Single stage vs progressive reloading presses

[Slapstick]

I'm a little late in this thread. After 40 years or so I still use single stage presses for all of my reloading. I have 3 setup on the bench and have loaded 10's of thousands of rounds with my set up. I'm never in a hurry so speed doesn't matter. On my setup 2 presses are used for most of the reloading and third is set up a a dedicate decapper. On pistol rounds I use one to resize and then move it the other to bell the case mouth, then toss them in a can for priming. I find priming by hand to be more efficient and you get better feel for the primer seating properly. After priming I them change out the dies with the first set for bullet seating and the second for crimping. Rifle rounds are simpler, Use one press for resizing, then tumble to get the lube off, trim as necessary and back to using 2 presses, first for seating the second for crimping.


I always recommend that a person new to reloading learn on a single stage, I feel you get a better understanding of the whole process and then if you want move to a progressive. In reloading understanding the process and developing good habits is so important from a safety standpoint. You'll always find a use for a good single stage press, mostly in making precision rounds but they can't be beat if you need to convert brass from one caliber to another. Case in point, I convert 30-06 brass to 8mm and 7.65x53 which is easy to do on a single stage not sure how hard it would be using a progressive.

 

[VERT]

I have a friend who keeps 3 single stage presses in a line to reload. He can pump out quality rifle cartridges with no problems. The only real disadvantage is handling the cases multiple times and the bench space required. Otherwise it makes sense.