I was brought into shooting and hunting using a M1 Carbine and taylored handloads. My dad had a ton of ball ammo that we practiced with, and he matched up the load prety well using Sierra 110gr RNSP's and 14grs of 2400.
He loaded them one at a time on an old Herters press. When I get ready to do a bunch, I will generally tumble several hundred at a time to get them nice and shiney. Then I will run them through my progressive using on the size/decap die. After this they hit the trimmer for a quick face off. After which they are run through the rest of the loading operation. I set the expander to only touch the lip of the case enough so that I can just barely feel the difference using my fingernail on the lip. Most of the cases I have had to discard were from a split neck and were loaded no telling how many times. I use carbide dies but still shoot them with a quick shot of spray lube, depending on if they were shot in the rifle or in my revolver. The rifle chamber is larger so they get a little more worked when sizeing them. The pistol cases I simply run them throug and trim. If lubed they get the tumbler once more.
My press is an older RCBS 4x4 and makes quick work of several hundered rounds. My trimmer is a RCBS Trim PRo power trimmer, using their three way cutter which trims and deburs in the same operation. Very nice for bulk trimming. Generlly I use the same old load of 2400 but recently I have worked up some using 296 as well. THe bullets I have found to shoot the best were Speer in my rifles and I use the Speer #1835 in my Ruger.
As of late, the grandson gets most of the trigger time behind the rifles, and I have enough loaded to hold him over for quite a while. I drag out the revolver from time to time just to carry around for snakes when doing work in the country. Hate to have to use it but it works great even on bigger critters.
Good luck and have fun.