i've used one for a year, i put the seat and crimp dies for 40 s@w and 45 acp in a turret and turn the turret back and forth by hand to seat and crimp, don't use the auto index. cases are sized on a pacific power C press, primed with a rcbs ram prime die in a lee reloader press and charged with powder using a ohaus duo-measure with a lyman multi-expand die set in a redding model 7 press. yes i reload to enjoy using the equipment. i now have 3 turrets with seat and crimp dies.
Posts: 107 | Location: alabama | Registered: 18 August 2002
I've used one of the 3 hole presses for years, among others. I've never found any of the ammo I made in the Lee any more or less accurate then in my Rockchucker (since passed on to my brother), or my buddy's Dillons (which I use for mass produced pistol ammo and AR15 fodder), as long as I paid attention to what I was doing. FWIW - Dan
Posts: 5284 | Location: Alberta | Registered: 05 October 2001
I have one of the 3 hole presses and have used it for over 25 years. I also have all my dies in extra turrets so once there set only minor ajustment is needed for diffrent bullets. In my op. the lee is by far the best press for the money -I load from 218 bee to 458 win. mag./.32 s&ww to 454 cas. with no problems at all
I've been using a three hole Lee for 23 years and I haven't had any issues with it at all. I do admit that when I resized some 375 H&H brass last week I cringed a little bit as I pulled the handle down. But, it seemed to handle the big cases just fine.
Posts: 12603 | Location: Kentucky, USA | Registered: 30 December 2002
I`ve been using a 3 die Lee for 15 yrs & for the money it`s unbeatable. The ability to have your different calibre dies in separate turrets so as not to lose adjustment is worth having one on its own.
In Australia they are by far the cheapest in price, heaps of my mates have them & we all swear by them.
My advice is if you get one you won`t be sorry.
Good luck
Posts: 124 | Location: Newcastle Australia | Registered: 23 September 2004
I was expecting to load a round with three pulls on the handle. I never made that work, due primarily to the old primers bounceing around and pluging the primer mechanism. I wasn't impressed with the priming, either.
So I resized and deprimed on my single stage (lee Cpress). Then I primed with a lee hand primer with tray.
Or, if a pistol round, I would run it thru my lee pro1000 (either off the range, or resized and deprimed, or also primed).
I do some rifle rounds on the turret, but really just seat bullets, as I drop powder with a powder measure and all that is left is seating the bullet.
Oh, the auto advance only helps when I can figure out 3 operations to do without removeing the case from the press.
JerryO
Posts: 231 | Location: MN. USA | Registered: 09 June 2000
The basic argument is that turret presses have too much give in them because of the need for indexing the stations and do not produce very concentric rounds. Having said that it seems to me that reloads from my Redding 25 six station turret press are every bit as concentric as those of my RCBS Rockchucker. Go figure. Best wishes.
I have one. Of all the turret presses I have used, including an old Hollywood and a Lyman All-American, the Lee ius by far the crummiest! I especially dislike the priming setup, which requires you to handle each and every primer individually. Lee claims a high productiuon rate using this contraption. Well, forget that if you use its' priming arrangement!
I had one for a year, before going with a dillon. It was MUCH faster than a single stage machine. I mainly loaded handgun rounds, Had six turrets with the dies set up and adjusted.
Yes I primed in the machine, used the auto advance feature and the auto disk measure, with lee final crimp dies, so 4 pulls of the handle was a completed round. Picking primers up manually was the only bad part, I hear they are coming out with an auto primer feed for it.
I never got more than 150 rounds per hour, but that beat the hell out of a single stage co-ax. But then I only get about 400/hr with my dillon 650.
Posts: 596 | Location: Oshkosh, Wi USA | Registered: 28 July 2001
Quote: I had one for a year, before going with a dillon. It was MUCH faster than a single stage machine. I mainly loaded handgun rounds, Had six turrets with the dies set up and adjusted.
Yes I primed in the machine, used the auto advance feature and the auto disk measure, with lee final crimp dies, so 4 pulls of the handle was a completed round. Picking primers up manually was the only bad part, I hear they are coming out with an auto primer feed for it.< !--color--> I never got more than 150 rounds per hour, but that beat the hell out of a single stage co-ax. But then I only get about 400/hr with my dillon 650.
That would be a great improvement! I just wonmder how they managed to overlook this little detail to begin with?? After all, a cartridge is just not complete with only a case, bullet, and powder charge.< !--color-->
I have one of there 3 hole presses and i love it, use for handgun reloading only, i didn't want to go with a progressive press,mostly because of cost but also because i like to sit down, relax, and load up some ammo, i'am not in a hurry.
