Out of curiosity, how fast are you going? A friend of mine told me that with everything lined up (cases prepped, brass primed) he was loading 50 rounds an hour. What about you?

I ask because I am buying a Rock Chucker.

I do about 150+. Lee Anniversary kit.

Quoted: I do about 150+. Lee Anniversary kit.

yeah, I can say that with your brass prepped and all you have to do is charge and seat, you could knock out 300/hr or maybe better than that.

The key to speed is decent sized batches,

Size and decap 500 (45 minutes?)
Prime 500 ( 30-40 minutes with a Lee hand prime
expand  500 (30 minutes)
Charge, seat and crimp 500 ( 2-3 hours depending if you seat and crimp separately)

So figure 150-200 per hour for pistol.  Rifle is a lot slower, because you have to lube, and trim, remove lube etc. But you have to do that for a progressive also.

with my rock chucker i'm doing about 20-25 rounds an hour.

of course without:
double weighing-(throw a charge and then weight it)
measuring cases
measuring AOL
weighing cartridge after completion

i could do a few more

I have a used Rockchucker--best friggin' $35 I ever spent.

I do things in batches for pistol--say 500-1000 cases at a time to clean, resize, bell case mouth and prime. Never had to trim pistol brass, except for 5.7x28mm. I'll do a couple batches like this so I usually have a couple thou of primed cases that next get  put in a tupperware with dessicant until needed for reloading. Using a powder measure to dispense charges and weigh every 10th--I do about 100-150 pistol cases per hour.

Rifle--I dunno--I just started doing .223. Maybe 100....I measure my rifle ammo more frequently to be sure OAL isn't screwy.

I don't know many folks who take 50 or 100 spent cases, clean, resize/decap, etc. and reload them. I guess some folks do it that way--I've never found it to be as fast as batching the work like on an assembly line.

Oh--if you're a cheapo like me--save any 50 round pistol cartidge boxes--if the ammo is packed in a 50 round plastic tray with 5 rounds across and 10 on the side--save it for a reloading tray. Then you can spend more money on bullets, etc.

I do 45acp at times...

- bulk size

- hand prime all while listening to TV w/wife & kids

- flare all of them

- set them up in block or on table, dispense powder with DILLON measure in hand and manual cycly powder bar.

- set bullets in place, seat them

- remove flare/crimp

Personally, my own opinion, I don't care at all about hourly output of ready to rock ammo.  I care that I am doing everything right with every round.

Rock Chucker press
Prep'ed brass less primer

20 rifle - 1 hour
50 pistol w/crimp - 1.5 hours

This is done with an electronic trickler and scale.

YMMV

Haven't reloaded single stage for years and years, but when I did, I learned the basics of bulk processing:  size all you can until running out of brass, prime everything just resized,
get multiple loading blocks and charge as many cases as possible, seat as many bullets at a time, etc.

I store my low volume brass cleaned, sized, trimmed, primed in ammo boxes.

So when I load them, takes about a half hour to drop powder and seat bullets for 100 rounds.

I loaded 50 rounds of .223 today and preped 20 cases for my 22-250.  I'm not in a hurry, every round I load could be a match load.  I don't believe in plinking ammo.  If I just want to make noise I'll toss out some firecrackers.

I should add that the 150+ estimate for me is with my plinking rounds, it still shoots as accurate as I desire at the moment. (moa or so at 100, It's not a flick a flea off a fly's back accurate)  

If I was throwing up some long range accurate loads, It'll be slow.

I actually took the time to time myself loading single stage.  That way I could get an estimate on how long it would take for any stage at any time.  These were the results.

Rock Chucker Press
Dillon 1200 trimmer
Lee hand primer
Redding dies

.223 ammunition/100pcs

Sizing:  7 min
Trimming:  9 min
Priming:  6 min
Charge and seat:  17 min

It's around 40 minutes/100rds.
Add 9 minutes for chamfer/deburring
These times are operation only.  Setting up dies, powder drop, tumbling, lubing not included.
I drop the powder from my Redding and seat immediately.
I tried this doing 100 cases, and then a small batch of 250.  Numbers about the same.