BigJakeJ1s
Member
YellowLab said:Either you never used one, only read about them on the Internet, or used one as your first press, boogered it up and when you got a second press marveled at how easy it was... not realizing that all the knowledge and expierience was gained at the expense of the first press.
I have NO idea why people bash the Lee presses. Either they are trying to justify the fact that they had to spend 4x the money before they figure out how a press worked, or that they bought $800 worth of gear, only to find out that the same gear is available at 1/4th price.
The plain fact is that a cartridge made from a Dillon is no better than a cartridge made from a Lee.
If you have any of that 'crappy' Lee gear that sucks so much, send it my way. I'll take it off your hands for the cost of mailing it to me. No need to throw it away, toss it in the swamp or do what people in thier Lee bashing posts 'say' they do to all that Lee junk that they have.
It all comes down to how smart the monkey pulling the lever is.
You're right, I have never used a lee progressive press. However, I have used, and still use, a lee hand press, perfect pm, safety scale, case trimmers, autoprime, and some of their dies. Some of it I love (for the way it works and the price: trimmers and collet-type FCDs). Some of it works only if I fiddle with it. On the other hand, I have other equipment from Hornady, RCBS and others (nothing dillon yet) that works flawlessly, repeatedly, and without mucking with it. I still use the lee hand press, for depriming with a universal depriming die, because that operation does not require a lot of precision, and it catches all the primer debris very efficiently. I now use a Huntington hand press which is much more accurately aligned, and has practically zero flex. It rivals some of the best bench presses I have tried. Based on the way the autoprime works and the quality of their hand press, I would surmise that their progressive equipment works similarly (if you fiddle with it periodically, it works ok). This seems to match a lot of what is written on the web about it. I don't mind a little fiddling when I am building ammo one cartidge at a time, one step at a time. But when you go progressive, there's a lot more going on, and having equipment problems becomes much less acceptable.
I never said that ammo produced on lee equipment was of any less quality than that produced on dillon/hornady, or anything else. What I tried to say was that you can produce the same quality ammo on a dillon/hornady with a lot less fuss, granted at 2-4x the price.
Andy