Dear Sir, I have hand-loaded on and off for a few years, and recently acquired a Lee Classic turret press. As you say, the instructions assume some mechanical aptitude, and did challenge mine. Aside from that, I have found the system very rewarding. The powder measure really works - I had never been able to trust volumetric measures before. The turret system allows me to keep a set of dies fully set and just swap out the whole turret for another. The auto indexing feature allows me to automate my loading to a degree, at a fraction of the cost of a progressive press. Thank you for your well laid out series of instructional videos. It would have saved me some time to watch them before I set up my new press. An important thing I gained from this series is confidence to take on loading rifle cartridges. I had planned to just use my turret press for straight walled handgun cartridges, but I can see you have no backoff using it for large bottleneck cartridges. Yrs, Chris F.
I have studied all your videos on the Lee Classic Turret Press and found them highly useful. Many thanks for the time and effort you spent in producing them.
My personal findings for Benchmark powder after careful testing was: R-P cases, Winchester Std. LR Primers, 140 grain Sierra Spitzer flat base bullet, seating depth .004 behind rifling of Rem. Mod Seven (18 inch), and 38.8 grains Benchmark. You can expect 2,800 to 2,900 fps or better with most guns. This is .5 grain over Hodgdon's listed maximum, so work up any loads carefully, observing all standard precautions. Use standard flat base bullets for best results on med. game, no ballistic tips.
I had always used a RCBS rockchucker single stage and just this last year acquired this press....I love it!! I have been loading primarily 9mm with it for the volume, however it can be used as a single stage all the way to the semiprogressive way. I have stayed with my rifle loading to single stage, but I am ready to give it a try with my .243 and .308. What I have found with the 9mm and the fine powder of Hodgen titegroup is for some reason the disk powder dispenser will throw the first case or two either too much or too little, so I weigh the first several case powder charges after they dispense and usually dump that powder back to the hopper.....and then it settles into a perfect mode throwing correct charges.
I am about to statrt reloading 7mm-08 and was curious how many grains of benchmark you used and what the velocity was. I am looking for a good white tail and antelope load.
looks good..but at 7.00 (I'm a beginner) it looks like when you press it up ..the flange holding the dies goes up a bit too...doesnt this affect the size of the finished bullet ?
Everyone was once a beginner, and it's you that I am addressing in these videos. Welcome to the hobby! To answer your concern: The turret is designed to have clearance so that it can be placed easily into the press without tools, so yes, it does move up a bit under the pressure of the ram, until the press and turret stop at the upper limit of travel. But the travel (play) is a fixed constant that never changes. When the dies are adjusted as described in their respective turrets (you normally get a turret for every set of dies), the amount of case insertion remains precisely the same, for every round, without any degree of error or variation. Just so you can gain in understanding of the universal language, remember that the "bullet" is one component that makes up a finished cartridge, which may also be called a "round". A bullet is only the projectile component of the completed cartridge. Just as bread is made from flour, water, yeast and salt, a cartridge is made of case, powder, primer, bullet.
