Found out about this new press that Lee Precision came out with. Looks like it's aimed at competing against the Dillon XL650/XL750 type of press, and it's affordable. Additionally, doing .45 ACP on the Classic Turret Press, while very easy, reminds me that a progressive press is even faster, about three times as fast. I have two Lee Pro 1000 presses, which are three-stage presses, but since for .45 ACP, I need to post-size the rounds down with the Factory Crimp Die, any prospective press should have at least four stations. I tried the Load-Master and found that I can safely get about 250 rounds/hour out of it, but the priming system is that press's weakness, without question. Priming on the press is one of the big value-adds of any multi-stage, auto-indexing press, especially a progressive press.

I was seriously considering the Lee Pro 4000, which is the Pro 1000 redesigned for four stations and a "new-n-improved" primer design.

And then....

(DAA-DAA-DUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM!!!)

Lee announced something that they call the Pro 6000 press. This thing is a six-station press! SIX STATIONS! With a street price of about $350 for the whole kit? Oh, yeah, baby! With that amount of stations, you get a whole lot of flexibility. Need to post-size cases? Gotcha. Need a Powder-Cop die to make sure of no squibs? Covered. Need to use that new Primer Pocket Swaging Die on the press, say for all those 5.56 NATO or 7.62x51 NATO cases...or any Sellier and Bellot handgun cases whose primer pockets don't have much beveling? Welcome to the party.

Thanks to the good folks at Titan Reloading, I now have such a press in my possession, as of this evening. The idea is to use the following dies in the following stations.

1.) decapping/resizing
2.) powder-through-expander and flaring
3.) RCBS "Powder Cop" die
4.) bullet seating
5.) Factory Crimp Die
6.) nothing at this time

Looking at it, it appears to be typical Lee construction, which I consider to be quite adequate for the job. The linkage is straight from the Classic Cast/Turret Press line, meaning it's all-steel and beefy as a Peterbilt. The die head, i. e. where you put the dies into, uses Lee's relatively new Breech-Lock system, and I gotta say, I was a Doubting Thomas about that system, but now that I see it first-hand, I really like it. It's a new-and-improved version of Hornady's fine "Lock-N-Load" die holding system. The press comes with the Auto-Drum Powder Measure. I've been using the Pro Auto-Disk Powder Measure for 13 years, and I love it. It will be most intriguing, as Lt. Cmdr. Data would say, to compare this newer Auto-Drum powder measure to that experience.

Just unboxed the press and am preparing to put it on the reloading bench. Man I can hardly wait to get started with this thing. And if it does pan out, I will DEFINITELY be doing a video series on the thing. If it works as well as my twin Pro 1000's have been, then I will consider this Pro 6000 a smashing success, and I hope that it will live up to that.

Will update this thread as I get some experience with the press. Let's cross our fingers that it will live up to expectations. I really hope it does.

I am very impressed with your persistence with these products. As a dusty old guy with a Model T sized garage and a single stage Orange Crusher, I could never even aspire to your level of expertise with these (dare I say it) new-fangled machines, even "Number Six" above. I am looking forward to enjoying the video with a cuppa Road Rocket Dark Roast and some buttered toast with raspberry jam. I will reload fast vicariously through you, then schlep through my little process out in my shack. Sweet to have such variety in my life.

CDFingers

CowboyT wrote: Sun Dec 11, 2022 8:26 pm Found out about this new press that Lee Precision came out with. Looks like it's aimed at competing against the Dillon XL650/XL750 type of press, and it's affordable. Additionally, doing .45 ACP on the Classic Turret Press, while very easy, reminds me that a progressive press is even faster, about three times as fast. I have two Lee Pro 1000 presses, which are three-stage presses, but since for .45 ACP, I need to post-size

When you say post-size, do you mean after the round is otherwise complete?

Indeed, I mean just that. The Factory Crimp Die includes a tungsten carbide ring that will size the entire round, ironing out any "bulges" that might cause the round not to chamber in some guns.

