I used to do a lot of loading for pistol cartridges on one sitting in the living room. As long as you're not trying to size most rifle brass they will take care of large pistol , 45/70 and other straight wall rifle cases quite handily .
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As long as you travel by car this seems like a good idea; if you fly then not so much.
Ditto!
I have a friend of mine that travels for work. When we whee talking about reloading in are campers. He highly recommends the Lee hand press. But I found a reloading table that folds up.
My dad and I started out with a hand press. We resized rifle rounds up to 30-06. As long as you properly lubed the cases it worked fine. My biggest issue was actually decapping. You need to be careful to dump the spent primers frequently or they will bind up the shell holder. With carbide dies, sizing pistol cases is a snap.
I recommend a bench mounted press
A friend of mine got one for Christmas when we were high school. I got a bench mounted press the same Christmas.
He figured out very quickly that it was easy to keep his dies and components in a box at my place and load on my press.
We played with it, and he eventually found a good used single station press.
It worked but lacked the ergonomics of a bench mounted press.
It’s worthless for heavy duty stuff like reforming cases into other calibers.
303 British was no fun in it.
9mm and other smaller stuff was ok
A friend of mine got one for Christmas when we were high school. I got a bench mounted press the same Christmas.
He figured out very quickly that it was easy to keep his dies and components in a box at my place and load on my press.
We played with it, and he eventually found a good used single station press.
It worked but lacked the ergonomics of a bench mounted press.
It’s worthless for heavy duty stuff like reforming cases into other calibers.
303 British was no fun in it.
9mm and other smaller stuff was ok
7.5x55
That not a good choice for the hand press unless you’re neck sizing only.
I seem to recall that pulling the case back over the sizing ball was also an issue.
I think you can make that case by full length resizing 284 Winchester in a standard die and trimming
Neck annealing may be required. Can’t remember, it’s been too long.
I would not try forming it in a hand press
If you have multiple presses you need a way to calibrate the presses to each other, or you have to adjust your dies when you swap presses.
Have fun with that.
That not a good choice for the hand press unless you’re neck sizing only.
I seem to recall that pulling the case back over the sizing ball was also an issue.
I think you can make that case by full length resizing 284 Winchester in a standard die and trimming
Neck annealing may be required. Can’t remember, it’s been too long.
I would not try forming it in a hand press
If you have multiple presses you need a way to calibrate the presses to each other, or you have to adjust your dies when you swap presses.
Have fun with that.
44-40 is a cinch with one, .45-70 was a bit tougher but not bad and I don’t have gorilla arms.
I used a hand press for years as my only press. I did 30-30, along with many handguns with straight wall cartridges.
It worked fine, but I wouldn't use it for high volume.
It worked fine, but I wouldn't use it for high volume.
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