I have been slowly buying equipment I have a lee APP press for depriming/resize I am ordering the frankford arsenal rotory tumbler. I really only intend on reloading 2 maybe 3 calibers 1 being 300 blackout and 2 being 9mm I may get into 45 acp as well. My main motivations for getting into this are 1 I have gotten into suppressors and I want subsonic ammo for everything LOL 2 even though supplies are slowly coming back I want to never be short again.
All that being said what press would you guys suggest I have a single stage lee(actually 2 breachlocks) but i really want a turret or maybe a progressive. Since I don't shoot large caliber super spendy big bore stuff and everything I do is plinking so speed of processing is important.
One other option I have been kicking around is buying the lee ACP and priming everything off press and then using a single stage to seat and crimp bullets and buying a electric powder thrower. I am a little lost here and diving into the rabbit hole. I am also debating just biding my time and waiting for panic buyers to sell their pandemic equipment.

I started with a progressive press and I've never looked back. I did buy a Lee turret press to use for oddball calibers for which I cannot get a shellplate for my progressive, but the progressive does 99% of the work for me.

I bought a Hornady LNL, and I've been very happy with it and I recommend it. I know Dillon makes a good press too, and I'm sure you can't go wrong with one of their progressives either.

When you decide to crank out 1000 rounds of 9mm, you'll be glad that you spent the money on a progressive.

what progressive did you start with ? I can get a smoking deal on a pro1000 9mm kit

I bought the Hornady LNL Auto-Progressive.

I don't know a lot about the Lee presses. I heard some very bad things about their earlier progressives, but maybe the newer ones are better.

Another vote for the Hornady LnL auto progressive press. I have been reloading for a very short time and had to teach myself everything about it but it works great and wasn’t hard to learn to use effectively.

Nice thing I found thru all my research before getting the AP press was that you can go as slow as you want with one round at a time or quicker turning out a round with every pull when you get comfortable


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Drink the blue kool-aid!


I’ll see myself out.


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Reality reared its head I think what I am going to do is buy a case prep center and use my single stage for now it will let me get started ( even though I have been avoiding starting on a single stage) that will make depriming on the APP easy tumbling in the frankford then case prep (length and primer pocket) easy then I can slowly roll each round with care. then when life gets caught up buy a square deal b in 9 mm.

That's roughly the phase I'm at... except I wouldn't waste money on a case prep center

Home built tumbler, RCBS chucker. If you're going to go the wet tumbling route you really should have a single stage press for popping primers anyhow. Let that get dirty in stead of your nice progressive

When it comes time for a progressive skip over the square deal unless you want to have one press for handgun and another for rifle (which is not a bad idea)

When that time comes for me I'll get a 650 (now the XL750 I think, it's been a while since I looked at them)

Case prep center makes things convenient when you have thousand rifle rounds to prep unless you’re going to going to get a progressive that you can setup for case prep as well. Or chuck up a Little Crow gun works trimmer and debur in your drill press or mill.


Little known fact. You can use a progressive press as a single stage and warm your self up to fully semiautomatic


BLACK HAMMER ARMS
Type 07 Class 2 NFA Dealer
http://www.blackhammerarms.com
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Another vote for Dillon. Best customer service in the business.

Might be easier to get a Dillon 550 or 650 (discontinued) or 750.

Maybe wait for marcus in Olympia find a setup (Check For Sale-<Reloading).

If the case prep center is not recommended for someone single staging it then all I need is 300 bo dies and I can get going. I think Marcus or TCB finds a blue machine I can afford and the timing works for both of us I’ll jump on it. Just need to figure out if I want to prime on machine or by hand in the living room with the family.

I started loading on a single stage that I rarely use anymore. I have a Lee Classic 4 hoe Turret that I use on occasion. I have a Dillon Square Deal B that is amazing for pistol loading. I have a Dillon 550B that I load 300 AA, 5.56 others. All the presses are functional, well built presses that do the job.

That said the Dillon 550B is the one I tend use the most. Hard to beat.

Bob

Do not get a Lee Load Master. I can not get mine to index. The case feeder I gave up using. All it does is fling cases across the room. I have loaded 1k a day several times with my Load Master but I prep my cases one at a time using my Rock Chucker and prime using my RCBS hand prime then I go to my Load Master. I wish I had gone with a Hornady but I can get by With The Load Master. I sure would never prime with it again. One of my first runs I blew up five primers at once. The Lee Primer trays have been made by different sub contractors and some of them are defective. They are too deep and allow the primers to flip but a RCBS round tray will fit the machine.

It is the lack of feel when seating primers that makes me stay with the hand primer. The Lee Auto Drum sure does work slick with small grain powders.

I will never get one of those scale powder meters as I have a Lyman 55 and I can set it and it stays set. When I have to weigh each charge I use a pharmacy scoop because I can drop powder fast that way from years of lab work.

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the APP. I have been considering one to use for basic brass prep. deprime, size, swaging.

Having been down the road in the last few (well decade) I will second what others have said, go higher end. Since you already have a single stage, you are able to reload and save $ vs factory, so no reason to go cheap just to get started.

Lee makes some pretty cool products, and you do get good bang for the buck and can get into progressive loading faster on a limited budget. For many like me, it was really the only option to go progressive on my limited budget. I had no press at all and wanted to step right into progressive. However they do have their limitations and quirks. ALL presses have quirks, but the lee can be more glaring when you start to increase loading volume. I started with a Pro1000, had it a week or two and realized it was not right for how I wanted to reload with only 3 stations. Sold and went loadmaster. I ran that press a few years, but over time it started getting harder and harder to index. Just not a super consistent/reliable indexing setup for long term/high round count imho. However since you have a single stage I would not go the lee route, as mentioned they are great for a new reloader to be able to get reloading rather than burn more $ on factory ammo and trying to save up for a press.

I ran Madpicks LnL one day when he was showing me how to reload 300blk. WOW after running lee's the LnL was just a whole new world, just much smoother indexing and the LnL system is damn handy. It is really nice being able to set dies into the lugs and not have to reset them again, but still be able to on the fly swap a station out if you need to correct/fix something mid run. Or if you just want to do a single process. You don't have to empty out or dedicate an entire head assembly for one die/operation. Only issue I ever had was sometimes the case feed was finicky. Run great for thousands of round then it would be crank, fiddle with it and then back to flawless running for a long long time.

Out of time this AM. I will finish tonight after work.