Lee Safety Prime on Classic 4 Hole Turret Press

Mine is 100%. Sounds like you have a misalignent.

Mine is 99%, but I admit there was a learning curve. Once I got the hang of it, I rarely drop one.

Just push it from the back. I use my thumb & just push it forward. Don't try to force it or push down on the front. It takes a certain feel to get it to work.

Put 2 or 3 washer (8 mm.) under the plastic bracket. After this, mine works very well (100%). You must refill it after 70 - 80 primers...

Push it with your thumb until it stops then push down on the front with your index finger. Once I got the technique no problems at all except that last one can be a little stubborn

Wish I was home to give you a good picture, but I'll try to explain it. What buonvento said above is correct. In fact, my primer CAME with a washer that I didn't know what to do with, so left it off. Then I found out that if I just brought the press down a smiggin from the top, the primer loaded into the little cup like a champ every time. Duh, now I know what the washer was for - to raise the auto-prime fixture up a tad. Put it UNDER the plastic (not over) and it will work perfectly. If you didn't get a washer with yours, you will need something between 1/16 and 1/8 of an inch thick to work.

Good luck!

squarles67 - stubborn?!? Impossible is what it is for me! I load the last one manually after removing it from the primer tray. I have never gotten the last one to load properly from the auto-prime.

Gadzooks Mike said:

squarles67 - stubborn?!? Impossible is what it is for me! I load the last one manually after removing it from the primer tray. I have never gotten the last one to load properly from the auto-prime.

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Yeah, due to the ramp, and without the weight of other primers pushing the lead forward, the last 1-2 never self feed. No big deal for me. I just refill 1-2 primers earlier.

Also, the only thing I've found I have to do is make sure the ram is at the top of it's the stroke. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDZkzuaYHwg It should look like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDZkzuaYHwg
1:20 in.

Put 2 or 3 washer (8 mm.) under the plastic bracket. After this, mine works very well (100%). You must refill it after 70 - 80 primers...

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What he said.. If the plastic trigger piece is dragging them out of the cup into your hand start with one washer. One washer will fix it most of the time. My safety prime will feed all of the primers but the last two. I load the tray with 200 primers so I don't have to stop as often.

mine mostly works great once I figured out how to push the lever thing. it won't feed the last one and I tend to get jams when I first fill it and try to get all the primers to slide down the chute.

my biggest complaint it that I upgraded on old press, and it kicks the primers out the side of the ram all over my table instead of down the ram and into the tube like on the new ones. I taped a playing card between the posts to keep the primers from running away, but it's an inelegant solution and prevents me from grabbing the posts for leverage when forcing a primer into a crimped 223 pocket that I failed to decrimp properly.

I am glad to hear you can run 200 primers in it. lee says no more than 100, but it sure seems like there's a lot of wasted space on the tray.

my biggest complaint it that I upgraded on old press, and it kicks the primers out the side of the ram all over my table instead of down the ram and into the tube like on the new ones. I taped a playing card between the posts to keep the primers from running away

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Greyling22:
Mine did the same. I cut a piece of plexiglass and applied a little heat to bend it into shape. Cut it about 1 3/4" high and made it long enough to cover the back left post, bend just inside the right rear post and the cover the right front post on th outside with a short 90 deg bend to lock onto the front post.

Hope this makes sense. It's really easy to do and it holds itself in place with a little tension on the posts. It pops on and off in no time.

PIC: http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=505858

scroll to post #16

Mine was a useless p.o.s. that only served to piss me off. Lives in the box now. They shouldn't even market the plastic hunk of crap, and the fact in comes with NO decent directions is an abomination. "Here it is, figure it out". I like my Lee Classic, but their printed directions flat-out suck.

I prefer to pre-prime all my cases now anyway. I've found that loading goes much faster for me when I start with a bucket full of clean, polished, pre-primed brass.

I've used the Lee Auto Prime, which inflames my carpal tunnel syndrome. I've done it by just putting them one at a time into the little primer arm thingie, that actually works very well. And I have a new Lee Auto Prime II which is basically a press-mounted Auto Prime, haven't used that one yet.

I too hate the cheesey plastic safety prime setup. I use a Lee Auto Prime II to install primers on a single stage press next to the turret press. I disabled the auto-indexing on the turret press so that I could just do the decapping/resizing step to the batch on the turret press, install the primers on the batch using the single stage press. Then continue the batch on the turret press with all remaining steps until done.

rondog said:

Mine was a useless p.o.s. that only served to piss me off. Lives in the box now. They shouldn't even market the plastic hunk of crap, and the fact in comes with NO decent directions is an abomination. "Here it is, figure it out". I like my Lee Classic, but their printed directions flat-out suck.

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Was it really that difficult that you needed directions? The picture on the book made it pretty obvious where all the pieces went.

As mentioned before, place one washer under the plastic carriage. Mine runs flawlessly now!!

Mine runs flawlessly now!!

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Mine has for four years now. It's not that hard to make it work right.

Mine works okay, but it needs a shim under the washer I have under the mount. It feeds better IF I lower the ram just a tiny amount. That means I need a thicker washer, or a very thin one to raise the feeder up a bit.

Mine was a useless p.o.s. that only served to piss me off. Lives in the box now. They shouldn't even market the plastic hunk of crap, and the fact in comes with NO decent directions is an abomination. "Here it is, figure it out". I like my Lee Classic, but their printed directions flat-out suck.

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Sorry yours didn't work. I agree lee's directions leave a lot to be desired. After you calm down, dig it out and try again, using the tips the group has given.

Mine has always worked great and I can't see doing it any other way.
It feeds all large pistol primers and leaves one small primer every time. No big deal.

Wish i would have read this befor i ordered the safety prime yesterday from midway havent got it yet and i already hate it

Wish i would have read this befor i ordered the safety prime yesterday from midway havent got it yet and i already hate it

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Why would you let the opinion of a few sway you? You will not have any problems with the safety prime setup, if you pay attention in this thread. Its a very good way to prime cases, and it prevents having a tube of primers stacked on top of each other detonating.

jeeptim posted; Wish I would have read this before I ordered the safety prime yesterday from midway haven't got it yet and I already hate it.

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Why would you let a couple people with ten thumbs and no patience make you think it's not going to work?

A couple of washers/shims, a little fiddling and learning where and how much to push will result in a much improved loading session.

In your other thread, you said you ordered the "older" version of the turret. Leave it in the box, call midway, say I changed my mind, I want the classic turret. You will be glad you did.

Wish i would have read this befor i ordered the safety prime yesterday from midway havent got it yet and i already hate it

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Yeah, but you could just as easily LOVE it like the rest of us who outsmarted a piece of plastic. Sheesh.

Man, the tool user. In some cases, that is.