Here are some pics from today's reloading session. For some reason, the LGC forum Web site does not seem to allow "click to resize", i. e. clicking on the thumbnails simply produces the thumbnail, not the full-sized image. This is true with both ImgBox and PixHost. Therefore, I'm using the largest thumbnail size that the image hosting sites allow.

I had just finished setting up the press. Still getting used to it and continuing to dial it in as I use it. The priming system in particular appears to require a bit of a "break-in" period of several hundred rounds. As I use it, it appears to get more reliable, which is a good thing. The load is 5.4gr of Titegroup under a 200gr LRNFP. The cartridge is .45 ACP. The powder measure is the Lee Pro Auto-Disk Powder Measure with the so-called "infinitely adjustable" powder cavity insert. Note that my Lee Pro 1000's both also needed a bit of dialing in to get reliable, so I expect this from any press, especially a progressive press. Initial indications are looking promising.

It also reminded me how quickly one can go through a box of primers with progressive presses....

Seems there are several variations of this die, interesting.

If you mean the Factory Crimp Die, then there are two variations. There's one for handgun cartridges, and there's one for rifle cartridges. The handgun cartridge variation is the one that post-sizes the entire case. The rifle version simply does a "factory-like crimp", according to Lee. I don't use the rifle version of the FCD, since relatively few of the the rifle bullets that I use even have a cannelure/crimp groove.

Christmas present to myself today. Just reloaded a few hundred more .45 ACP rounds this afternoon. Took about an hour. The priming system performed perfectly this time. I think it really is getting dialed in here....

I have made another determination, though. Primer pocket swaging, say, for 5.56 NATO or .308 Win/7.62 NATO is not practical on this press. There are two reasons. First, there's no place to put the swager ram underneath the shell plate. Second, even if there were space for the swager ram, the priming happens in Station 2, which is too early; it would need to be in Station 3. Station 1 needs to be the decapping and resizing station, for obvious reasons.

However, fortunately Lee has this thing called the Automatic (Case) Preparation Press, or APP. Pour the cases into the case feeder, start pulling the handle. Perhaps that's best anyway, because swaging primer pockets does take some force. I suspect that's best done on a single-stage press like an RCBS Rockchucker, Lyman Crusher, Lee Classic Cast, or APP.

That APP also looks like it will do very well for fast cast boolit sizing. For that reason, since I do cast my own, I'm going to get the APP as well. This will replace--finally--the $30 Lee Reloader Press that I bought 13 years ago and have used a whole lot since. Nothing wrong with that little press; it's just that the APP is a superset.

My Lyman Crusher was made last century and still crushes. ;-) My birthday is next month, so am considering adding to my already crowded bench.

CDFingers

Swaging primer pockets sucks. Let us know how the APP works out.

I will. It's on the way, with the 0.358" bullet sizing kit. The primary use will be for resizing my cast boolits. Primer pocket swaging will be a secondary, but obviously useful, application.

BTW, I should point out that resizing cast boolits the old-fashioned way, with a single-stage press and Lee's traditional ("classic" they call it now) bullet resizing die, is not exactly slow. I did several hundred in under an hour this evening. They're currently outside with their final coat of Liquid Xlox from LsStuff.com. They have to call it Xlox because the name "Alox" apparently is trademarked. Same stuff, though, as Lee's "Liquid Alox", and considerably lower priced per unit.

I'll be sure to give a report on the Lee APP in a separate thread. As for the Pro 6000...since I'm out of 200gr, 0.452" cast boolits, it'll be time to cast some more this winter. I'm gonna make a bunch of 'em, and then the Pro 6000 will be getting a lot of exercise. That 1911 needs proper honoring by taking it to the range as often as possible.

BTW...a video series on the Pro 6000 *IS* planned for my Web site! The Web page is already made, and it's just a matter of actually making the videos for it.

Just did another run of .45 ACP, this time with Rainier 230gr round-nose (standard ball), since I'm out of my cast LRNFP's. Man, this Pro 6000 is really proving its worth.

