simcoe
02-01-2007, 01:21 PM
First...my apoligies for this very long post. My reloading bench consists of a RCBS Ammomaster progressive and a Lee Classic Turret press. I had an RCBS rockchucker but I sold it, reasons forthcoming. By changing the die head and removing shell plate and carrier and screwing in a shell holder you can change the Ammomaster progressive into a BMG single stage press which is the configuration that I was using for reloading my rifles using the Lee for pistol reloading. Just being retired I found I had a lot of time on my hands this winter. I reloaded almost every piece of pistol brass I have, 357,44mag,44spec,45colt. Considering it hasn't been over 28 degrees for quite some time, shooting has been minimal. Standing out in the cold shooting at paper just isn't as much fun as it used to be. The situation being thus, I started reloading for my rifles, 243,'06,7x57, and my trusty old 30-30. Haven't done any 45-70's as I have about 300 already loaded. I know you all know the ritual doing one stage at a time, hand measuring each load, and so forth. Reading several posts here about auto dispensers I decided that was the item needed to help speed this process a little. Natchez had the RCBS Powdermaster unit on sale for 249.95, couldn't resist. Received it yesterday. All I can say is VERY COOL!!! After reading all (yeh right, as soon as I got to how it works it was going) directions, I started reloading some 30-30 rounds. Wow, can't get any easier than this, punch in the number, hit enter, hit dispense, and voila, done. Hit dispense another charge is ready. But wait it does get easier, hold the enter button for a couple seconds and AUTO comes up. After that every time you place the empty pan back on the placate it automatically dispenses your powder charge. I checked accuracy with an RCBS rangemaster 750 and a Hornady beam scale. Spot on. It did go over a couple of times by .1 when a couple grains would trickle out of the tube after it stopped turning. No problem, it tells you it's over, so dump back in and get a new charge. It gets better, I set up the dies on the Lee Classic turret along with a rifle charging die to see how this would work. I ran 40 30-30's and 20 30'06 rounds in about an hour and half. You have to consider the learning curve here, and the 30-30's were sized and primed, but the '06s were just sized and deprimed. All in all this worked very smooth and a lot quicker than what I could do before, course having a new toy to play with made it even better. Cleanup was very easy, you just have to make sure you close the dump tube on the side before you change powders. If you don't you have to get out the vacuum to clean up your mess to say nothing of losing a half pound of powder. This is experience speaking...With the limited use I've given this machine I would recommend it for anyone wanting to speed up their rifle reloading. It has a lot of features I may never use, but so does my cell phone, but it does seem to be very accurate and pretty darn quick. I'm impressed. Using this setup with any turret press will definitly double your output and I think without sacrificing accuracy. My ammomaster is now back to progressive configuration for those massive amounts of plinking loads. If it ever warms up.....