Well, I picket up two arbor presses.... The K&M Arbor Press with the deflection gauge and the Herrell Tool Company Arbor Press.
The K&M uses a known spring constant and washers inserted in series to get the force applied to your round, which can be indicated by one of their dial indicators or you can use one of your own, as long as you have a 3/8" diameter dial indicator or a metric dial indicator (8mm standard diameter) with 3/8" copper or brass adapter sleeve. This K&M force indicator may be useful if you care about the different neck tensions you may get while seating rounds. I don't know, as I haven't loaded a round yet! The K&M press is beautiful but you need to loosen 4 hex screws on the spine of the vertical assembly to "unpinch" the press head and slide it up or down the "flag pole" as needed. This won't matter to me as I will probably not be reloading much other than my .308 for some time and will not be adjusting height often.
The other press is the Harrell Tool Company Arbor Press, which if any of you have seen the Lapua reloading page, will recognize this as the press used in their photo as can be proven by the square press design rather than the rounded Sinclair press head. I investigated the Sinclair Arbor Press only to find that their attempts to reduce costs (my opinion) have evidently resulted in poor quality gear metal and they are tending to spit teeth. I like Sinclair as a company overall but I much prefer the smaller American worker, making these by hand in their own shops and controlling quality themselves. American business as a whole disgusts me, taking quality designs and effectively ruining them to maximize the bottom line. They will tell you this is to stay alive, but in reality it is to buy a bigger yacht and upgrade their golf driver every time one comes out. I have no sympathy for what the USA has become. Our reputation world wide is that we do not produce quality but quantity. That's fine for WWII but will result in bailout requests when their cheap product no longer stays together for the long run. The Harrell Arbor Press looks great. Mr. Harrell actually just sent me the press after a brief phone conversation. I then sent him a check immediately. The trust was refreshing and the product appears to be solid.
I might use the Harrell if I don't care about seating force and the K&M if I want to investigate seating force on groupings. They both will look great on my reloading bench, being pieces of art, IMHO. Thanks to both Roger Miller at K&M for his tireless responses to my email questions and to Mr. Harrell, for his trust and traditional manufacturing approach to reloading.
I look forward to using both of these without the teeth spitting out, screaming, "oh my God, I'm so cheap, but at least my company is enjoying their savings and new golf clubs!"
