RCBS Piggyback 3 Thought?

[teddy12b]

I've seen them advertised and I was curious if anyone out there had one or knew somebody who did.  I'd probably just use my single stage for rifle ammo but I think it would be great for knocking out 44mag and 45ACP ammo.  I'd love to hear any thoughts people have about them.

[PlacitasSlim]

I have an older Piggyback2 and an RCBS Pro2000 which is very similar the the piggy back 3. I love the pro2000 and really like the APS priming system. I have different die plates and shell plates for each calibre, so chageover is fast. The Pb3 uses these same components. If you have a Rock Chucker, I would say go for it.

[teddy12b]

For the cost of a Piggyback, I'm trying to figure out if I'd just be better off getting a regular progressive without the kit.  I saw turret presses were pretty reasonable but I'm not very familar with them.

[PlacitasSlim]

When I am going to put out a lot of ammo, say for SASS or for Varmint Hunting, I use the progessive and turn out one round for every pull of the handle. On a turret press, you will save time if you do one cartridge at a time, but I do batches so I don't have to change the dies much. On these, you will have to pull the handle 3 to 4 times per cartridge.

[teddy12b]

I'm just not familiar with turret presses.  Would you bacially do the complete process in order until the round is complete?  Does a turret press only save setup time?  I'm thinking the Piggyback 3 would work well for me I basically only load 44 mag for pistol but I fire about 100 rounds when I go to the range.  Trips to the range aren't frequent enough so I make them count.  I'd also like to start handloading for 45ACP, 223, and 6.8mm SPC.  All those can be done on the Piggyback 3 but it also means I have to go back to using the powder thrower that came with my Rock Chucker kit instead of my Chargemaster combo.  I need to do some more thinking about this before I get too carried away.

[PlacitasSlim]

On a turret press, you screw your dies into the turret and then can rotate the turret as you need to do different functions. If you had a primer that didn't seat properly for instance you could rotate the turret back to the decapping die and remove that primer. You must still pull the handle for each step of each shell and only do one operation at a time. On a progressive you have different operations going on at each station as you pull the handle. For me, I have never seen the need for the turret over my single stage, but I have friends who love their turrets.

[teddy12b]

That's how I thought they worked I just wanted to make sure.  I set my handloading like an assembly line and move pretty quickly considering.  A turret press only seems like it would save set up time with the dies.  I think the piggyback will be the way to go.

[Wingman26]

Piggyback's try to make a press that wasn't ever intended for that purpose do something in a half arsed way, if you want to load in quantity get a Dillon, it's worth it to get a press that was designed from the ground up to be a progressive loader. 

Dillon sets the standard for progressive loading, I've seen a number of postings from former owners of the RCBS,  Hornady and Lee progressives that have moved up to Dillons and are extremely happy with the change...Dillon, nobody else comes close.

http://dillonprecision.com/default.cfm?