Hello all,

I've been reloading for several years now, but I have always used my father's equipment. Now that I'm out of college I'd like to get my own equipment. I've been looking hard at the Hornady Lock-n-Load setup, and of course at compairable Redding equipment (b/c that is the equipment that I learned on).

I'm not going to be reloading for Benchrest Competition, but I do quite a bit of varmint hunting and I'm getting into Silhouette Competition.

Is the Hornady equipment consistent enough to give accurate powder charges? Does the L-n-L setup hold its consistency? Should I just save my pennies a while longer and get the Redding equipment?

Let me know what your opinions and experiences are. Thanks everyone.

I love the Hornady products and have zero problems. I also like Redding and will not own any other powder measure. There are better but they are expensive custom measures.
I load a lot of handgun ammo for hunting and the Hornady dies are the best.
You will not go wrong with either.
I was an RCBS fan for years but found Hornady gave me 3 times better accuracy. I still like RCBS presses but will not buy their revolver dies any more.

Buy your last <insert equipment here> first.

Wilson dies and arbor press.
If you dont' want to weigh each charge, Harrel Measure.
Good beam scale, you'd be set.

If I had known this before I bought all my RCBS stuff, I'd be a few GUNS ahead.

Regards,
Jimno

RCBS has served me well for over 30years without a problem. I see no reason to try anything different. Good Luck with your choices.

I have an old Pacific powder measure and a Lyman 55 Measure. I have a friend who has a couple of Harrell powder measures. I am of the opinion that a powder measure is a powder measure.

My pacific has a tall reservoir, and as the powder column drops, the charges change. The bigger the drop, the more the difference. Since the Lyman 55 has about half the capacity, the effect is still there, you just don’t see as big a difference. My friend who owns two Harrell complained to me about how much money he had spent on the things, and how the powder charges varied just as much as his old (no idea what it was) measure.

Certain powders throw awful, and those are the long stick powders. Ball powders throw well as long as they don’t clog up the measure by being too dusty.

I have not having done an exhaustive market survey on measures, but I suspect since all of them are gravity feed, they all throw charges with the same variability. Stick powders orient randomly and that of course changes the volume which of course changes the throw weight. I don’t see how a powder measure can control the orientation of the powder granules. There may be a few antigravity centrifugal measures out there that throw all powders perfectly, but I suspect the claims of measure superiority are due to the placebo effect. People who pay more often expect their equipment to be better. And they “see†it, when it may not be there.

If you want to throw exact weight charges you are going to end up having to weigh them.

Just buy something that is cost effective and you can get repair parts if you drop it and break something.

Jimno2506 has good advice; serious benchrest shooters use arbor presses and special dies, not standard progressive presses. The Hornady LNL press uses RCBS' Uniflow powder measure, which is a very good measure but isn't up to doing benchrest ammo without checking each charge on a scale and trickling in that last couple tenths of a grain of powder.

CMcDermott,

I wasn't talking about the Hornady Progressive, I'm asking about the single stage press and the available kit that includes a powder measure and some other beginning reloading supplies.

But, tell me more about these arbor presses. Who makes them? Where can I find them?
Thanks for all the advice so far folks, this site is a great tool.

IMHO, far and away the best single stage press is the Forster co-ax. It has superb alignment of cases to dies, as they are allowed to "float" and allign themselves, die changes are super fast, and there is no shellholder so it's faster to remove cases and to change between calibers.

Of the std type dies, Redding are excellent. I like the Redding BR powder measure as well. Add a good scale, some calipers and misc stuff and you're ready to go.

The Co-ax press is a top of the line press for accuracy. I would not mess with an arbor press unless you are going to shoot BR. You need special custom dies and they involve a lot of hand work and expense.
I am sure you will be fine with the kit you are looking at.

Kimber.204
I think you will find any of the above named reloading manufacures equipment will produce sub minute of varmint ammo. And will do the same for the silhouette shooting.
I think for your competive shooting you would be best off spending your time practicing rather than getting wrapped up with the fine details of reloading. There will be plenty of time for that later.

muck

I love my Co-ax and Dillon, but if I were in your shoes, I'd go for Redding's turret press. It is hard to pass on the kits put out by Redding and RCBS, but if you're a handgunner those kits won't give you the production capacity that the turret press will.

Dillon 650 for everything from 25acp to 510 Lott and 50-90 Sharps. A Dillon service rep named Darryl something used to shoot a 6PPC. He was very competitive and loaded all of his Bench Rest Competition. Won a lot of matches. You can load a couple hundred rounds of rifle ammunition in an hour or 500+ rounds of pistol ammunition in the same time on a 650. No-BS lifetime warranty, and casefeeders are an option for real speed.

Nothing else comes close. 99% of the IPSC shooters load on a Dillon. Ditto HiPower rifle shooters.

Rich

make that 458 Lott.

Rich

If you plan on putting a lot of rounds down range, then maybe a progressive, like some of the posters are recommending would do. Of course a Dillon 650 is not at all cheap. For your varmint shooting, I believe you can do no better than a Wilson inline seater die and arbor press. This combo has produced the most concentric loaded round of any seating die I have used. If you go to a benchrest match, you will see a lot of shooters loading between relays and almost all of them will be using an inline seater(some custom dies, but a lot of Wilsons). I have yet to see someone using a Dillon or even heard of one that loads his benchrest ammo on a progressive press. Wilson dies can be had for less than $40 a die(neck die or seater). They, along with arbor presses are available from Sinclair, Lester Bruno, and Midway to name a few. I load strictly for accuracy and rarely shoot more than 50 rounds in a day(exceped when match shooting), so I don't have the need for speed, and I can honestly say I haven't used a threaded press in years to seat a bullet. I do use them for FL resizing and prefer Redding type S FL sizers. I load for 6mm PPC, 243win, 243AI, 6.5x55, 7mm rem mag, 30br, and 300 win mag.

kimber,just give the nice man a call at sinclair and tell him everything you will or want to do,and let him take care of it.tell him you want the good stuff.

how much difference to accuracy can a press make?

Varmints?

Have a look at Sinclair's web site.

Also, look at Varmint Al's site:

http://www.varmintal.com/arelo.htm

I like RCBS, good customer service, functional gear. But I'm doing a single stage press, and lots of "hand work."

That said, I've loaded .223 Ackley in a Rem. 700 PSS that was shooting 0.2xx" groups at 100 yds.

-- Using some Sinclair case prep stuff.

RCBS warranty, customer service is "bomb proof." I had a factory rep. tell me "Screw it up and send it back so we can re-engineer it!"

I sent back a primer press. Replaced with a new one, better design, and a box full of "goodies."