My Dad had a reloading press and I got to use it one or two times before I got out of college. I was helping him load his ammo. I had a shotshell loader and loaded my shot shells for duck and goose hunting. All rifle and pistol ammo was purchased.
I was married just before I graduated from college. My first house was about 20 miles from Dad's so I went and purchased a used reloading set up from a nickle ad. (That set up went to a new loader last summer.) I got an RCBS Jr. press, Lyman scale, Lyman #55 powder measure, and a couple of funnels, trickler, loading blocks etc. Best $50 I ever spent. With that I press I began loading 100s of rounds of ammo. 50-100 rounds an hour was not uncommon.
After a couple of years, I heard of the Lyman Pistol powder measure. It had replacable dies with different powder volume. Gee, this was great! I could get 50 38s or 357s sized, belled, primed, and into a loading tray. I could then hold the pistol powder measure and jump from case to case dropping the powder charge. 2 minutes max and 50 rounds ready to seat bullets. Top the first five cases with bullets and seat. Really sped up my pistol reloading. I was also doing 30-30 rifle, and eventually .243 using this press.
After a couple of years, I found a new sport, handgun silhouette. There were matches every couple of weekends and it was easy to go thru 100 rounds. I wanted to speed up my reloading. Lee offered a Pro-1000 press that would do up to .223 size cases. My 7TCU round was based on the .223 case, so I ordered a Pro-1000 progressive press.
I learned a lot with the Lee. First and foremost, it worked faster if I didn't use it progressively. I could set it up with a sizing die, and with the automatic indexing, it took just a few minutes to size up 100 cases. If I tried to size in one step and bell in the next, it actually slowed me down. The priming system didn't work right so if I tried to seat a primer on the down stroke, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I ended up buying several bullet pullers to get the bullets out of cases that didn't have primers in them, or out of cases with primers that were upside down. Also found out the Lee powder measure would work with some powder, and not with others. It wasn't long before the disks were gouged from powder residue and didn't want to work any more. The press was ideal for fast resizing, fast belling, and fast bullet seating. It was like a self indexing single stage. I didn't have to load the case and it automatically spit it out, so I saved some time.
When trying to load the 7TCU on the Pro-1000, it didn't take long to realize that heavy bullet made the case top heavy. Top heavy cases flip funny, don't land in the ammo tray like pistol ammo, and end up hitting the floor. So soon I had a sore back from bending over and picking up my loaded ammo all the time.
About this time I was looking into better progressive presses. I was making good money, so I ordered a Dillon 550. I set that baby up to do the 7TCU ammo and within a week or so, I was cranking out 100 rounds of ammo within a half hour. Start to finish. Soon it was 200 in an hour.
Well, 20 years later, I have two 550s, a Square Deal B, and an RCBS Rock Chucker. Like I mentioned above, I sold my original RCBS Jr. press to a new reloader. That is because my Dad gave me all of his reloading gear.
That Rock Chucker still gets the nod on sizing .308, -06, 7mm Mag, 338 Mag, etc. All of the heavier rifle cases get resized on the Rock Chucker. I also make a lot of wildcat brass on the RC. .223 into 6,6.5,or 7TCU, 30-30 to 7x30 waters, 30 herret, 357 herret, etc.
You often hear of coaches talking to their teams and saying "it's back to the basics, we have to have the basics down." This is true of all sports. Get the running, hitting, catching, shooting, breathing down, and then fill in the gaps. Same is true with reloading. You have to get the basics down, and then fill in the gaps. I am still using single stage press, powder scale, trickler, etc just like I started with. When I get to some operations where the progressive can help speed up the process, I fill in the gaps.
Start out basic and work your way up. It will bring you hours of pleasure and sense of accomplishment when you shoot tiny groups or game animals with home grown ammo.
Let the fun begin!!
Steve