I also began a run of .38 Special on the Pro 1000 as a comparison. The Pro 1000 is generally a good press...with one issue, and that's that you've really got to watch the Auto-Prime-based priming system. On the Pro 1000, primers don't always slide down with as much authority as they should, and you get tipped (and thus crushed) primers. They slide down the chute a little sluggishly sometimes. This is even after cleaning. So, my solution is to tap the Pro 1000's primer tray during the primer drop, and that generally fixes that problem. But it is an indication of why Lee replaced the Auto-Prime system with the Classic Turret Press's Safety Prime system.

The Pro 6000 appears to eliminate that issue altogether. The primer drop chute is at a steeper angle, and primers therefore slide down better. Also, that primer grabber slider thingy positively grabs the primer and puts it on the primer ram, in similar spirit to the Mauser 98-based Controlled-Round-Feed chambering mechanism. It's just a fundamentally better priming system.

Seems that Lee Precision really got it right this time.

Here's the output from a little leisurely session with the Pro 6000 today, before heading to the range.



Took just over an hour. The load is Rainier Plated 230gr round-nose (standard ball) on top of 5.3gr Bullseye, the max charge listed in Lyman's 49th and 51st, and corroborated in Lee's Modern Reloading. This is basically the standard military load, and it shoots quite nicely out of the 1911.

This is what the press can do when you get it dialed in. And I was not rushing. I could've gone faster, but reloading isn't a race.

That is a tremendously impressive output. An hour-ish. Man.

CDFingers

And it's repeatable. I did this at lunchtime today, actually timing myself. Just finished a little over half an hour ago. The reloading session started at 12:00 high noon, on the dot. I stopped at 1:00pm, again on the dot. Then it took me 12 more minutes to box them up like you see here.



That's 350 rounds there. There were actually 351, but one of them, I didn't fully seat the primer, so I didn't count that one.

So, total time is 1 hour and 12 minutes to get ammo made, boxed up, and ready for the range. Note that this includes the following steps during that hour.

- Four restockings of the primer feed tray
- One restocking of the bullets (plated round-nose, 230gr), and yes, I'm seating the bullets old-school, i. e. by hand
- One restocking of the powder hopper
- Several (I forgot to count) restockings of the case feeder--it was probably about 6 or so, given its capacity

Also, as with any progressive press, including my Dillon XL650, I did run into a few glitches here and there, two with the priming system of my own causing (not the press's fault), and a few cases with slightly bent rims didn't fully feed without a little help, so I had to watch that. Again, normal with any progressive press. None of these issues were difficult to deal with; I just adjusted and kept right on going. The reason for not having any actual, serious problems? It's called, "paying attention". And even with those few glitches, I got this output in one hour. Again.

This thing is worth the money. Dillon Precision had better be looking over its shoulder at this Pro 6000...especially given its price. For the cost of my .38 Special XL650 or today's XL750, you can buy *THREE* of these Pro 6000's, fully kitted out like mine is.

As Gazelle said in the movie Zootopia....

https://youtu.be/NAKZsjJa6Nw?t=27

Another relatively leisurely session occurred last night with the Pro 6000, again with .45 ACP. Currently, I'm using a 200gr LSWC bullet, seated pretty deeply into the case so that the round feeds consistently. It's amazing how fast one can go through components with this press. I was going pretty leisurely, as usual, since reloading is not a race. While I didn't time myself in this instance, before I knew it, I had gone through 300 more primers. It was less than an hour.

However, I have noticed one thing. The primer tray has a switch on it. Yep! That switch has three settings--open, lock, and on. The "on" setting is the one that allows primers to drop through into the primer chute for reloading. Sometimes, the primers do kinda hang up a little bit in the primer tray, due to that switch; a slightly greater clearance might be called for. It's easy enough to fix, though. Just tap on the primer tray every, say, 8-10 rounds. Not quite perfect, but it's an improvement over the Pro 1000's Auto-Prime-based system, which itself was manageable.

