I love my Dillon gear... but the hostess made a very good case for Hornady gear!Crappy Dillon gear? I’m hurt.
I love my Dillon gear... but the hostess made a very good case for Hornady gear!Crappy Dillon gear? I’m hurt.
Idk man. I’ve seen comps and most of those guys had 650s.Some highly advanced competition shooters buy identical single stage presses and set them up for use at the range. Sizing is done in one press and seating. These shooters are some of the most skilled in the shooting sports. They have learned that excellence is achieved by simplification and fool proofing of the process.
In contrast almost 100% of pistol kabooms are shooters with progressive presses and bad habits. It appears the lazy and those prone to taking short cuts will start off with a progressives. These people are not really interested in top quality hand loading, they just want some cheap ammo fast with the least amount of work. That is where the bad habits and blown up pistols come from.
Idk man. I’ve seen comps and most of those guys had 650s.
And you’re right as far as fundamentals go, but in my experience, progressive presses allow for less error, especially when you use an audible powder check alarm like Dillon. It’s almost impossible to double charge anyway, but a no charge for some reason will alarm. I do advocate for a powder check, though. Hats why I didn’t go with a 550. The manual indexing demands attention. Not saying I don’t pay attention, but the 65o or the lnl with powder checks are insurance against 99.9999999999% of failures.
Btw the competition shooters that I referred to are bench rest and other competition rifle shooters who almost never blow up a rifle...
I'm only passing on what the owners of the presses told me. One friend has a Dillon 650 dedicated for each of his three pistol calibers and one for .223 (four presses; he shoots competitively). He said it was too much hassle to switch over to another cartridge and just bought more presses. I have seen that at several friends'/acquaintances' reloading benches and been told the same. The LNL I was just looking at the other day and the friend who owns it was explaining the hassle it was to change primer sizes. I have no idea why their experience is so much different than yours. They are very experienced reloaders so I respect their opinion. I would advise a person looking into presses to try to get hands on experience with any type of press they are considering so they see first hand what is involved in set up, operation and maintenance/tweaking. A lot depends on the amount of rounds you plan to reload and how much experimenting you plan to do; not just concerning the press but the type of powder scale, measure and case prep tools.
They also consider a shooting more than a couple hundred rounds a hard weekend.
If I could afford a Camdex setup, I would buy one, because it isn't unheard of for me to shoot 3,000 to 5,000 rounds in a week.
No, I think he just shoots competitively. I have had a couple of friends that easily shoot that in just informal competitions. They practice during the week and compete on the weekend. Practicing times, over and over again. From what they say it is pretty common for anyone that shoots much competition, and a reason why you want a sponsor some day that buys it all for you. Until then a progressive that spits out one recipe in the thousands per week is a necessity.
Call me a serious doubter of that kind of talk.
If simply talking about load data, keep in mind that ALL of the load data in the Lee manual is simply a collection of the load data from the powder manufacturers, which are all available online. In addition, the online data will list additional information, like the specific bullet (not just a generic JHP of FMJ) as well as other pertinent info like barrel length, etc. If you have a different book, such as Lyman, then you can also access the powder manufacturer's website and have free and independent data to compare.A lot of people say to buy multiple books, but then post about how this book has a different load than that book. So I started with one book (Lee) and bought a variety of powder and made up loads for each. Then once I was confident in my abilities I started buying other books and was able to better compare and understand the differences.
I would always advise new reloaders to start with a single stage even if they know they are going to buy a progressive soon. It only adds $100 to the cost, and if you shoot enough to use a progressive then $100 isn’t much money. You learn the process intimately and you can use the dues with your progressive. And there’s always some reason to use a single stage: push-thru sizing, primer pocket swaging, decapping, collet bullet pulling, ...
I would have thought long and hard about what machine I'd want to have ten years down the road (which for me included retirement and thus more shooting), and spent the money up front. Changing one progressive for another was time consuming and expensive. Having to reconfigure my loading bench for the taller machine was a PIA. The change over just took way more time and trouble than ever anticipated.
Don't buy cheap stuff. It will be nothing but frustration and you'll wind up buying the quality equipment sooner or later. If it means waiting a few months to save the money, so be it. Some equipment is cheap for a reason. Note: Don't confuse cheap with inexpensive. Read a lot of reviews of equipment before buying. It's free advice.
I wish I had kept better records. I have forgot things I learned.