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I have presses from RCBS, Lee, Lyman, Dillon, and Ponsness-Warren.
The answer depends on what you are loading for. A full-time, world-class IPSC competitor would need something different from a 1000-yard benchrest shooter or a casual weekend skeet shooter.
I would get a RCBS Rockchucker or the equivalent for small batch precision loads, and/or a Dillon 550 or 650 for making larger quantities of pistol and short rifle rounds. I went with the 550 because I reloaded for a lot of different rounds, and the caliber conversions were a lot cheaper. Note that the 550 actually requires a third hand or you lose a significant amout of production speed while you try to figure out how to feed a new case, rotate the shell plate to the next station, seat a bullet, and pull the handle all between rounds. I understand that there is a company that makes a foot treadle to pull the handle, which would speed up the process considerably. I have never found an automated shell feeder or bullet feed for the 550, though I have not looked for quite a while. The 650 automated those processes, requiring just a handle pull. If you want to get into it for the absolute least amount of money, the Lee will do it, but based on the two years I spent running one, it is a Rube Goldberg device and not a particularly well built one. Something was always breaking or coming loose. That will not happen with the RBCS or Dillons.
Just my .02, YMMV.
TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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