Re: reloading equipment HELP choosing
"You gentlemen that have "been there done that", what brand or type of equipment would you suggest for a beginner? I have a background in industrial machine so precision comes natural when it comes to machining and fabrication."
Okay, so since you have a solid mechanical foundation you will better understand some things that confuse others. I've BT, DT since '65 and some of the things I've learned are (a) accuracy can't be bought in a box, it takes skill and knowledge, (b) kits are not a good start, no brand has a lock on the "best" tools across the board, pick and choose between brands for the best values, (c) cost is a poor guide for quality, (d) massive strength is only needed if someone is massively likely to screw a tool up, (e) life-time warranties are a good value mostly for those who screw things up.
So - dies? On average, any brand of the same general design will work as well as any of it's competitors, no better or worse. About all we get for higher cost of conventional is a purty exterior, and from some badly miss-labled "competition" sets too. (Forster and Redding dies are very good.) All our dies are quite good so spending big bucks on competition dies before you learn how to use conventional dies to the best of their capabilites takes years of experience. By the time you reach that level of ability you will have enough understanding you won't need to ask anyone what brand/model to buy. (For those who ask, "Are competition dies worth the cost?" I think the proper answer is, "not yet.")
Press? "Best" press begs the question of, "Best in what way?" All presses are much stronger and better made than they need to be, they are all very good. In general, a cast ferrous metal press is significantly stronger that lighter presses but some guys break the top-stap on Rock Chuckers, Big Boss, etc. In the opinion of many who actually know what they're talking about, the Lee Classic Cast press is by far the better single stage value available today, one of the very best of a list of good presses period. Cast of railroad steel, not cheaper/weaker cast iron, it's precisely machined and bored on CNC tools, has a really strong, large diameter ram, the only one with a fully adjustabable lever and it handles spent primers MUCH better than its competitors. (No howls from fans of Co-Ax and UltraMag presses please, each of those are indeed in a class by themselves but they are vast over-kill in both cost and mass for any common reloading work.)
The digital powder dumpsters are fine. Well, fine IF you will be loading massive quanities of precision rifle ammo with individually weighted charges; few of us do that. In fact, weighting charges to .1 gr. is best used for develping accurate loads. Inside 300 yards, I doubt anyone will see any effect of charges with less varation of less than +/- .3 gr. from medium size cartridges. And there is NO rational reason to weight individual pistol charges (common ones, I'm not applying that to super -short bolt rifles with pistol hand grips). And no digital anything will last as long, be more accurate and sensitive, and be as trouble free as a conventionl beam scale. For most of us, a common beam scale from Redding, RCBS and common powder measures from Redding, Hornady and RCBS are perhaps the better choices. (Only Redding makes a reasonable quality powder dribbler, need one to use with the powder scale.)
Case trimmers? Lee's little inexpensive case trimmers are great. I have two very good conventional hand-lathe type trimmers and rarely use them any more. Lee's trimmer tools are quicker and fully as accurate. ??
Perhaps the single most important "reloading tool" is the working - loading - bench; seems few people give much thought to that. I see lots of photos of nice benches with tools hard mounted in what appears to be near random and awkward to use places, set in such a way as to make it necessary to move around a lot during the loading session. Place the press on a firm bench, at the right height, and then place the powder measure, scale, and trickler in easy proximity to each other while still allowing sufficent room for a loading block/bullet box is very helpful but rarely accomplished. Putting a beam scale near eye level is VERY helpful. (I suspect most of the fellows who "love" digital scales have been placing their beam scale on the bench top and that's a really lousy practice!)
Bottom line, don't do a kit but you can use the kit list of tools AND what you see/read about in books to learn what you will really need. And what you NEED is different from a lot of neat but much less important things, at least for now. Ask here what's the better choices of each item, disregarding any who say, in effect, "I love my brand XX stuff, it's all I've ever used and it's great." Also, know that most of the slams you may read against any brand usually comes from folks misusing things, not so much from valid defects in the tools themselves.
