The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Gazoo wrote:I have always preferred RCBS presses etc, used and have just bought another Dillon, with great satisfaction, but have never had cause to complain about the dies or hand primer that I have bought from Lee, horses for courses.
I never liked the look of their presses so didn't ever buy one but what a great thing a LEE loader is eh? banging away with your hide mallet, it's great ! And it does do what it says on the tin.

+1 for the Lee Loader......it's almost therapeutic!.

Have you wiped out the powder dispenser with a used anti-static dryer sheet?

Josh

bradaz11 wrote:
to be fair, they found the issue, designed new, discontinued the old, and have admitted that it was s***. it's not their fault there are still retailers out there selling the old stuff.

They have known about these issues for years and did nothing but still sold the crap to customers knowingly ripping them off, any company that has so many you tube videos and internet posts and essays on how to make Lee equipment work has to tell people something.

Talented geniuses like Simg who can get the stuff to work from the start are rare on the ground but for most of us mere mortals a lot of Lee kit is a struggle to get to perform, Lee does not do complicated very well at all.

Great innovation let down by poor materials to meet a price point, half hearted product support and absolutely no quality control.

I gave up on the primer feeds years ago, in the turret and progressive presses I have.

I had to polish the turrets too as they were poor fits. Same with their bullet moulds.

I've been hand priming beforehand for donkeys years now. I have to do a "dummy" pull on an empty position. Daft I know but it's got to be a habit.

I don't know any different now. I have Lyman and RCBS scales and powder throwers etc. but there is still a place for good old Lee stuff.

Lee moulds, being soft aluminium are more easily damaged than others. That said. I still use a 44 Lee mould bought in the 1980s and it still produces good bullets. I have Lee, RCBS, Lyman/ Redding. C4Hd and NDFS dies: they all work, none appear to produce better ammo than the others. I have Lee (turret) and RCBS presses plus a small Lee press which is used exclusively for de-capping. Calibres that need dies to re-load are usually put together on the Lee turret---it is more than 30 years old. I have a Lee bottom pour pot---it has never dripped, but I don't like if. Most of my casting is done with a ladle.
The " lets knock Lee" brotherhood appear a lot on this forum, but I suspect that this is driven by "cheap is bad, expensive is good". It ain't true. What matters is value and Lee are well up on this criterion.
Fred

Have to disagree with you on that Fred, I desperately wish that Lee would just improve that little bit so that buying their products isn't such a pig in a poke. For instance I use Lee collet dies I think they are great but I buy them secure in the knowledge that I shall have to put time and effort in fettling them to get them to perform as advertised. I'm all for value, if you get a good Lee item then they are indeed great value but if you get a duffer which often happens then they are no value at all.

I had a customer round the other week I I was helping him get into casting, I took a new .454 RB mould of the shelf opened the box and started to clean the mould noticing the sprue plate was slack I knew that there was an issue as the sprue plates are held in place with a self tapping screw that is a bugger to tighten if moved well it lasted half a dozen cycles and came loose again, I pulled out another new in box Lee mould and exactly the same problem. Now I can fix that by drilling, tapping and putting a set screw in place but neither of those two moulds should have been passed as fit for sale, and yes I did lube them.

I also have some excellent Lee moulds that have seen me through decades but they are the smallest minority. I don't know of any other sector where such variable quality makes the company a brand leader.

It sounds like the quality has gone down. Most of my equipment is ancient, like me! MyLee sprue plates are not held in with self tapping screws.
Fred

It's not a surprise that companies lose quality over time in a bid to cut costs. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if there was good customer support to rectify problems, but it sounds like Lee don't have a good reputation for that either. I have some Lee dies and don't have issues but Lee tend to be the last choice for me compared to other manufacturers.

I have to say I started out with whatever the forerunner of the Lee Precision kit was back in 1995 and I've never had any issues with Lee equipment. Admittedly I'm a bit of a plodder and never had an interest in turret presses - I like to inspect each round at each stage as I assemble them - turret presses seem like a good way to replicate a mistake.

My first ever press was a Lee Cast Classic and it is still going strong, in fact I doubt I will ever manage to wear it out! I am a fan of Redding and Forster dies and reserve Lee dies for lower volume production however with some attention to set-up I get results that are every bit as good with Lee as I do with other brands and I have read of some recent instances where Forster have been defective out of the box.

As ever, we never remember the good times and people tend to shout about things that do not perform more often than they do about things that do work. As an aside, I would not use the Lee beam scales.