I finally got the Dillon RL-550B press all set up and loading ammo!

I reused my Lee Precision dies, partly because I had them already and partly because the Lee Factory Crimp die is highly recommended, even by many Dillon users.

On the Lee Pro-1000 press, there are three stations with dies, resize and deprime, flare and charge, seat and crimp. The Dillon is a four station press. I kept my Lee resize and deprime die on station 1 and used the Dillon flare and powder die.

For the bullet seating and crimping stations, I elected to keep my seat and crimp die, but adjusted it pretty high up so that it will only seat the bullet. I got a second die for crimping, with the bullet seating punch on it adjusted very high. This separates bullet seating and crimping operations. I may consider the Dillon seating die in the future, for it does have some interesting features, like the ability to disassemble it for cleaning without losing it’s setting. For now, I went with what I know.

I stopped using polycoated bullets, such as BBIs, because I was getting a ring of shaved material right at the case mouth, which was usually caught at the case gauge, but occasionally caused difficulties going all the way into battery. More case flare did not seem to address the issue, and I believe it was likely because the one step seat and crimp is still pushing the bullet down as the die is crimping the case. The harder copper plating on bullets like the Xtreme Bullets are just not as sensitive to it and are essentially just as inexpensive with frequently free shipping, minus BBI’s always included shipping. However, with these operations separated, perhaps I can revisit the poly ammo option.

Compared to the Lee, it is a substantially beefy press. It’s a bit more manual, though. My Lee has an automatic case feeder and the Dillon does not. The case feeder option for the Dillon is very nice, with a motorized unit up top to load loose brass into the press ready to process, whereas the Lee is really just a chute that you fill manually. With the case feeder in place on either press, one hand stays on the handle and the other handles placing bullets and, in the case of the Dillon, also indexing the shell plate.

There is much to recommend the simplicity of the Lee approach. It’s a fairly simple plastic turret with four clear tubes and a shallow funnel collator to simplify filling them, and a simple pusher to position the case into the shell plate during the upstroke of the handle. Each tube holds about 40 empty rounds of 40S&W. As each tube empties, you turn the turret assembly to bring a full tube into battery. Once empty, you reload the tubes all at once with the attached funnel and an agitation technique that causes the cases to drop, head first, into the tubes. It takes all of 20 seconds and you’re back to loading. It’s such a simple and inexpensive approach that it’s not really optional; the press ships with all the but the $12 funnel collator included.

The Dillon case feeder, however, is a large motorized contraption that costs more than the entire Lee press. Not saying I don’t want one, just thinking the $270-ish would buy a lot of reloading components right now. I wish there was an intermediate option, something between having no casefeeder and having the super-deluxe model.

No, for now I will get a few extra bins so that I can have empty brass at my right hand and and thus become the case feeder. 🙂 These trays from Amazon are the exact model provided by Dillon, though they are likely a different shade of blue and don’d have Dillon’s logo on their sides.

Since I have had some feeding problems with some ammo I made recently, particularly bullet setback while feeding, I am starting conservatively. I loaded 180gr RNFP over 4.4g of PowerPistol, 15 each with new brass and range brass. They are 1.125 OAL and crimped to 0.420, +/- 0.002. As I was setting the seating and crimping dies, I tested the crimp (with unprimed, uncharged brass) by compressing the finished round with pliers to verify that it takes substantial effort to move the crimped bullet.

If these feed and shoot correctly, I will see about having a bunch ready to go for a shooting class I am attending this weekend 🙂