Shopping List for Lee Hand Press Reloading Needed

[Ranch Dog]

Since I don't have a dedicated reloading room, or even an area to claim just for a "bench", I have all my reloading tools stored in office file boxes stacked at the end of a layout table in my office, powder and boolits are in boxes under the table. Other than the occassional pile of clean brass laying out on the drafting table (I haven't had to do a table drawing in over 20 years ), or the gun I may have disassembled on that table, my clients would never know about my obsession .... unless they happened to come in when I wasn't wearing a cover shirt.

Sound like a great way to get it done!

[Rooster59]

I suppose lost coast could benefit from this although it is slightly off topic. Just curious what the rest of us do for seating and crimping. I always seat then crimp in two steps. That foils my attempt to "set and forget" the seat/crimp die in my turrets for calibers that get cast bullets. Specifically 35 Rem and 45-70 Govt.

I'm a little apprehensive to use the Lee FCD on cast loads for rifles as the collet style crimp might down size the bullet a bit. Maybe that's an old wives tale, not sure.

For handgun cartridges I use the FCD as it appears to be a roll crimp anyway.

I've thought about getting a second seat/crimp die for the 35 and 45-70 and install it in the FCD spot in my 4hole turrets. I haven't loaded a jacketed 45-70 bullet in 4 years and don't anticipate doing so in 35 Rem.

[Ranch Dog]

I suppose lost coast could benefit from this although it is slightly off topic. Just curious what the rest of us do for seating and crimping. I always seat then crimp in two steps. That foils my attempt to "set and forget" the seat/crimp die in my turrets for calibers that get cast bullets. Specifically 35 Rem and 45-70 Govt.

There is a real basic misunderstanding of the Lee FCD dies and I think we have a post here that outlines the types available and how they work. I'm very familiar with the guts on both the collet type, this is the type normally referred to as the simple "FCD" and the "Carbine FCD" for handgun cartridges, let me offer a few remarks.

I'm a little apprehensive to use the Lee FCD on cast loads for rifles as the collet style crimp might down size the bullet a bit. Maybe that's an old wives tale, not sure.

Yeap, old wife's tale for sure. The Lee "collet" FCD, used with bottleneck cartridges (35 Rem) and straight wall rifle cartridges (45-70 Govt) has a fine, segmented collet that moves in horizontally to contact the case mouth. That is the only contact with the cartridge.

For handgun cartridges I use the FCD as it appears to be a roll crimp anyway.

Shooting cast bullets in revolvers is where you can run into problems with the FCD supplied with the pistol cartridges. These operate very similar to the way a normal roll or taper crimp is applied through the bullet seating die except a floating crimp sleeve is used so that variations in brass length does not result in over or under crimping.

The issue with these carbide FCD dies is that they pass through the carbide ring at the base of the die. With over bore bullets, the bullets might be resized when passing the carbide ring, hence; defeating the purpose of selecting a cast bullet for the particular firearm. You can check it out by measuring the inside diameter of the carbide ring and then measuring your brass thickness at the rim. If the brass rim thickness times 2 plus the bullet diameter is greater than the inside diameter of the carbide ring, the bullet will be resized. The resizing typically takes place inside the case.

I've thought about getting a second seat/crimp die for the 35 and 45-70 and install it in the FCD spot in my 4hole turrets. I haven't loaded a jacketed 45-70 bullet in 4 years and don't anticipate doing so in 35 Rem.

I would stick with the (collet) FCD with these cartridges. The only way that these dies could be an issue is the bulet will not pass through the collet. I have never seen a case where this could happen.

[hr][/hr]
I was experiencing issues with the 357 Mag, 41 Mag, 44 Mag, and 45 Colt, so I had Lee make rifle type collet FCD for these cartridges and offered through my business. They worked very well and eliminated the sizing that was taking place as the cartridge passed through the carbide sizing ring of the Carbide FCD. Lee has continued to make special runs of the dies and I have since seen them through other vendors as well.

The only comment I have about the handgun (collet) FCDs is that with the short length of the dies they do require a solid stroke to actuate the collet. Lee was concerned that the short collet component might have only a 250,000 round life but at $25 I thought it not an issue. That is more than a lifetime of reloading for most folks.

