That's 2 'd's for a double dose of reloading!
I had no idea how much faster an auto indexing turret press is vs a single stage until I watched a couple of Youtube videos. After seeing what I was missing, I decided it was time to upgrade from my old single stage press and ordered a Lee Classic 4 hole turret press. Being a cheap bastard, I shopped around.....best prices I found was Natches Shooters Supply $87––$10 cheaper than Midway and $50 cheaper than factory direct. While I was spending money, I picked up 3 spare turret heads (1 comes with the press and a turret head for each caliber I reload), a couple of flow thru rifle dies, a primer feeder and an Auto Disk powder dispenser.
I know that Lee isn't considered 'The Best', but the price was right, and so far, I have zero complaints. The Auto Disk powder dispenser is stupid simple and the .57 disk threw 8.4 grains of AA #5 fairly consistently. (within +/- .2 grains––-fine for my plinking loads, but I'll continue individually weighing and trickling up my precision loads). *I ordered the wrong primer feeder, so I did that by hand––the press comes with a nifty little doohickey that seats the primer on the up stroke, and it's almost too easy.
The BBT dropped everything off on Thursday and I got it all mounted and set up last night. This morning, I loaded up 994 230 gr ball .45 ACP––-would have been an even 1000, but I dropped a tray of primers and didn't feel like crawling under my work bench to find the last few......there was also one squished case when it didn't line up exactly right.
$28 for 1000 Winchester Large Pistol primers
$18 for one pound of AA #5––-I still have enough left to load a few hundred more in this bottle.
$60 for 1000 Zero 230 gr jacketed ball bullets.
Free brass (range pickup) and a few hours of my time....
We're talking about less than 11 cents/round. Casting my own bullets and buying powder/primers in bulk would cut the cost down even more.
Today was about bulk....tomorrow, I'll be loading smaller batches of 10mm, .223 and 6.8. (I'm gonna go broke saving money!)