieve its potential.

Using TylerR's mods on the 3D printer thread here on CastBoolits, a demontration below of depriming a box of 50 .357's. Note the total time of the video which includes the boring hand loading of a 36" tube.....then think how an electric case feeder...Dillons or homemade would half the time.......and you don't have to interrupt your progressive's setup just to deprime.....or deprime the slow way on any other single station. (And it will swage LC brass just about as fast.)



Bet you noticed the single fly-away near the end....shoulda dry-lubed the shellholder first with some graphite with a Qtip, which would eliminate that little happening...it was getting gritty.

[Txcowboy52]

I use the Lee APP press along with an NOE adapter and NOE push through bullet sizing dies . Super fast and great way to size cast bullets . It has it’s place and I wouldn’t want to be without it .

[kevin c]

^^^

Sizing cast boolits on the downstroke is what I bought it for, and it’s great for that. Hand feeding works pretty well for that. If I want to decap and/or swage primer pockets (rarely) I’ll use the shuttle with the appropriate pass through shell holder.

[ddeck22]

Curious about the swaging too. The Dillon one has a few different add ons to do both large and small and I'd prefer to buy one tool to handle both.