First off, I'm new at this. So let's see if I got this right.

This press

http://www.dillonprecision.com/#/con...291/?viewImg=0

The way I read it, it works with screw in dies.

So if I have dies from a single stage press, as long as they are threaded the right size, it should work?

Yes your have it right.

Yep, they use standard dies. Looks like a serious setup

Thanks guys!

Your not messing around. That is a very nice setup. Are you planning on loading high volume pistol rounds?

i use lee carbide dies on mine

I highly suggest a person master a single stage first before moving to a Dillion 550. It took all my knowledge of single stage loading to get past teh setup of the dillion or LeePro1000.

But yes, same dies single uses.

I could not agree more!! a friend of mine I was guiding into reloading went against my advice and bought a dillon 550 as his first press its been nothing but headaches for him and me too with the bazillion questions he continually asks everytime he wants to load or changes calibers. I dont mind helping him but I really wish he would have taken my advice at went with the Lyman t-mag press.

My father has had a single stage reloader since I was a kid. I'm 45.

Not sure what it is Its green and he had to fix the handle on it. It is old and he claims it is one of the first reloaders. ( Not sure about that claim)

Anyway, I have used his press to load.357, .38, 30.06, .222, .243 etc, when I was in my mid 20's.

I got away from reloading and have been buying ammo for the last 20 years. With prices going up, I thought it would be time to get back into it.

I admit I feel stuck in the 1960's using this press because I don't know anything about other presses. We have many dies for several other calibers other than the ones mentioned above.

My father is older and has some health issues now. He doesn't use the press or dies.


He also has severl thousand bullets of various calibers and weights. Has two ammo boxes full of various primers.

All kinds of brass. About 20 cans of powder.

Basically there is a ton of reloading stuff here.

I want something that doesn't take all evening to load a few boxes of shells.


With all the supplies on hand, I'd like to get a press that is compatible with the dies we have and load quicker.

Sounds like you have everything you need already. I'd say from start to finish to load a box of ammo should be just about an hour, more or less depending on how anal you about it. I do all my brass prep during the winter to give myself something to do so cabin fever don't set in. You can lube and deprime and resize 100 cases in about 30 minutes, trim, chamfer and clean the primer pockets in about an hour, prime the cases in about 10 minutes, weigh out the charges for about 20 rounds in about 30 minutes and take about another 5 to seat the bullets.

I tumble and lube the cases on one night, deprime/resize and tumble again on the second night, trim, chamfer and clean the primer pockets on another night and do one final tumble in clean media then bag the brass until ready to be loaded. Now I do have to say when I do this I'm usually working on 100-200 pieces of brass at a time for each cartridge. So I can usually go the whole year of shooting before I have to do anymore brass prep.

I have also mechanized my setup as much as possible, the RCBS case prep station and the Lyman DPS cuts a lot of time off of the process.