I 'm probably going to get myself in hot water with somebody for posting this, but I can't keep it bottled up inside any longer. The only question is whether to post it in the Ammo & Reloading discussion area, or make it the daily laugh in General Discussion. But ... it's about reloading, so I'll put it here.
The vast majority of my reloading is .45 ACP. Despite owning a single stage press and three progressive presses, I do all of my reloading on a Lee Turret Press. Why? Because it works, and it's fast enough for me to load enough ammunition to supply my shooting needs. If and when I find that my loading can't keep up with my shooting -- well, that's why there are those three progressive presses waiting in the wings.
So I know what a turret press is and what it can do. The Lee Turret Press, in fact, offers something that I don't think any other turret press offers -- auto-indexing. Each time I pull the handle, after performing the operation it automatically advances the turret so the next die is lined up for the next operation. It's pretty slick ... I have, on occasion, described it as a "semi-progressive" press. Working with cleaned and pre-primed brass, I typically produce roughly 50 rounds per hour. I could increase that throughput a bit, but when working with something that can blow your fingers off if you make a mistake, I don't care to rush things.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I peeked into a discussion on another web site and saw a gentleman claiming that HE can produce 320 rounds of handgun ammunition per hour, using cleaned but unprimed brass, on a turret press that doesn't offer autoindexing.
Really?
Let's break that down. First up, a turret press is just a gussied up single stage press. One pull of the handle only performs one operation on one cartridge. I use a 4-die set, so I have to pull the handle four times to produce one round. The gentleman in question didn't stipulate whether he uses a 3-die or 4-die setup. To be generous, we'll say maybe he only needs three pulls of the handle for each round. But he doesn't use a Lee press, so he doesn't have auto-indexing. Hmmmm ...
320 rounds per hour means 5.33 rounds per minute ... for every single minute of a 60-minute hour. That's 11.26 seconds per round. In those 11.26 seconds, he has to
- Insert a case into the case holder
- Pull the handle to resize
- Push the handle up, while flipping a primer into position to be pressed into the case
- Advance the turret to the next position
- Pull the handle to flare, and (I guess) charge the case
- Push the handle up
- Advance the turret to the next position
- Look into the case to verify that it has been charged
- Pick up a bullet and place it on the mouth of the case
- Pull the handle to seat the bullet and crimp
- Push the handle up
- Remove the finished cartridge and drop it into a receptacle of some kind
- Advance the turret to the starting position
- Pick up an empty case and prepare to do it all over again -- 319 more times
That averages out to 3.75 seconds per pull of the handle ... continuously, without stopping or slowing down, for a solid hour.
Or, he could be using the turret like a single stage, and doing each operation in batches. But doing it that way means having to handle each case three times before it finally gets finished. I don't even want to think about laying out the time-task sequence for doing it that way to get 320 rounds per hour.
Bottom line: I think he's either exaggerating massively on his production ... or he's on crack.
If anyone else uses a turret press (any brand or model), please feel free to chime in and tell me what your production rate is. If I'm missing something, I'd really like to know it.
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