So I was coming off of a long out-of town assignment where I made a little extra cash, and I had planned to upgrade from s hand press and a single-stage to a Lee Classic Turret. But the ad goblins showed me that the Lee Auto Lock Breech Pro was actually cheaper, like $109 from Midway, So I jumped on it.
Now, to be fair, to actually get it up and running, (especially if you have no other reloading equipment already,) you will probably double that in adding a auto-disk powder measure, priming tool, dies, etc. Also I made a pedestal upon which to mount it out of 2x4 scraps I had, which left it sitting too high, and contributed to the problem I had with a squib I talked about a couple of weeks ago in another thread. So I paid for a Lyman universal stand that is about 10", and put a lamp on it to be able to look down into every single case to verify a charge. That was like $57. The upstroke is sometimes stiff, so you will need a solid mount that will prevent it lifting off the floor.
The plastic pieces work fine, but you will probably chew a few of them up in figuring out how this thing works. It's ok, replacements from Lee are very cheap.
I got the case feeder and collator. The collator works pretty well, it only inverts about 1/100 cases. (Or, I can just have my juvenile range slaves feed them into the tubes manually.) The problem is, WHEN it messes up, it interrupts the entire process. You have to manually de-index, remove cases, etc. If it double-feeds a case, or one fails to go all the way into position, it makes it very easy to crush the case, damage the slide plank, or both. It was arguing with this process that allowed me to miss an empty case and get a squib. So I removed the case feeder. I have a bin of cases and a bin of bullets. It doesn't take that much time to place a case, and the feeding is far more reliable. So far I don't miss it at all.
The other thing is, I started skipping stations when I feed. When I had the squib, I backed off and started running only one case through the entire process. I found that it was much easier and smoother. So I clocked it. I can run a single case through the entire process in about 17 seconds. So I tried running all four again, and found that doing every process, every time, takes about 15 seconds. I was almost as fast with single cases as I had been running it as full progressive. But of course the other half of my brain asks; "If you are only running one case at a time, THEN WHY GET A PROGRESSIVE AT ALL? Why did you not just get the turret like you planned to in the first place?" So I tried running two at a time, every other station. This reduces the actcual time per round to about ten seconds. TO ME, that makes more sense than 15 seconds per station as full progressive?
Am I completely crazy? Is this just what I get for running a progressive that's non-blue?