Lee Load All?

[TribunusSanGeorgii]

I had my 8yo loading some 12 ga for me today. He picked up the process right away

[hoodat]

That's starting em young! I don't recommend putting him behind a 4 pound break barrel 12 gauge however - for awhile. jd

[TribunusSanGeorgii]

I have a 20ga for him, but he chose to wait last time we went out to the range.

[hoodat]

My first scatter gun was a 20 ga Ithaca Break Barrel. I was a pretty puny kid, and it kicked hard enough. I've gotta admit that I wasn't exactly a crack shot with it. It hurt me terrible bad to spend $2.50 for a box of shells, and the friendly old guy that owned my favorite gun store walked me through the process of starting Lee Loader.

My gramma would pay me twice as much as I was worth for doing any job that Gramps was procrastinating on, and the neighbors gave me enough Alcan wads to get started. My powder was IMR 4756 for prolly two bucks a pound. Five pounds of shot was probably $2.95, and primers were around a buck a hundred.

That Lee Loader which cost $9.95, hooked me from the start, and from then on, I seldom bought factory loads for anything except for 22's. jd

[GONRA]

TribunusSanGeorgii -- GONRA's grand kids grew up faster than I could keep track....
Forgot I had a .22 LR conversion kit for my Supressed Vector UZI for 'em to learn on .....

[BobT]

I had a Load All back in the late ‘80s and used it for a summer trap league. I practiced quite a bit and loaded as much as 500 rounds a week. By the end of the summer it was pretty much worn out. Still got my monies worth out of it though, I think it was somewhere around the $20.00 mark. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy one if I was only loading a few boxes a year.

[hoodat]

As far as wearing the press out, I can see that it is a probability. It seems like there is a lot of technique that can be used to distribute the pressure evenly on the handle and pressure points as you load. Like most things, finesse is better than muscle. I've also started lubing the higher brass cases with imperial to help them size a little easier.

I had pretty good luck the other day finding empties in a couple of spots. With the wads I've got, the 20 ga data seems to use several of the same cases I've found. Also, cases these days seem to have a more standard internal length from what I remember back in the old days. jd

[WashingMike]

Reading this makes me laugh. I too started with a shotgun lee loader and a bunch of hand-me-down Alcan wads, and some Alcan AL-5 powder. I loaded the 16 gauge purple federal hulls until they were ragged. Got the wad pressure with a bathroom scale. 14 years old and absorbed all I could read about reloading and shooting.

I have had a several different shotshell presses since, and have used the Lee LoadAll. But the one thing I acquired was a Mec Super Sizer. That thing has come in handy to pre-size hulls to work through the reloading process and also increase the reliability of feeding through pump actions and autoloaders. It looks to me that they have gotten pretty spendy like everything else now.

Mikey G

[JFoster48386]

Midway USA is showing the 410 Load All as being in stock soon.

Jon.

[kaiser]

My first reloading kit was a 16 ga. Lee "Whackamolly" that got me into reloading. I later bought (and could afford) a Lee Load All that was a marvelous upgrade in production. I still have two on my bench, one a 16 ga. and the other a 20. I use them as often as my "MEC's".