Thanks for the tips Ranch Dog!Ranch Dog wrote:Welcome to the forum! I have some Load-Master love, have four of them! I load the 25, 32, 380, and 45 Auto along with the 9mm Luger and Makarov, plus the 30 Carbine and 7.62x39. I use all the press' functions; case and bullet feeders (no bullet feeder with the 25 Auto & 7.62x39), priming, and Auto Drum powder delivery.
My advice is not to get too wrapped up with what you see online. I spent a lot of years being very frustrated with the press and always was following someone else' tinkering and buying someone else's accessories. One day I decided that if the presses could not work the way they came, I would get rid of them. I made sure I had a solid bench attached to the wall and a solid mount (Bench Plate) and then followed Lee's instructions to the letter. I still had small primer seating problems but had started to uniform and bevel the mouth of all my rifle primer pockets as I had started priming on my Classic Turret with the Safety Prime, and that pocket treatment had made the seating 100% better. So, I started doing that work with the cartridges heading to the Load-Master. It ended my primer seating issues.
If your press isn't new, you probably will not have gotten the deal you thought. You need to make sure your primmer feeder is the latest (three generations). I've helped some fellows setup used presses, and the most common thing I see wrong with them is that the ram and carriers need to be replaced because the Draw Bolt at the base of the ram was tightened by feel rather than with a torque setting and both of those parts are damaged, out of round, where they mate. There are actual threads on other forums advocating that a torque value than Lee's spec need be exceeded! This is a huge problem with the dozen of presses that I have looked at and quickly brings the price of a used press to more than that of a new press. I did it to my first press. Buy a torque wrench, it is cheaper than those parts and all the frustration of crappy ammo and locked shell plate rotation. Finally, if a used press, get a new shell plate with the ratchet bottom versus the round pins. Probably need a new index rod too! The list of correcting the ills of a misused press can be extensive.
My toolkit is simple; a few small wrenches, a popsicle stick, five popsicle sticks glued together, a pencil, a torque wrench, and Lee's instructions.
Loading on a Load-Master is a hoot, but it boils down to case prep. That is probably about 90% of the work.
I checked it out, the press is fairly new, all of the original parts bags came with it in the box, all dated 5/2018. The primer feed is the 3rd gen, and I've ordered a large feed from Lee.
I looked at the bolt on the bottom of the ram, and checked the torque value, and it was right around 12 ft lbs. so it wasn't over torqued. I did dump about 100-150 primers out of the ram, which is probably all the use the press has seen. There was a crap-tonne of powder everywhere (the previous owner probably had a topside mishap with the auto-disk)
Oddly enough the shellplate was the older style with the drive pins instead of the ratchet bottom. Putting it through the dry run, it seems to index fine enough. The dies were in an old unlabeled red box without the normal paperwork, so probably obtained separately along with the shellplate? I do have a new index rod on the way as well.
I'm going to clean it up well, and lube it all with STP treatment. and start setting up the case feeder.
All in all, for $100, I'm not going to complain. One thing I am going to mod is the bench plate to eliminate the phillips bracket screws. The below vid seems like a nice upgrade. Off to Ace Hardware
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Link if the embed doesn't work
I'm sure I'll have more questions......so stand by