So I'm goofing around buying primers and a big batch of wonderful 500/525gr bullets for my Sharps rifle before I move away from the guy who makes them. Something big and heavy catches my eye, sitting on the floor is part of an estate sale, the deceased was an avid reloader. It's an old CH Tool & Die press, Model 206 (or 208, kinda blurry casting), with a 4-station die holder on an otherwise normal O-frame design.
The press came with 9 thick steel 4-die plates, with indexing slots on each side edge. One puts all the dies needed for a given cartridge in the plate, setting them to proper depth, then indexes them fore and aft in the press against an allen screw ball detent, which locks the whole assembly solid. It reminds me of the tool heads of my Dillon 550, albeit a few years earlier.
This one's missing the primer arm, but I *think* a spare RCBS unit I have laying around in the evil lab will fit and function just fine.
I've owned several presses, and still have my Lyman 310 tool, as well as the Dillons, an RCBS JR2, and a Pacific (Hornady) 007 O-frame. But something about this oddball just grabbed my eye, especially when I picked up the spare dieholder/toolhead plates and felt how beefy they were. So I brought it home to live with my other reloading tools. It was only fair.
The press came with 9 thick steel 4-die plates, with indexing slots on each side edge. One puts all the dies needed for a given cartridge in the plate, setting them to proper depth, then indexes them fore and aft in the press against an allen screw ball detent, which locks the whole assembly solid. It reminds me of the tool heads of my Dillon 550, albeit a few years earlier.
This one's missing the primer arm, but I *think* a spare RCBS unit I have laying around in the evil lab will fit and function just fine.
I've owned several presses, and still have my Lyman 310 tool, as well as the Dillons, an RCBS JR2, and a Pacific (Hornady) 007 O-frame. But something about this oddball just grabbed my eye, especially when I picked up the spare dieholder/toolhead plates and felt how beefy they were. So I brought it home to live with my other reloading tools. It was only fair.