The simple elegance of Lee stuff

The Perfect Powder Measure doesn't look like much.......my first impression was it was joke. But the more I look, the more I find. Because it was thrown in a box with a lot of other stuff, I got no instructions, so didn't know about a lot of little things. Just now learning hopper has an on/off setting. You can turn it OFF, then lift the entire hopper off the base......to dump it. Who knew?

Then there is the other cool little feature that I missed........setting numbers on the plunger correspond to cubic centimeters.....cc's, so you can quickly set it up to match the powder scoops. At least for a coarse setting, before you fine tune it with a scale.

And having a long, skinny drop tube......it seems to handle the stick powders well.......and the measure cutoff of a long skinny tube seems more accurate than a big, wide, shallow tube. A straw vs. a saucer. (OK......an exaggeration, but you get the idea) Perhaps a tall, skinny graduated test tube vs. a beaker?

Doesn't look very impressive, but it works. Seems to be a common theme with all their stuff.

Found yet another.......the Lee reloading manual. Someone posted that Midway had them on sale for about $9. Always find something interesting in all manuals, so picked up one, and with savings, got the Hornady book too.

If using Lee equipment, the manual is essential. It explains a lot. But beyond that, it includes a whole slew of tables and references that I've not seen anywhere else. Things like measured case capacity in cubic centimeters for each caliber load data is provided, along with tables that allow you to calculate what a full case of any powder would weigh. Plus the load data (book is 90% load data) includes a reference to the dippers, cc's of powder etc. How they were developed, how they work. Things that correspond to their systems. Plus the powder selection for any given load is about 3X what most include. Impressive and very helpful.

Somewhere in the book is a reference to their Challenger reloading kit.....and mention that for the small volume guy wanting to reload to factory or better specs, it would be all a person would ever need. That would be me. Had someone suggested that kit to me when I was starting out, I would have rejected it outright. No way possible for it to be any good at that price. Had to be junk. In fact, if memory serves, I think someone did mention and I did reject it......and was a bit disappointed when that was what become available and I decided to make do. Experience has proven me wrong.

BTW, Hornady book is good to for it's purpose. For the calibers I'm loading for, Hornady bullets have been available when others are not. So having data specific to those bullets is helpful. Also curious that while the powder selections are pretty small, they tend to list the all stars. And is the only published load data I've seen that also includes Shooter's World powders.