This exactitude will not make a bit of difference except to the egos.
Tubbs used a 550 to crush the competition who had access to many of these presses.
Want the best, based on this test, get a Turban.
This exactitude will not make a bit of difference except to the egos.
Tubbs used a 550 to crush the competition who had access to many of these presses.
Want the best, based on this test, get a Turban.
The results page is interesting in that even at $950 the Turban is best in only 3 of the categories. Each of the RCBS holds 2 and several presses are very close to the Turban in several areas for a whole lot less $.
Not being a bench rest shooter or owning rifles in that class I doubt I would benefit by using any press on the list over any other with the exception of force required to size cases.
Nice article and it confirms my belief that most any press is capable of loading very good ammo. The question is , how good of a press do you need for your your type of shooting and loading. I have about a dozen different presses and find they all work good enough for me, even the lowly Lee hand press.
So, where can I purchase one of these "Turban" really high quality presses, because I really need one for my really precise type of loading and shooting at extensive ranges. With my Moisin Negant and 303 British?
I can't figure out who won the test....too complicated for this old dog.
I'll stick with my Pacific Super Deluxe , Eagle Cobra 300 , Lyman All American turret and last but not least my two humble Lee Hand Presses ... We can do it !
Certified Cajun
Proud Member of The Basket of Deplorables
" Let's Go Brandon !"
I've never heard of any serious bench shooter using a threaded press or threaded dies of any kind to load competition ammo.
You believe correctly. Ammo is made in the dies, all any press, does or can do is push cases into and pull them out of the dies. In some 50 years I've seen and used quite a few presses, some new and some "worn out" but I've never seen any press that wouldn't make very good ammo if the dies, cases, bullet, developed charges and user technique were right. In other words, I've learned that if we're getting bad targets buying a more costly press won't improve a thing.Nice article and it confirms my belief that most any press is capable of loading very good ammo.
There are no sure or easy paths to precision ammo. A skilled loader will make good ammo on most any press. Some tools are easier to use than others but loading skill is paramount. Skill can't be replaced by a tool and, unlike tools, skill can't be bought at any price.
I read his comparison more as multiple reviews with a few measurements to help one make a more informed decision if shopping for a press.
even the cheapest $40 or $50. press he tested he said loaded ammo that shot into 1/2 at 100 yards and that is more than good enough for a lot of deer hunters or plinkers.He goes from there to $900.00 press for the guy that has to have what may be the very best single stage press.
I thought it was interesting and informative.
Feelings? Really?
You can't make 99.99% believe this,
1. Trying to determine force with the human nervous system is the most unreliable things you can do.
Humans simply aren't wired to determine force accurately.
Prove it to yourself, put exactly 5 or 10 pounds of pressure on a scale, blindfolded...
See how close you get.
2. Hold exactly 5 or 10 pounds of pressure on a scale for 30 seconds and see how good you are...
That scale is going to jump up & down like a little girl that gets a kitten, you have no chance!
The biggie of 'Feel' is ergonomics.
Again, 99.99% won't have a bench at the optimum height, or have a chair/stool at the right height.
I'm 'Disabled', I have a shoulder, neck & back that's screwed up...
I took the class on ergonomics & kinesiology, and went home to rebuild my workbenches.
I got a solid, comfortable chair with back & thigh support (no wobbles or leaning!),
And I put the presses in a position where I could pull/push the handles within comfortable range of motion,
Then built a bench design that didn't wobble, and adjusted the top height so the handle was in the normal, comfortable range of motion.
Shoulder, neck & back problems went away, AND the machine *Seemed* to run smoother, much less effort required...
And I was back doing one of my favorite things without pain & suffering.
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As for mechanical movement, there is a reason humans invented all sorts of measuring devices,
Because we suck at determining small movements.
It's a predator/pray thing...
As for presses, I've owned a bunch, tested a bunch, even built a few...
(What a waste of time & money...)
From my observations,
A Co-Axial press that PULLS into the dies are quite inherently accurate.
The Pusher presses, which is most types, the issue is ram diameter and the extension of that ram.
A LOT of unsupported ram will deflect (bend) when the pressure is on.
A larger diameter and/or hardened ram would stop a lot of this...
The 'O' ring press frames stretch/flex/deflect less than 'C' frame presses, but everyone should already know that, it's a no-brainer.
Just for the record, the #1 killer of a good press is rust on the ram.
Rust just kills the guide bore tolerances, and it does it really quickly.
Doesn't matter if the frame is aluminum or iron or steel, rust on the ram is an equal opportunity tolerance killer.
It's also 100% preventable with cleaning & lubrication...
I have no idea how a case entering a die knows if it's moving up or the die is moving down, relative only to the user. ???
I'm not a BR shooter but I've been friends with some serious bench shooters. Perhaps the best once told me a lot of them used a slightly modified RCBS alum "Partner" press and a body bump die at the range when they needed to restore the case headspace they desired. The modification was to lathe turn a skim cut to the ram so there would be enough ram looseness to insure cases could drift into perfect self alignment with the die. He pointed out that a tapered round object (case) will always float into a perfectly round and tapered hole (die) unless a too tight ram fit prevents it.
(That bit of info came from the late Meryl "Mike" Walker who was a lead rifle engineer with Remington and ran their custom shop until he retired. Of course Mike may have been wrong about the value of a slightly sloppy ram but he knew enough about rifles, precision reloading and BR shooting to earn his way into the National BR Hall of Fame before he died.)
