Reloding Press suggestion

[mdThanatos]

A friend and I are considering reloading and doing it together. He has a house, I have an apartment so it will be at his place and both of us will be using it. We both shoot the same calibers, .45, .38, .357 and .223.

What we are trying to figure out is what press to look at. I have read the sticky about new reloading and since we usually go shooting together once every couple of months, a turret press will probably work for us.

The main question is will something like the Lee Classic Turret Press work for all the calibers listed, just needing the proper dies and turret plates?

What we are considering is the Classic Turret Press Kit and then purchasing the dies we need and additional turret plate for them.

Thanks for any insight,

MD

 

[Walkalong]

An excellent way to start. Be sure to pick up a good reloading manual with it.

 

[J_McLeod]

Lee turret will be a great way to start.

 

[777TRUTH]

The Lee Turret will do all those calibers and is an excellent choice.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

I don't have any experience with the Lee Classic Turret, but I've never heard anything but wonderful things about it.

It's also great to go in with someone. You can buy a lot more stuff when there's more than one person footing the bill. And trust me, there will always be something else you want to get. That's the fun part. My brother and I got into it together and it's been a fun time for sure.

 

[gacajun]

I bought the Lee Classic turret and I load the calibers that you listed plus .380, .40, .308 and 30-06. The turret is a good choice and is very versatile. I bought a 4 hole bushing for each of the calibers and just leave the dies loaded in the bushing. Caliber changes are very easy. The Lee reloading book is a good one as well....its a good start and will take care of most of what you listed as loading.

 

[greyling22]

rifle is a little more complicated than handgun, so I suggest you start with pistols. probably 357 or 45. start with 1 or 2 calibers and make sure you like it before you go bananas.

 

[twofifty]

If you share calibers -i.e. both have a .223- you will likely end up having to re-adjust the dies each time to suit your particular firearms.

 

[grubbylabs]

I know that Lee makes quite a few things that are pretty good, I have some of them. But I also know that you will be replacing a few of the things quite quickly, like the powder dispenser along with the scale and some others. I am sure I will get blasted for this but I am going to go against the grain and recommend the RCBS set up. Their stuff seems to be a little more up to the long term task. I am quickly becoming a Hornady guy my self but I do have quite a bit of RCBS stuff and I really like what I have from them. I know they make a turret kit that comes with most every thing you will need including a load book. But as others have suggested look into another book as well. I like my Speer book (comes with RCBS stuff) Hornady, and Lyman books. The Lyman book is probably more versatile than the Hornady or Speer book.

Good luck with your quest.

 

[res7s]

I trust you're talking about the Lee Classic Cast. I love mine. I haven't had it long so I don't know if it will last as long as my 1982 Lee Turret press has, but I guess I'll find out. It is rather massive and WAY stronger, so I'm thinking it will. I used to load with a Lyman T-Mag, and I know it's not the exact same press as the RCBS turret, but it is the same design. I liked it, but not as much as my Lee, and it's the little three hole turret press. Having six holes is nice, but I didn't like the turret not having any back support and the alignment wasn't as good as the Lee's.

I do like Ohaus scales better than the Lee scale, but my Perfect powder measure is more accurate with stick and flake powders than either my Uniflow, or LNL, and the same with ball powder. The only thing I don't like about it is it's made of plastic.

Here's an old review. There are three parts. http://www.realguns.com/archives/122.htm

 

[Legionnaire]

The Lee Classic Turret is a great press, especially if you reload multiple cartridges. I have a separate turret head set up for each of the common cartridges I load for (.357 mag, .44 mag, .223, .243, .308, etc.). twofifty has a point, so I would suggest adding a neck sizing die for your rifle cartridges; keep your brass separate from your buddy's and you shouldn't have to full-length resize each time ... just size the necks. But you will have to adjust if you change bullets frequently.

Regardless, the Lee Classic Turret is a great press for what you want to do.

 

[Blue68f100]

Depending on how much you shoot you may need to go a Progressive press, particularly since you reloading for 2 shooters. A single stage press the max you will produce in a hr is ~90 rounds. So when you go to the range it's all gone in 10-15 min. A lot of work for time used to shoot it. A progressive will give you a min of 300/hr. You also need to figure out how much free time you have to devote to reloading. If time is limited you may want to re-think what your equipment needs are.

A SS press is great to learn on and good for low count ammo, bolt rifles. They are also the best when it comes to working up loads. As for multiple guns in the same caliber, use shims. Set the die up for the short length and use shims to set it back for the longer. You can also use a caliber set to measure the seater depth and adj accordingly. You measure from the inside, die base to bottom of seater.

If you want to go Progressive either the Hornady LNL-AP or Dillon 550b are good choices.

 

[RandyP]

On my very nice Lee CLASSIC Turret at a super relaxed pace I'm making 150-175 rounds per hour, if I really want to exert the effort - 200 per hour is achievable. It will easily do all the calibers you have listed and then some. I have a separate turret set up with dies for the four calibers I reload, so caliber changes are simple and economical.

Some of the best Lee pricing is at https://fsreloading.com/html/xcart/catalog/index.html. Kempf's and MidwayUSA are also very good sources, among many.

A progressive (even the Lee Loadmaster) is more complicated but will churn our many hundreds of rounds per hour. The BMW of progressives is the Dillon. but that marque carries a matching price tag, typically 3 times the cost of Lee, though it is doubtless worth it.

Lots of youtube videos out there showing all the various presses in operation.

 

[TwoEyedJack]

In general, I really like Lee products. I have an autodisk powder measure that has thrown tens of thousands of charges without fail. All my handgun dies are Lee carbide. I just got into bullet casting and my molds and melting pot are Lee. That said, none of my presses are Lee. I have two single-stage RCBS presses and one Dillon RL550. Almost all of my reloading is now done on the Dillon. I can reload more quality cartridges per hour with the Dillon than anything else. I think of all the hours spent in front of a single stage press and think what a waste. If you don't have the cash now, save up for a few months. The only thing I really don't like about the Dillon is changing from small primers to large. It only takes about 10 minutes but I still hate doing it. I try to load all of my large primer loads (.338, .270. 30-06, 7MM-08, .22-250,.45, .41) then switch over to the small primer loads (two versions of .223, .357, 9MM), which I shoot more.

Reloading is a lot of fun and you will learn a lot no matter what setup you get. There are really no bad choices, it is just a matter of time and money, like everything else!

 

[Olympus]

Another vote for the Lee Classic Turret. I went from using a finicky progressive to the Classic Turret and can't imagine why I went with a progressive to begin with. When the progressive was working, it was really fast. But if you factor in the time I spent tinkering with it to get it running smoothly, I am easily confident that a steady pace on a Classic Turret would have been a higher round count. I use the Lee Pro Auto Disk powder measurer and the Lee Safety Prime system on mine. I load all the calibers you listed except .223. I absolutely LOVE my Classic Turret.