So, after a few thousand rounds of .45 ACP, yeah, this press was a smart purchase.

Now, I will compare it against my Dillon XL650, in .38 Special.

The XL650 makes fine ammo, as you'd expect. Dillon Precision does not make junk and never has. If one can afford a Dillon Precision press, then as long as you do your part, it will make lots and lots of high-quality ammunition for you. It's built like a freakin' M1A4 Abrams tank, sort of like Ruger revolvers. Ruger in fact chambered the original Redhawk for .357 Magnum, in a 6-shooter configuration, years ago. The chamber walls in that cylinder are so grossly thick for the cartridge that it's almost comical.

The Pro 6000 is not quite built as tank-like as the XL650. It's built more like a S&W revolver that way, in that it isn't as massive or heavy of a frame. However, the now-late Richard Lee, an engineer, spoke about that in his book, and he was right. It's still waaaaay stronger than needed to do reloading. The revolver comparison here would be the S&W Model 27/627 N-frame in .357 Magnum or the Models 586/686 L-frames. Is it as ludicrously strong as the Redhawk .357M six-shooter? Obviously not. Is it strong enough for a steady diet of full-house .357M over the years? Definitely.

The same argument applies to these two presses.

Now, let's deal with ease of setup. The XL650...takes some study. You don't actually need a mechanical engineering degree to set up an XL650, but it kinda feels like you do. There's a lot to the setup, and you do have to study it pretty extensively to get it right. Once you do, like I said, it puts out fine ammo, and lots of it, but there definitely is some complexity to the press. It took me an entire day to figure it out. There is, as with all progressive presses, some tweaking to be done to dial it in properly.

The Pro 6000, by contrast, is far easier to set up. I had it on the bench and producing ammo in about an hour. As with the XL650, I had to dial the press in. That took about as much time as it did on the XL650. So, the ease-of-setup definitely goes to the Pro 6000 in this case.

As an owner of both...which one would I recommend?

If you want name recognition and the ability to brag to your friends, get the Dillon XL650 or its newer version, the XL750. You'll spend a lot! And you'll spend plenty of time figuring out the setup. But you will get plenty of fine ammo. I would call it the Audi, BMW, or Mercedes-Benz of progressive reloading presses. You get to brag to your pals...but at least you have a quality machine to brag about.

If you don't care about name recognition, and you want a similar quantity of fine ammo, get the Lee Pro 6000. It' s more like the Toyota Avalon or Acura (Honda's upscale division here in the USA) of reloading presses. It will make just about as much high-quality ammo, at a third of the price, with far easier setup and much less expensive cartridge conversions.

On either press, I would recommend Lee dies if your press doesn't already come with them. If your Dillon press came with Dillon dies, though, those also are high-quality, albeit considerably pricier.

Great review - I’ll be all in on a Lee Pro 6000 when primers ever drop below $50/box.


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Dammit, I need a tutor to come over and show me. I ain't good at video learning, or book learning for that matter. lol I usually wait until its a must do or die problem. Get it, die? lol sorry

tonguengroover wrote:Dammit, I need a tutor to come over and show me. I ain't good at video learning, or book learning for that matter. lol I usually wait until its a must do or die problem. Get it, die? lol sorry

There’s an older gentleman in my office that helped me get started out loading 50 rounds over a dozen years ago. Just someone confirming how to do it really adds piece of mind. If you haven’t figured it out by September, I’ll be in your area for work , and I’ll come over and get you started with your first batch.


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INVICTVS138 wrote: Tue Apr 25, 2023 6:55 pm

tonguengroover wrote:Dammit, I need a tutor to come over and show me. I ain't good at video learning, or book learning for that matter. lol I usually wait until its a must do or die problem. Get it, die? lol sorry

There’s an older gentleman in my office that helped me get started out loading 50 rounds over a dozen years ago. Just someone confirming how to do it really adds piece of mind. If you haven’t figured it out by September, I’ll be in your area for work , and I’ll come over and get you started with your first batch.