With that in mind though, along comes the Bottle Neck Pistol FCD. This is essentially a rifle type collet FCD that is inverted inside the die body. The collet is being actuated by contact with the top of the die so a long collet component can be used resulting in a longer and smoother stroke of the ram delivering the crimp.

[hr][/hr]
Finally, I shoot cast bullet in all my semi auto handguns. I do not use the Lee Carbide FCD because they do resize my over bore bullets. I bought just a bullet seating die body and have it on the fourth stage of the turret. I trim my brass uniformly, an easy task with the Lee trimmers and apply just enough of a crimp to bring the case rim back to speck after passing through the powder through expanding die. The crimp desired is case rim thickness times two plus bullet diameter. Semi-autos headspace on the case rim so the cartridge does not really need a taper.

[Rooster59]

Well that is certainly enlightening. I assumed the FCD collet was a much wider surface that was clamping over a wider (taller on a vertical brass case) area than a typical roll crimp ring. I'll go back to using the FCD on all my 35 Rem and 45-70 loads. That saves a lot of time fussing over die adjustment to use the seat/crimp die to crimp after seating.

It's funny that you mention how the FCD for pistols could potentially downsize a cast pistol bullet. The other day when I was loading some 45LC (Lee 300-454) the standard seat/crimp die was hitting the seated bullet ogive quite a distance above the brass. It actually pushed a slight ring into the lead ogive (approx 12bhn). I resorted to using the FCD to crimp and it didn't hit the bullet noticeably. However, after reading your description I do remember feeling a slight "clunk" as the bullet entered the FCD body but it passed through and was crimped properly. It would appear my standard crimp die ID is smaller than my FCD ID. I'll have to take each apart and inspect them in case there is something else causing the crimp die to hang up on the .454 bullets. It doesn't hang up on some store bought Suter's Choice .452 250RNFP bullets. Just those .454" 300gr Lee bullets my buddy cast. The meplat on those Lee 300's is very wide though and the ogive doesn't taper down quite as much as the SC 250RNFP. The SC 250gr bullets may not even be .452" until the shank portion that is inside the case.

Thanks RD. I wish I had made these comments earlier. I was going on what "some people" had claimed and not actually found that information on my own or from a truly knowledgeable source like yourself.

[Lostcoast]

Excellent post, surv - thanks for sharing all that great info.

[Model 52]

With the breach lock system, whether the hand press or a bench press, the dies stay where you left them when you snap them in and out - about a 15 second swap. I figure the next real meaningful improvement would be to skip right up to a Dillon progressive, but then I couldn't kick back with my feet up on the desk while I was working the brass

I have a Dillon 550B with 5 quick change kits and 3 more tool heads set up for other rifle calibers I load on occasion using a Redding BR powder measure.

But I still use a Lee hand press and a Lee Auto Prime for most of my .45-70 loading.

[mr surveyor]

With the breach lock system, whether the hand press or a bench press, the dies stay where you left them when you snap them in and out - about a 15 second swap. I figure the next real meaningful improvement would be to skip right up to a Dillon progressive, but then I couldn't kick back with my feet up on the desk while I was working the brass

I have a Dillon 550B with 5 quick change kits and 3 more tool heads set up for other rifle calibers I load on occasion using a Redding BR powder measure.

But I still use a Lee hand press and a Lee Auto Prime for most of my .45-70 loading.

when the previous "late great unpleasantness" turned the shooting sports upside down 4-1/2 years ago, particularly in cost/availability of ammunition, I turned more from the semi-auto stuff back to revolvers and bolt/lever rifle shooting. I even went back to a pump gun for bird hunting. If I was still fun shooting the nines, 40's and 45's (semi-autos), I would NOT be able to keep up with my former volume of shooting if I was loading it all with the Hand Press. But, with the cost and inavailability of most reloading components I couldn't keep up anyway, so I'm glad I gravitated back to the simpler "manually operated" firearms (I still carry the semi's occassionally...5-10% of the time). The old school "mentors" I have available are (a couple now gone) staunch rifle and revolver loaders and all insisted I start my reloading experience with the old Lee Classic Loader. I'll never regret that. I loaded up at least a thousand rounds of .357 (and a couple hundred 9mm before I decided it just wasn't cost efficient), and got a real feel for the little details involved. I studied the Hand Press as compared to a bench mounted single stage, and fell in love with the idea of complete portability. I'll never regret that either, as long as I don't have to squeeze a .270 case in a full length resizer.

