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Regarding presses, shot cups and wads

CaddmannQ

.50 BMG
I'm looking to buy a shotgun reloading press for 12 and 16 gauge (& I also plan to buy a 20 gauge at some point.)

Because of this, the inexpensive Lee Load-all press looks like a really good deal.

The price is extremely attractive but I can afford to buy more quality.

In general, three things turn me off about this press.

The first thing would be the plastic base. I was hoping from the pictures that the base would be die cast aluminum.

Has anybody worn worn out or broken one? What wears out?...what breaks?

The second thing was I started reading the instructions and it says you have to use plastic wads. I was hoping to avoid buying plastic shot cups or wads. I planed to make a little die & just punch some out of cardboard.

I have lots of used lead & ideally I will just have to buy powder and primers and punch my own wads.

The third thing would be all the bushings. Ideally I would set up a press for each gage I plan to load, and not bother changing bushings all the time.

Of course, being inexpensive, the Lee truly sounds ideal for this type of service. I can buy 3 of them & I wouldn't have to change all those bushings.

But the plastic base is sort of a deal breaker.
<Big Edit.....
Most of my shooting is simply for fun at the range. I'm not hunting, I'm not in competition but home defense is a possible priority.>
 
I have not worn mine out. It has a plastic base.

True that.

But if you bolt it to a piece of wood decking board for instance, it's more sturdy. I have mine screwed to my workbench.

The main moving part is metal (the lever). It has metal lever arms.

The primer arm is metal (that's the part that uses the most pressure to deprime). The resizer is metal. Again, has some pressure involved.

While it would be ideal to have all metal, all metal is not necessary, but the lee does have metal on the high wear areas.

It does not take much pressure to push a wad down into the hull. It is plastic.

So plastic ram arm works fine.

The powder and load bushings are also plastic. But the bushings just allow powder or lead shot to fill the area and drop into the hull. Again, not sure what you would gain from using metal. It's not a high wear part area.

Also you could probably charge the hulls a lot more precisely if you don't use the powder bushings at all. You could load a lot more consistently if you use a Lee "perfect powder measure" dropping into a digital scale because not all powders will throw the same through the bushings because they have different textures.

Actually, I recommend a powder scale regardless of which loader you get for that reason.

Back to the lee loader questions, the crimper is plastic. I would like metal there, but the hard plastic folds the crimp without any issues.

I haven't loaded thousands of shells on mine or anything, but it loads as well as a factory shell, so while all-metal would be great, I'm not really sure what you would benefit from it.

The other choice to the lee load all is the MEC, which I have hardly no experience with.

To be honest, the lee is all the press I need. If I were loading thousands of rounds a year, maybe I could see dropping that much coin for one. But I don't. I load about 4 or 5 boxes of shells a year. And the Lee has yet to disappoint for my amount of loading.

On to your question.

The lee says it'll load plastic wads.

Those are usually what you'll find in modern shells.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sho...3fTQAhXCRiYKHWfBC08Q_AUICCgB&biw=1360&bih=643

And you'll also get a more consistent performance with a plastic wad. Save the cardboard wads for if you have no alternative or just want to impress your cowboy action shooting friends.

Also, most loading and powder recipes are pretty specific about which powder and wad combination and charge to use together. Getting too far away from proven combinations can have bad consequences.

A bag of wads are $12 or $15 or so.

My most used wads for loading are the Figure 8 (I use mostly Remington hulls) and I also use Downrange brand Versatite wads in Remington hulls, which gives me a super close version to hornady factory high brass loads.

I have some federal wads too, but I seldom use them.
 
Thank you for all that, John. It's becomming clear that there's a lot of options, and choosing them can be a real black art.
 
There really isn't any black magic to it.

To explain in everyday terms, wads are made differently. No big revelation there.

Like these 3 for instance.

http://www.downrangemfg.com/

If you are using federal hulls, use federal style wads if you are wanting a shell that performs like federal factory loads. This is also the easiest way to do reloads if you stick with factory style components.

Since wads are made differently, wads will create more or less resistance when they're being shot.

Which means they will create more or less pressure.

You can't just find a recipe and switch wads or powders all willy-nilly without considering what it will do to the pressure curve. It's pretty easy to find specific load data for different combo's though.

To add to that, most all powders have a different burn rate, which again, changes the pressure curve.

Too much curve, kaboom. Too little curve, squib.

So, that's what I meant that you'll need to look through the load data and find some recipes that you like.

This book explains a lot about how different shells are made internally with cutaways and has various load data with all kinds of combos

https://www.amazon.com/Lyman-Shotshell-Handbook-5Th-Edition/dp/B00162MK2M
 
Well certainly, by replicating the factory loads you don't have to do too much thinking. No real magic there except getting it right every time.

I was impressed (when I really started looking) by how many different types of shot cups & wads there are available. Okay it's not as bad as picking fishing lures, but good Lord there are still a lot of them.

Anyhow in the interest of keeping things easy my first run of shells will probably be nude of shells that I pry open in replace loads with buckshot.

From what I can imagine, buck shot doesn't really care about how hard or pure the lead that you're shooting.

I have several big junkyard ingots, which have been sitting around for the past 40 years & I figure I can cast about 2000 1 ounce loads.

I guess no one will use a wadcutter & nake wads if you can get perfect hightech plastic wads for pennies.

I was considering that a much lower Tech approach was not just feasible, but reasonable.

But you guys are going to laugh at me when I spend $600 on a press and then cut my own wads.

:rolleyes:

I have 4 different types of 12-gauge Hulls & 3 different types of 16 gauge hulls, to reload, but the total is no more than 125 empties so far. If I buy all plastic wads I'll end up buying 7 different bags. Also wind up with 7 distinct loads. Too much diversity right off the bat.

I have more 12 gauge Remington and 16 gauge Winchester's than anything else, so I'll set up to do those two first.

I bought about 50 rounds of Olin Milbuck and these look like some good candidates for reloading. The brass is annealed from the factory. I shot up about half of it from that pistol grip shotgun.

Time for a Hogue grip, a birds head or something. Ouch!
 
CaddmannQ

I would sell to you my MEC 600-Jr 20-ga for an unheard of low price. I don't have a 20-ga gun any longer and I also still have two other MEC reloaders. It is still like new and I still have the box it came in. And you could then simply buy a die set to change to different gauge(s). I and my boys LOVED the 600-jr. They used to pick up warm hulls and run into the garage to load more ammo while the other brother was trap shooting. Those were great times.

Four to six boxes an hour is possible. And it is all-metal. Doing slugs or buckshot and not using wads would change that production rate but not by very much.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/AlkdIQTxj8U?fs=1&autoplay=1&rel=0

BTW, when you say you don't want to use plastic wads ... I would recommend that to keep good powder seal and powder compression and get good powder combustion and peak pressures you must use wads.
 
@nitesite

PM me the price please and add $ to ship it to 93611. I imagine it's much heavier than the plastic model so don't cut yourself short on the shipping.

I'll be looking to buy a scale too.

High production rate isn't really important to me but durability and reliability is King.
 
If I use die cut cardboard wads instead of those formed plastic wads would my recoil be lower?

I'm not hunting with these short shotguns or my hypothetical loads. This is for close-quarters scattergun response and short range fun. If I buy a nice goose gun to go hunting I might think differently. Hitting a moving goose for me is almost a miracle I'm not sure how a sawed-off shotgun would help me with that either. :D

20161203_110139.jpg
We are right on the goose migration path and they are all grounded by rain and fog this time of year.
 
You can certainly make your own wads if you want to. But as nitesite pointed out, factory wads and shot cups are superior to cut cardboard wads because they have a better seal against the powder throughout the travel down the barrel.

Most wads and shot cups are formed 1 piece, and why they are superior than stuffing a round piece of cardboard down over top of the powder, essentially loading it like a black powder rifle (which you can load like a shotgun in that manner by the way).

And you aren't restricted to only shooting Winchester style wad in a Winchester shell. But it is a lot easier to find load data for "like" components because many manufacturers don't make load data for every company out there. Just theirs, and since they are the ones that provide much of the load data amongst each other, that's why I said it's easier to find recipes for "like" components.

As for 16 gauge, the SP16 and SG16 wad are among the most popular wad/cup to find load data for, and compatible with the most different brand hulls. The SP16 has powder combinations with federal, fiochii, Remington, and Winchester 16 ga hulls.

As for powders for the 16, looks like unique, longshot, universal have more recipe combinations than other powders, according to the 5th edition lyman book I have.
 
I'm gonna follow this as I hope to begin loading in the new year!
 
Well it's amazing what a difference a couple weeks of experience makes.

Not only is this my first reloading experience but I have only owned a shotgun few months.

In that period of time I've managed to shoot a couple hundred rounds of 12ga, and half of those were ones that I loaded myself. I also shot about 100 16ga factory loads.

I've been using Winchester AA clone wads from Clay Busters in all the shells I have reloaded, regardless of brand. This one seems to be short enough to work with every shell I try, and where it is a tiny bit short I have added a paper wad on top of the shot to make up the slack.

So far this seems to be working excellent and I've been careful with powder weights and shot weights.

I don't weigh every charge but but I do when I'm setting up the machine for the day and I weigh individual completed shells every time to make sure I don't have a double load or such.

From what I can tell shot cups can vary 3 grains, and the hulls vary a grain to 1.5 within types. My shot charges vary up to 4 grains. Even with all that my reloads don't seem to vary more than +/-10 grains, with the typical being +/-5 grains.

This is more consistant than almost all the factory ammunition that I weighed.

Regarding the Lee loadall 2:

I did not think I was going to love this press but I do. In fact I love it so much I bought another one in 16 gauge for $50 online.

Initially I thought the thing was balky and creaky. As it turned out most of the creaking was due to this metal column.
20170101_222535.jpg

It had burrs on the end of it, which were causing it to wear on the plastic and drag on the spring too. I deburred mine, cleaned up both the steel tube and the plastic, and waxed them lightly. I also waxed the Pivot Points because they are plastic on Steel.

Suddenly all the creaking was gone and the operation is now much smoother.

Anyhow I started out by following the exact published recipe from Hodgdon, but did experiment with the different hulls, & to great results. One thing I never did was allow powder variation of more than 5%.

I weighed numerous powder drops to make sure that I was getting this consistantly.

Anyhow I haven't had any over pressures, low pressures, misfires or squibs.

With one little exception that is.

If you want to know what that is, go & look up today's "Bonehead Range Report" by yours truly.
 
I was trying to improve the stability of the loadall press and I added this metal brace to the back side. I tapped a new screw into the column just below the existing screw, and braced it back to my mounting board.
20170104_100645.jpg
It was just getting too much flexure out of that plastic base for my liking, and this little piece of steel tubing stiffens it up a lot.

I decided I wanted to load pistol & rifle cartridges too, so I bought myself an RCBS Rock chucker Supreme Master kit, with some money for some carryover vacation time I sold back to the company.
1483578504881-462114947.jpg
So, of course there'll be another thread soon...:rolleyes:
 
Good job.

Rock chucker makes good stuff.

My main press was made in the 1970's.
 
This is the same press that my buddy Bobby bought when he retired his Lee. He's been loading for 30 years, so it never occurred to me to buy anything else but The Chucker. ;)
 
Well I guess I did OK on the price. I paid $300+tax in town, & I see it on the web going from $279 + shipping (cast iron!) To over $400.
 
I decided I wanted to load pistol & rifle cartridges too, so I bought myself an RCBS Rock chucker Supreme Master kit, with some money for some carryover vacation time I sold back to the company.
So, of course there'll be another thread soon...:rolleyes:

You

Are

AWESOME
 
Bless you, Nitesite, but I really don't don't deserve it. I'm just a lucky guy with some extra money on my hands, and a very loving and understanding wife.

Also my buddy Bob is doing so many reloads for me that I don't think he's getting to shoot his own guns so much.

I really never had much interest in reloading, & a lot of that was because of what I was shooting.

Now I've bought a long rifle that I think I really want to develop custom loads for.
 
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