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Wow awesome.
Contact me when you have time.
At least for a beer or range time.

Many years ago, I bought a Dillon RL-450, predecessor of the 550, minus the removable die contraption. One of the early models without the case ejection and star indexer, you spun the shell plate by pushing/pulling the cases. It served well but had some issues. It was possible to get out of sync / rhythm and double up on powder or primer or forgo entirely as both were manual feed / dispense as well.

Sitting on a shelf collecting dust at a local store was an RCBS Green Machine, also a four station press but of linear design and not caliber conversion friendly. It did however do nearly everything by simply cranking the handle, just not very well. I have heavily modified it over the many what seem like centuries to where it can do everything auto without a hiccup for round after hundreds of rounds.

Some while later, RCBS produced a five station rotary auto this and that, which once you get used to the priming gizmo, is a nice machine. I bought it used on ebay, “for parts, not working” and with a call to the manufacturer, had everything in a few days of make it whole again. Only thing I ever broke since is a small indexing bit no bigger that an ice cream sprinkle, which they gladly sent me 2.

Still. I lusted after Big Blue, and bought a 750. After about three or four hundred rounds each of a few calibers, it’s back in the box, in the basement of my reloading/man cave, awaiting it’s turn on ebay. The design of the thing is such that you almost have to use their dies, and as it case feeds on the handle side, their casefeeder also, along with expensive conversion “kits”. The only machine change on the Pro 2000 is a shell plate. The APS priming system allows the use of the small punch with larges primers also. It has removable die plates, but I find it just as quick to screw in and out the dies, and they fit back into the box.

If I wern’t in wind down mode, I might like to try the Lee. Sound like fun.

Indeed, it is. It's actually fun to reload on this thing. I'll go out and do, say 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there, and next thing I know, I've got hundreds of rounds.

To your point about wind-down mode, I'd say that definitely suits something like, say, a Classic Turret Press. One easy-to-use press that does every round you might want to reload.

Turns out that this new Pro 6000 also, surprisingly, lends itself well to "wind-down" mode. The primary reason is the ease and low expense of cartridge changes. The secondary reasons are the ease of use of the press itself, including when something goes wrong.

This thing, and a basic single-stage (e. g. Lee Reloader Press or the Lee Challenger), really are now all that you need for reloading anything short of .50 BMG. Had this press been around when I got started reloading, I'd have one of these and a single-stage, and that's probably it.

tonguengroover wrote: Tue Apr 25, 2023 6:22 pm Dammit, I need a tutor to come over and show me. I ain't good at video learning, or book learning for that matter. lol I usually wait until its a must do or die problem. Get it, die? lol sorry

What part of the country do you happen to be in?

I have been reloading .45 ACP off and on over the past month and a half with this press and the LSWC's.

You know those .50 BMG ammo cans? I'm about to fill one up with .45 ACP reloads. It takes some hours, sure. But remember, I'm popping out 350 rounds/hour on this thing, going at a relatively easy, non-rushed-at-all pace. I'll include a picture when I run out of LSWC's to reload with.

Why mention this? Because marksmanship practice is important. I haven't shot in 4 weeks due to life pressures, and my marksmanship is rusty. I'm getting back to practicing at least twice a week, maybe 3. That will require practice ammo. This press gives me that ammo, efficiently.

UPDATE: Lee came out with a Year 2023 update to my traditional progressive press, the Pro 1000. It's got the same new priming system as the Pro 6000, and it uses the new Breech-Lock system, too. This is a really cool development. Given Lee's update/refurbishment policy, I may have my .38/357 Pro 1000 refurbished, if they'll do it, to the new 2023 version.

Folks, the recent developments in affordable progressive reloading are extremely cool and very helpful to use as marksmanship practitioners.

Oh, yeah. I remember this thread. But to tell the truth, you had me at "six pack". ;-)

Muscle memory is what I'm after. I use snap caps to keep up.

CDFingers