I got to thinking last night after I said something about shooting less than 1000 rounds per year and realized it's probably closer to 2k or more per year, but that's still real low volume loading and shooting.

surv

[Lostcoast]

Yes it seems like a Lee hand load press is a nice, simple and low impact way to get a taste for the art of reloading so I can determine if it is an activity I want to get into more fully. So I am back to compiling a list of the needed components. Should I for example be looking to get carbide dies?


Surv, do you pour your own boolits as well for your .357 loads?

[mr surveyor]

Nope... not into casting.

And, yes on the carbide dies, no matter what brand you pick. The Lee (carbide) 4 die sets (for handgun loads) were running under $45 before the frenzy, and are well worth the money. No need to lube the brass with carbide, although on larger brass (like .44 mag) it does seem to occassionally help to run a lubed case through ever 10-15 rounds. Rifle dies are a different animal.

As for your "list" of essentials, If you get the Hand Press "Kit", there's several items you will want to add. If you plan to stay with loads near the start to near moderate range, you can get by with a set of the Lee Dippers for powder measure (using the Lee volume measurements in the Lee 2nd Edition Reloading Manual), and the Lee "slide rule" that shows a great many powders and relative weight/volume ratio for the dippers. If you plan to load anything in the moderate to max loads, you're gonna want either a precision scale and individually measure each and every load, or a good scale and powder dispenser. Either way, every powder drop is going to be a step of it's own into each piece of brass, no matter which of those methods you use. Along with the powder measure work, you'll need at least one stable "loading block", or a plastic cartridge tray from a factory ammo box in a larger caliber than you're loading for will work, if you glue it to a small board for stability. A plastic tray from .45 acp will work fine with .38/.357 as the openings are large enough for the case rims to fit in. Then again, the RCBS loading blocks are only about 10 bucks.

In addition to the powder dropping tools, you'll also want a chamfer/deburring tool ($10-20) and a primer pocket tool (5 bucks), and I highly recommend a kinetic bullet puller (it WILL get used).

Priming can be done with the Ram Prime tool that comes with the Hand Press kit, or you can buy a hand prime tool that holds 50-100 primers from Lee, RCBS or others. The Lee hand prime tool, I think, is still around $20, and will hold up for many thousands of cycles.

There's a lot more "stuff" that can be added to the list, but that's all I can come up with off the top of my head as necessities .... other than at least two current reloading manuals. If you're going to use the small scale Lee "system", one of those manuals really needs to be the Lee manual. Never, ever take a published load as gospel by itself - always cross reference with at least aonther trusted source. I've found typo's in a couple of "trusted" manuals, and they are out there. Now, most powder (and some bullet) manufacturers publish some load data on their websites. I don't use it as a primary source for all information, but I do use it as a cross reference to make sure the published data in the manual is reasonable.

Other than the above, your biggest challenge is gonna be finding components. I would suggest you get your manuals first, decide on what type of loads you want to work with, then isolate certain powders from that to give you the widest range of use possible. Although there's better powders suited to individual bullet styles and desired velocities, there are powders such as Unique, 2400, TrailBoss and others that will serve many, many purposes. Right now, you have to shop around, have at least 4-5 labels that will "work" and hope you find at least one on the shelf.

I guess I got a bit long winded for being the amatuer I am. There's a lot more "seasoned" advice out there.


surv

[44-40 Willy]

My setup is a Lee 4 hole turret press along with a Lee C press for decapping and bullet sizing. I started out this time loading 357s on the C press and then when I added 44-40 to the mix, I upgraded to the turret press.

But I'll tell yall what the best reloading investment I made was.... Manuals. When I started back loading after I retired from the Navy, it had been about 15 years since I last loaded a round of ammo and it was mostly shotgun back then with some 41 Mag and 35 Rem tossed in. I picked up a couple of manuals along with that C press and read 'em from cover to cover before I loaded a single round of ammo. I got to thinking the other day (that sometimes gets me in trouble) and decided that as it's been a while since I've actually loaded any ammo, that I'd re-read those manuals as a kind of brush up. Have the Lee manual on the nightstand right now. I don't think you can read them often enough.