The-Armory.com Forum

Well it's finaly occured to me that I'm spending WAY too much on ammo. Its time to start reloading. Sounds simple huh, Well I dont realy know what I need to get started properly. Thats why I'm here.... Ok where to start. Maybe the type of rounds I need to reload. Well I use alot of 357 Sig (not cheap), a butt ton of 5.56X45 (not real expensive), some 7.62X51 (not cheap) and I wish I could afford to shoot my FN 57 5.7X28 (REALLY EXPENSIVE FOR SUCH A SMALL ROUND).
Ok then maybe my shooting habits. Well I normaly shoot about 150-240 rounds of 223 per week, about 100 rounds of 308 per week, maybe 200 rounds of 357 sig and 100 rounds of 5.7.
So now I ask. What type of press is best for the amount I shoot, what s the best brand and how much should it cost to get set up (initial investment)? What all do I need?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

First, get a couple of reloading manuals, Sierra, Hornaday, Lyman, or Lee, and read them a couple of times. This will tell you what you are getting into and give you some idea of what you need.

Second, decide your budget! You can get in cheaply, with a Lee kit, or somewhat more expensive with an RCBS kit, or go whole hog and start with Dillon. Start with a single stage press before you graduate to an automatic. Learn all the mistakes you can make while you are loading them one at a time!

Once you have done those two things get a Midway and a Graf's catalog and start dreaming.

Oh, and find someone who will teach you how to do what you want to do.

Wayne The Shrink wrote:First, get a couple of reloading manuals, Sierra, Hornaday, Lyman, or Lee, and read them a couple of times.

Learn all the mistakes you can make while you are loading them one at a time!

Once you have done those two things get a Midway and a Graf's catalog and start dreaming.

What Wayne said, but do consider Hornady's lock-n-load AP - As for cheap - unless you really do a lot more shooting the pay back will not happen soon. $500-$600 for a progressive press or a couple hundred for single stage presses. The best part about rolling your own is increased accuracy and it is a bit cheaper if you do not figure in your cost of the press and dies.
Rock Chucker Press Kit is still a pretty good deal and certainly a strong press even for those magnum loads. A Frankford press stand works well and takes the abuse. A good lube is a certainty, like Rooster CFL-56 or Lyman's lube. A vibrator cleaner and treated corncob material for tumbling. You can get away with may be not cleaning first fired rounds but it is better to clean.
Hope this has been some help - remember - read - ask questions and don't get distracted while reloading - - back off all max loads 20 to 10%,
its lots of fun and certainly adds to the hobby.

Longshots is right on also. The only reason I don't include Hornaday's system is that retro-fitting my 30 or so sets of dies becomes prohibitively expensive. If you start that way it's probably worth it.

A vibrator cleaner is very handy, I use mine frequently. Hover, i didn't have one for the first 20 or so years of reloading. If you keep your brass out of the dirt cleaning is nice but not necessary. It became necessary when I started shooting black powder cartridge, and I discovered that I love bright shiny brass!

I'm running a Lee Pro 1000 progressive press and for the money, it's hard to beat.

How well does the Lee progressive handle rifle brass, especially long rifle brass? I've not seen a real report on this. Most reports do not distinguish between rifle and pistol reloading.

Not sure, the most I use it for has been my 223, but mostly for my .41mag.

I found this on the Lee web page:

"The Progressive 1000 has an overall cartridge length limitation of 2-5/16 inches. Any cartridge longer than this cannot be reloaded on the Pro 1000 because the shell plate starts to index before the cartridge is out of the die."

Yeah, I know what Lee says about it, but I'm curious about how stable, accurate, etc. it is from those who use it. Especially when used close to it's limits.

The .223 is the largest round I have loaded with it, so above that, I really couldn't tell you.

I would look at www.midwayusa.com and watch for a sale / clearance on LEE reloaders.

I purchased a RCBS rockchucker setup way back in the 70's. Its a very good press but there price on the dies is a tad out of my price range(disabled/on SS my $$ is limited). I just purchased all my calibers in the LEE dies after running 6,000 rds of 308win thru there $9 RGB dies without a problem. With another 5 gallon bucket of cases left to go these affordable dies will get a workout. I'm also using there dipper cups to load the charge close to the specs i'm using then i use the powder trickler to bring it to the load I want. Its very fast even when doing one at a time you can go thru 1,000 very quickly and there all matched rounds and are exactly the same. The LEE dies fit my RCBS press perfectly and work great.

I just picked up a LEE 1000 setup for 45acp but i haven't tried it yet. Just running it by hand without reloading it seems to be very fast. I can't wait to try it out.

Other great places to check out for presses are the gun shows and eBay (as long as the price doesn't run away with some buyers). I picked up an old Hornady progressive for $100. I actually like it more than my Dillon 550 (a lot more stable believe it or not).

I have to agree on the Lee dies--have plenty of them and they haven't disappointed me yet. The Lee presses are okay, but aluminum tends to flex more than the steel in a lot of the other presses, so you look about a thousandth in tolerance. But if you're cranking pistol ammo out for defensive shooting, or you're like me where quality of pistol ammo doesn't make much difference in my accuracy, or you're trying to get military accuracy (about 3 moa) in your .223 ammo and you want lots of it for cheap, then a Lee press is a good way to go.

Best part is being able to get powder and primer at the The Armory.