A friend of mine has one of those Lee hand held presses and I borrowed it today to take to the range with me. I wanted to work up a load for the partition gold and didn't want to waste any more than I had to. This little piece is the cats meow for such a task. It is small and fit right in my range bag. I already had a bunch of sized cases so I don't know how it will work for that. I would load one starting charge and shoot it, Then up the charge .5gr and shoot that one until I was within close to max velocity and then I could load 3 rounds at close to max velocity and bingo. I wasted less bullets this way I found. Also changed the seating depth once. To do all this before I would have to load a bunch of rounds at home and take them with me.

Any way, not trying to ramble, just wanted to coment about something that'll make your life easier. And I'm typically not too impressed with a lot of Lee's equipment.

Hey NBHunter, Excellent Tip!

How did you keep the Powder scale out of the wind?

Like you.....I was not a Lee fan for many years.....then a friend sold me some dies.....now things are different.....Lee definitely has some worthwhile products.....However their so-called safety scale isn't one of them at this time.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy their steel press that they're advertizing.....Lee no longer means junk here.....rather it means....beware and do your researchg well. Their hand held primer tool isn't bad either.

Hot Core,
Our club has a 52 foot long building with a sitting/observing room for one half. The other half has 4 shooting stations so you are technically inside the whole time. I left my reload gear in the room and just walked back and forth a couple feet between the two. The little picture to the left under my sign on name shows my son shooting from one of these stations.

You are right about the wind though, it was pretty strong today.

A friend of mine did the same thing, but used a powder measure to avoid the breeze. He just determined about how much half a grain was on his measure, and checked the best load on a scale when he got home.
My Lee hand press will FLS .223Rem no problem.

I have one of those little hand presses too - use it at the range when I'm playing with seating depth variations. load the ammo at home with the bullets at max AOL and shoot a group, then seat the next string.002" deeper etc. untill the group is satisfactory.
The only problem is that I have to adjust the locking ring of the seating die, because its set up for a co-ax press @ home. So the digital vernier and comparator goes along so that I can duplicate the seating depth at home once the seating die is set up again for the co-ax press.

Hey NBHunter, Nice set-up for a Range.

I'd heard of people doing it on an open bench with the scale inside a box or in the back of a Bronco type of vehicle. No doubt your building is a significant improvement over that.

You may wish to closely examine bullet runout when using that tool for the larger calibers and longer cases.

NB Hunter - Count me as a convert! I used one for years, loading thousands of rounds with it until I broke it. I immediately bought another, gave it to my brother after many thousands more rounds and bought another. They are a Best Buy in my opinion, having loaded everything from .218 BEE to .416 Rigby on it.

The little hand held lee press has all kind of uses. It realy does have a large window to work in for big cases. It makes it a snap to load at the range. you can use it right at the shooting bench if you want to.
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If you like the Lee hand press, you'll love the Hunitngton Compac hand press. Smaller (in size not capacity), stronger (more rigidity and leverage), and more accurate than the Lee hand press. Combined with a window-style seating die, it is the best thing going for seating bullets at the range. I use mine at the house for all of my reloading tasks, save depriming, which I still do on my Lee hand press, with its hollow ram. I do everything except load powder and seat bullets from my easy chair. The rest is done at the kitchen table.

BigJake - I also have the RCBS hand press and agree that it is stronger than the LEE but is much less handy to use. I have not used my RCBS handpress in nearly 20 years because of the pain of changing shell holders and the difficulty of trying to keep it from rotating horizontly in my hands under heavy pressure. Screwed to a bench, as it is capable of it would be easier to use IMHO.

I don't think RCBS ever made the press I'm talking about; I think Huntington bought the rights to it after they sold off RCBS. It was formerly made by a different company, but they went out of business, and Huntington bought the rights to it.

However, it does sound like you and I are talking about the same press. Changing the shellholder does take an allen wrench, which is slightly less convenient that the spring-loaded systems on other presses. It comes with the allen wrench, which also is used to change out primer punches. I haven't had the problems with it rotating in my hands either. I mounted it to a ~4" circle of wood that lets it stand up on its own if I need both hands for something else for a minute. It doesn't interfere with the portability, and it is a little more comfortable in my lap that way too. That may help keep it from rotating on me too.

Setting a bullet on top of the case between the guide rods gets a little touchy, but I'm used to it now, and it seems like second nature. It is really at its best with a windowed seating die, like the RCBS competition seater die.

Yep. Too bad you can't prime cases with one. If you could, it would be about as good as the old Lyman 310 tool......

quote:

Originally posted by El Deguello:
Yep. Too bad you can't prime cases with one. If you could, it would be about as good as the old Lyman 310 tool......

Ahh, but you CAN reprime on a Lee Hand press! Just get a ram-prime die from Lee or Lyman (maybe others?). You could also try using the Lee autoprime II. Then it would be better than the Lyman 310, since it uses standard size dies, and can full length resize (if you have the arms to handle it!

If you're talking about the Huntington Compac, it already has a primer seating punch, with interchangeable small and large heads.