Lightest and smallest reloading press?

[hounddawg]

I used to try the range loading drill and found it a pain.

Now for rifle I load up 40 to 50 cases at home for my tests. The first 4 to 10 are pressure tests set .3 to .5 grains apart seated .025 off lands.The next 20 I seat at various seating depths from .100 from lands to on the lands using a mild charge weight in the middle of the test weight range. I shoot the pressure test first. Then the 20 to get a rough idea on seating depth.

The last 20 or so are loaded at home with the powder charge weight test with three or five rounds in increments of no less than .3 gns and no more than .5 rounds and seated at max length to the lands. I do a final seating at the range using the Lee and seat them at the best length determined by the seating depth test. These are shot these across a chrony to look for velocity nodes and grouping patterns. Completely Eliminates the pain of measuring powder at the range and allows optimum seating depth determination with fewest rounds fired.

here is a thread with pics and a better explanation. Turned out the 43.5 and 2.281 used in the seating depth test had the best numbers. I followed this with a 15 shot test at 300 the other day and it held a .6 MOA test group so I am loading 25 more to do a test at 600 and 800 to get the scope dope next week

I just lucked out on this one, sometimes follow up trips are needed to tweak in and fine seating depth and charges


https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=599693

 

[Don Fischer]

If weight is your concern, wouldn’t it be lighter to just bring lots of extra ammo to begin with? Sorry but that makes much more sense. Now if you’re just looking for an excuse to buy a new toy I can understand that.

I could see where the small lite press could be handy! It's 3 mi to where I shoot so if I'm testing loads I could haul along enough primer's, powder and bullet's to put together some new loads to try right there! On the other hand if the loads are already worked up and I'm out somewhere, I think simply bringing a bunch of ammo is the thing to do.

 

[hounddawg]

I could see where the small lite press could be handy! It's 3 mi to where I shoot so if I'm testing loads I could haul along enough primer's, powder and bullet's to put together some new loads to try right there! On the other hand if the loads are already worked up and I'm out somewhere, I think simply bringing a bunch of ammo is the thing to do.

Decapping and neck sizing is the easy part. From my experience measuring powder at the range is a pain in the butt even on the calmest days. You need to have a wind proof enclosure for measuring and transferring. Not a problem if you are throwing directly to the case like the benchrest guys do but trying to get down to a tenth of as grain is a different story. I made up a rig where I could weigh and trickle out of the wind but Murphy's law would kick in when I was getting the pan to the case and the wind would suddenly kick up and send half a grain to the range gods

I saw one of our club members set up his reloading station in the men's room one day when he was developing a load. Even a 1 mph breeze will blow powder or send the scale reading off into the ozone.

good luck though and if you can come up with a workable rig post pics, I would love to be able to get good measurements at the range on occasion

 

[jmorris]

So now if your goal is load development you would need to add your calipers and scale (not sure how well that would travel) to the load and I just remembered some sort of case lube and maybe a variety of powders. Just keeps getting worse.

Take a closer look at the 2nd photo in #9. The calipers are sitting on top of the 3 ring binder so I can write down what I learn. In the cake pan lid, on top of the cooler, is the scale, so I can zero the scale and then weigh powder charges without air drafts effecting readings. You really don’t need any case lube for anything if you are just working up loads.

If you plan ahead all your brass is already sized, trimmed if needed and primed with your choice of primers, so you are just dumping powder, seating a bullet and maybe crimping.

You don’t need a super “strong like bull” press for any of thoes operations.

In any case the op is talking about 9mm, 357/38spl. Just not that complicated unless he is going to try to shoot benchrest with them. Against better suited rifles and rounds, further efforts wouldn’t do him much good anyway at that point.

 

[oldscot3]

Lyman has a small c-frame press they call a "Brass Smith". I've been looking at it but haven't purchased yet so I couldn't tell you how solid it is from experience yet. It's made of cast iron so it might not make your weight requirement but size-wise it appears pretty compact.

Lyman makes pretty good stuff; I think I'm going to order one soon just to use with my universal depriming die. $75.00 at the usual internet suppliers.