OldHorseman wrote:- If you want to leap into handloading headlong, you can drop several hundred to a couple thousand dollars and set up a state of the art progressive loading station. You just put in a bunch of components, get everything set and adjusted, then every time you pull the lever, a ready-to-shoot cartridge pops out!

- Or you can buy a Classic Lee Loader for under $20.

- The Lee Loader is an ingenious kit about the size of a paperback novel that has all the specialized tools you need to handload one caliber cartridge. It includes illustrated instructions and even (limited) loading data for that round.

- To load "plinking" ammo with a Lee Loader, all you'll need (aside from components) is safety glasses, a small hammer, a good mallet (I use a 28 oz. rubber-clad dead blow hammer), and an anvil (piece of heavy plate steel, section of railroad track, bench vise, tinker's anvil, etc. will do). It's also handy to have a factory cartridge of a type that cycles well in your gun to use as a reference to set overall cartridge length.

- You use the mallet for everything but depriming and driving the case out of the resizing die, which I've found to be nearly impossible. For that, you use the light, steel hammer. Working on a hard, solid surface, like an anvil face, makes everything much easier.

- But the Lee Loader can make much better than plinking grade ammo. In fact, it can make the best, most accurate ammo you'll ever use. For that, you'll need powder measures, a loading scale, and good load data.

- The load data on the card that comes with the Lee Loader is for rather weak loads to begin with. Combine that with the fact that the dipper included in the kit tends to throw less powder than it's supposed to (especially with Alliant Unique), and you wind up with some pretty wimpy ammunition. So wimpy that it may be inaccurate, or unable to cycle the action in some automatics. Using load data from the major loading manuals or component manufacturer websites will allow you to experiment and develop the optimum loads for your guns and applications. Using a scale to measure your loads, or at least to figure out how much powder your volume measure is actually throwing, is safer and more effective than using volume measures alone.

- The Lee Loader's advantage (beyond low cost and compact size) is that it gives you total and direct control over every aspect of reloading every single cartridge. This allows for very precise fine-tuning and consistency.

- The Lee Loader's main disadvantage is that it is very slow to use. As in less than 1/10th the speed of any decent progressive loader. But it is so cheap and handy that even guys who own full-featured reloading workstations often have a few Lee Loaders on the shelf as well.

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