toecutter
Member
So, a few weeks ago I took the plunge on a Lee Pro 1000 that they had on thier surplus page. It came configured for 9mm (not a caliber I shoot, but I have friends who wanted me to reload it) I planned on using it mostly for .223 reloading. I ordered most of the conversion adapters for this that and the other thing.
I originally bought it in the interest of using it to prep brass for a dillon 650 I plan on buying later this year. But I figured I would make full use of it until I got the dillon.
A few thoughts on the press:
The press itself isn't bad. It suffers from the inadequacies I normally find in Lee presses, the base is made of cast aluminum (possibly cast zinc), the primers dump into a hole in the bottom, requiring either a large hole be drilled in the table, or unbolting the press every time you want to clean out the primer area. For the most part, it seems this is a lee turret press to which some modifications were performed to turn it into a budget progressive.
It has some pretty goofy features, but over all it's not a bad unit seeing as how I paid under $100 for it.
So far I've set it up and used it to do my case prep work (sizing die, dillon case trimmer etc), and for the most part it's done a bang up job. For this work I have never been happier.
But tonight I was going to set it up to use it what it was meant for, loading ammo. So I plugged another turret thinger (I believe that's the technical term) into the top, screwed in the charging die, attached the powder measure, put in my seating die and assumed all was right with the world. The powder measure is set up with a lee micrometer charging bar. (this is an after-market accessory, but I'm of the opinion that being stuck with someone elses idea of "everything I need" is the quickest route to disappointment).
I sit down, pour powder into the measure (I'm a big fan of hodgdon's varget) and buckle up to reload a bunch of .223. So I throw a test charge and pour it into the scale, I do this a few times always finding my charges to be quite short. It isn't long before the screw is maxed out, and I'm still only dumping about 20-21 grains (24.8 behind a 62gr M855 bullet is my load for this).
At this point I'm confused, so I look at the directions, I'm still confused, so I read the directions again. I finally dig through the table that discusses how much each powder disk will dispense. Varget isn't even listed, and the closest I can get with H335 (another powder I used to load a lot) is 24 grains.
There are directions for stacking the disks and doing all kinds of other voodoo that will get me to my end goal of being able to charge my cases with the right volume of powder but I'm awestruck as to what a kludge this thing is. How is it that every other manufacturer can sell you a powder measure that can reliably dispense 3 grains of bullseye or 250 grains of H50BMG without this much hassle?
I think tomorrow I'm going to spend some time on the lathe and work out a connecting rod and adapter so I can just attach my RCBS powder measure to it and call it a day. I'm not surprised about the disks not being able to dump enough powder, but thier micrometer tool only being able to dump 20 grains is stupid.
Conclusions:
I chose several categories upon which to judge this press. Cost, Ease of use, and MTBF.
The press itself is pretty neat, it's fairly strong, it has a lot of compound leverage for those tough sizing chores, the quick change system is well thought-out and for the thousand or so cases I've sized on it it works pretty well. However, the best part of this is definately the price.
The ease of use was pretty good, pull the handle and a prepped case/live round popped out, it took a bit of doing to set it up properly, and required several re-orders to Lee for more/different parts but that's mostly my own damn fault. The powder measure thing still has me pretty bent so I'm lowering the score somewhat based on that.
One of the places where this press suffered somewhat was the MTBF, I could more or less count on the case feeder jamming, not feeding about 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 times, and a major failure which resulted in the press having to be partially disassembled about 1 in 500.
If it were not for the issues with the powder measure I would give this tool a B+ (due to the price and relative ease of use) however, because of the rather poor MTBF and the powder measure issues, I'm giving this tool a strong C.
It's not a bad tool, and it's not a great tool. But it is a tool, and consequently is welcome on my reloading bench.
Lee gets some stuff right, and some stuff wrong. This is the first time I've been able to experience both at the same time.
I originally bought it in the interest of using it to prep brass for a dillon 650 I plan on buying later this year. But I figured I would make full use of it until I got the dillon.
A few thoughts on the press:
The press itself isn't bad. It suffers from the inadequacies I normally find in Lee presses, the base is made of cast aluminum (possibly cast zinc), the primers dump into a hole in the bottom, requiring either a large hole be drilled in the table, or unbolting the press every time you want to clean out the primer area. For the most part, it seems this is a lee turret press to which some modifications were performed to turn it into a budget progressive.
It has some pretty goofy features, but over all it's not a bad unit seeing as how I paid under $100 for it.
So far I've set it up and used it to do my case prep work (sizing die, dillon case trimmer etc), and for the most part it's done a bang up job. For this work I have never been happier.
But tonight I was going to set it up to use it what it was meant for, loading ammo. So I plugged another turret thinger (I believe that's the technical term) into the top, screwed in the charging die, attached the powder measure, put in my seating die and assumed all was right with the world. The powder measure is set up with a lee micrometer charging bar. (this is an after-market accessory, but I'm of the opinion that being stuck with someone elses idea of "everything I need" is the quickest route to disappointment).
I sit down, pour powder into the measure (I'm a big fan of hodgdon's varget) and buckle up to reload a bunch of .223. So I throw a test charge and pour it into the scale, I do this a few times always finding my charges to be quite short. It isn't long before the screw is maxed out, and I'm still only dumping about 20-21 grains (24.8 behind a 62gr M855 bullet is my load for this).
At this point I'm confused, so I look at the directions, I'm still confused, so I read the directions again. I finally dig through the table that discusses how much each powder disk will dispense. Varget isn't even listed, and the closest I can get with H335 (another powder I used to load a lot) is 24 grains.
There are directions for stacking the disks and doing all kinds of other voodoo that will get me to my end goal of being able to charge my cases with the right volume of powder but I'm awestruck as to what a kludge this thing is. How is it that every other manufacturer can sell you a powder measure that can reliably dispense 3 grains of bullseye or 250 grains of H50BMG without this much hassle?
I think tomorrow I'm going to spend some time on the lathe and work out a connecting rod and adapter so I can just attach my RCBS powder measure to it and call it a day. I'm not surprised about the disks not being able to dump enough powder, but thier micrometer tool only being able to dump 20 grains is stupid.
Conclusions:
I chose several categories upon which to judge this press. Cost, Ease of use, and MTBF.
The press itself is pretty neat, it's fairly strong, it has a lot of compound leverage for those tough sizing chores, the quick change system is well thought-out and for the thousand or so cases I've sized on it it works pretty well. However, the best part of this is definately the price.
The ease of use was pretty good, pull the handle and a prepped case/live round popped out, it took a bit of doing to set it up properly, and required several re-orders to Lee for more/different parts but that's mostly my own damn fault. The powder measure thing still has me pretty bent so I'm lowering the score somewhat based on that.
One of the places where this press suffered somewhat was the MTBF, I could more or less count on the case feeder jamming, not feeding about 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 times, and a major failure which resulted in the press having to be partially disassembled about 1 in 500.
If it were not for the issues with the powder measure I would give this tool a B+ (due to the price and relative ease of use) however, because of the rather poor MTBF and the powder measure issues, I'm giving this tool a strong C.
It's not a bad tool, and it's not a great tool. But it is a tool, and consequently is welcome on my reloading bench.
Lee gets some stuff right, and some stuff wrong. This is the first time I've been able to experience both at the same time.