As I've looked at the chart of measured specs the Lee Classic Cast Iron equals or betters the neck and tip TIR of the Turban and is only slightly behind the Turban for ogive TIR. (How do you get better TIR at both ends than in the middle? Lopsided bullets?) I've read for years that runout was the most important component of accuracy. I only have 3 rifles that I've used for hunting and all will shoot sub MOA groups without measuring runout. Two of the three will shoot under 0.5 MOA at 100 yards. I don't uniform primer pockets or debur flash holes or do any of the more involved procedures that serious accuracy shooters do.
A complete test would include 5 shot groups at 100 and 500 yards from each of the tested presses. I'm betting that more money would not necessarily equal better accuracy.
Sometimes life taps you on the shoulder and reminds you it's a one way street. Jim Morris
As stated in the video the 2 presses that the die lowered to the case, had float built in or by design. The concentricity on a fixed die and ram (pusher) press is important. But so is the squareness of the ram and die threads. If one or the other is out of square you get oval or banana shaped rounds.
Most of the benchrest and a few of the long range shooters loaded with Wilson style straight line dies in a small arbor press. A lot of these dies were / are custom made from the chambering reamer. ( some air hardening steels shrink when hardened). Its slower but the alignment and size is almost perfect. I have set the rams up and faced them square for several guys. Sinclair's sells several small light arbor presses for this.
I loaded my Palma 308 in the Wilson dies with a arbor press I made.
To put this in perspective when Jenson had the contract for the issue palma ammo they loaded it on 650s or 550s.
Maybe the press does not matter wrt producing accurate ammunition...depending on how one defines accuracy.
Reminds me of the MOA claims by so many rifle producers...their MOA is for 3 shots....but they don't tell you it may take 5 or six groups to get that...statistical ** stuff. Food for the ignorant masses.
As to presses, I have only ever had one single stage. I used a Lee Target Loader until I go the Co-Ax 45+ years ago. I probably wasted the $68 it cost me way back then but I was a sucker for the marketing of "self aligning dies". Cannot tell you if it (now about $300+) is any better than a $30 Lee (no Lee presses back in the Dark Ages). What I can tell you is it produces ammunition that consistently holds sub MOA 5 shot groups with a capable rifle and shooter. Because of that, I have never yearned for something better. 5 shots under an inch at 100 yards is all I need. (My "wallet group" is .276" with my cheapest rilfe...a T/C Compass .308)
In spite of owning a few Dillon's (two 550's, a 650, three 1050's) capable of loading rifle ammunition, I have never loaded rifle ammunition on one. Might do that this year with one of the 550's for .223. Point being, if the .223's off the 550 are just as good as what the Co-Ax produces, I will conclude I wasted those hard earned $68 when I was a struggling college kid.
Common sense tells me those Benchrest guys think it matters. But my needs are different. If I needed to shoot sub .250", things change.
Good enough is good enough. The other components of accuracy are even more important than the press IMHO. The rifle, and shooter matter. I suspect that with the best ammunition and the best benchrest rifle I would still shoot groups 2-3 times larger than a top benchrest shooter. I am not good enough to tell the difference at that level.
Last edited by dverna; 04-18-2019 at 11:08 AM.
Don Verna
Yep, good enough is good enough and we each have our own ideas what good enough is for our own uses. Some folks need the absolute very best, I don't.
Very well done review. I thought 8 presses was a lot!
If you analyze the clearance between the shell holder and the case head you will find more clearance (slop) than the amount of error between the ram and the die threads. This clearance permits the case head to move as the case taper moves into alignment with the tapered die interior. The result is all that German perfection is a waste of money.
The one area where the author did not test the presses has to do with the co-axial alignment of the die threads along their entire length. The co-axial alignment of the dies insures there is no tilt of the die and that the case heads are not at an angle to the case body. Many die sets have such poorly cut 7/8-14 threads that a perfect press can't correct for the crummy threads and their misalignment.
Another thing that shows the difficulty of a good series of test would be life cycle testing.
A life cycle test might look something like the following:
Determine a standard case to resize or reform. Determine how much force this produces in the press. Then cycle the press until it fails or until it successfully runs the test to completion. A successful completion might be 50,000 cycles in a cheap die cast aluminum press. A heavy cast steel press might last 500,000 cycles. For presses that pass the life cycle test remeasuring the alignment would be in order.
Without objecting testing the rating of an item's quality is subject to the hot stove league's opinions.
A guy who is happy with a press used for 40 years might be misleading. It is possible you are hearing the opinion of a sometime reloader that used his press to load one box of 32 ACP each year for 40 years.
The opposite case might be a guy who used a press only 3 years to reload 5000 rounds of 14.5mmX114mm Russian machine gun ammo. The stress of the press is very different due to the size of the cases. Long life of a press that does only sparing and light duty does not mean much.
EDG
Not sure how you derive that number but, accepting you may be correct in general, I wonder ... how many guys who are happy reloaders would you guess will ever assemble that many rounds in their life. The point being, a LOT of reloaders will live quite well with a cheap cast aluminum.
My observation is that a few of us will ever punch out 50K rounds and for them a "cheap press" is entirely sufficent to last a lifetime. For the vast majority of reloaders, spending more for any tool than is needed for the job isn't wisdom, it's a waste. Note that "cheap alum" alloy presses are sold by RCBS, Hornady, Dillon and Lee; the users I know of are happy with all of them.
For those of us who eventually reload vast numbers, how we started doesn't really matter in the long run. I mean, all of the highly active loaders I've ever known have much more than one press on their bench so whatever press they started with seems a moot point. IMHO. ???
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |