Last night I made my first reloads with the help of a friend of mine that has been at it for a while. It was tougher than I thought though a lot of the time I spent dealing with all the new equipment. It took me about 3 hours to make 40 rounds of 7.5x55 Swiss ammo.

My friend pointed out all the flaws of my lyman press and after he explained it all to me I have to agree with him. He says it will do just fine but it isn't as good as a Rockchucker.

I'm heading to the range tomorrow to fire those babies off.

Thanks to everyone that has guided me this far.

Tom

Good luck. There's nothing like shooting those first handloads.

What kinda flaws did he find? Just curious.

He said a quite a few things, he is a machinist though and is very good at what he does. He claims that the threads that the dies screw into weren't done properly and that the machinist who did them probably had his head half way up...., He says that the entire action of the are is really sloppy, he didn't like the setup of the auto priming tool (we had lots of problems getting this set up and it still isn't set properly), he didn't like the included funnel, he didn't like the included lube, he didn't like the powder dispenser (but he liked the baffle in it).

I think that about covers it.

Tom

Holy cow, he dogged the entire setup. None of the threads are that great on these press's. I have to square my dies everytime with the ram even with a rock. A person should. Lube, I have yet to see good lube come with a kit. Most move on to imperial or hornady one shot. But the lube it gives is great starting out. A rock chuckers priming arm isn't very good either, most of us usually move to a lee hand primer or RCBS handprimer. But the one thats on the rock is good starting out. No, its not a competition bench you have. But I don't think you expected it to start out either.

We all had to start out on something. And we all had to build up the basics.

I'm cool with it since I know you get what you pay for. Had I bought everthing seperatly I would have spent a lot more money, just about twice as much.

Looking forward to tomorrow.

Tom

Bigcountry gives some outstandng advice, its stuff that reloaders learn from reloading for several years and find the best way to do things.


As far as press threads go, They are purposely made a bit loose by design. It wouldn't do any good to have threads that tightly fit your dies where you would have to chase the threads with a big tap occasionally to remove powder residue or oxidation in order to screw in a die, or worse yet, having to take a pipewrench to a die because its galled or bound up to the press. If you square your dies up with pressure from the ram before tightening the locknut, the loose threading is not an issue.

Having little or no play in the ram is a good thing, but when you think about it, your shellholder is going to have a littleplay in it as it mounts on the ram and as to how it holds the brass, if everything is squared up before you start, everything should selfalign as you run the brass up the die. One could go insane if they start considering how much the brass springs back after being resized dependant on the hardness and thickness of the brass and how many times its been reloaded. Its best not to worry too much about it, we are reloading cartridges, not trying to put together a manned mission to Mars.

my very first press was a lee challenger press had to start somewhere just to learn the ropes. the very first caliber I began to load and learn the ropes of metallic loading was 38 special. the challenger is a turd press but for 30 bucks it was good enough to get started with and is deffinately good enough for loading 38's. I still use it from time to time for resizing when im prepping pistol cases. consider yourself lucky that you have a lyman press its a far better press then the ol' challenger.

My first reloads was 44 mag. I still kept the first bullet. I crimped so much, it wrinkled the brass all the way down. Unshootable, but first one.

Briman, you are hilarious!

I guess I do feel pretty fortunate to have started out on a pretty good rig.

Tom