Well, if you want to be fast with a single stage press, you need a system. Herewith follows mine, which I used for years, with quite satisfactory results.
I Deprimed and resized the whole bunch of empties of one caliber. All of them.
Picked them up with the left hand and inserted them into the press, and while the right hand was raising the ram, the left hand picked up the next round. I hooked a little cloth "apron" thingie around the press and attached it to the edge of the bench, and before inserting the second case, I sort of "flicked" the resized and decapped case out and caught it in the apron before inserting the next case. The whole batch.
Then, I cleaned, tumbled, etc.
Next operation was priming all of them in one batch. Again, flicking the primed one into the apron and inserting the next one. (The angular orientation of the shell-holder has a lot to do with speed and accuracy of "flicking" and speed and accuracy of case-insertion). It gets fast when you get accustomed to it. Become real friendly with your primer-feed system, too.
The next asumption is that you DO use a loading block, a sheet of 3/4" plywood with holes bored NEARLY through, and room enough between rounds to handle them with ease. (I don't mean one of those cheesy little "checkerboard" plastic blocks here.You must have room to grab a case without knocking its neighbor). If you have 1/2" holes on a 1" grid, that makes your board, at minimum with margins, the thing is 7 or 8 inches by 12 or 13. That gives room enough to handle things well, to see what your powder charges are, etc. It gives you room to place bullets as you do the cases in 50-round batches. Good for 38's, 9's and 45's. You set up 50 primed cases for each "batch" now.
You are with me so far, right ?
The assumption is that you use a Powder measure like The Pacific Bullseye (an older model) or its modern successor, the RCBS "Little Dandy"
http://www.natchezss.com/brand.cfm?c...prodID=RC86040
and that you hand-hold it and charge each of those fifty cases in the loading block in sequence, all as one operation. You CAN use a rifle-style measure, with a drum and charge-tube, but you need to use the small (pistol) charge tube and a longer drop-tube to accomodate the room needed for the crank - BUT it is slower as well as unhandy, and that's why I like the Pacific Bullseye. With these types of powder measures, the charge bars are a round bar with a knurl on one end for you to turn it, and a hole of a definite size bored into the bar to give an exact charge. That means you have to have a number of bars if you are loading a number of different rounds. Sometimes, you can use TWO CHARGES PER CASE of a smaller amount to achieve the desired charge, but this requires a degree of discretion and a lot of caution to accomplish correctly - best to have a charge-bar for each different load, but you can overdo this as RCBS makes about 75 different charge-bars at @$13-$15. I wound up with five custom-sized bars for 45 and 38.
The assumption continues that you then visually check all fifty cases with a flashlight after charging and see that the charges are all the same (no light charges, no doubles). The human eye is a truly remarkable "pattern-matching computer" when trained, and it is quite easy to spot discrepancies, especially when you select a powder that nearly fills the case for the load you are using. And that is a good thing for other reasons which are not germane to this discussion.
Next, place fifty bullets in the primed and charged cases as one operation (again, continuing with the "one batch of fifty rounds at a time" concept). This goes much better if you are careful to obtain a proper flare on the case mouoth so the bullet will sit
IN the case and
not ON>
Then, pick up one entire uncompleted round with case, primer, powder, bullet, and place it in the press, run the ram to seat and crimp while picking up the next uncompleted round and then "flicking" the finished round into the apron just prior to inserting the next set of components for seating and crimping.
No, of course, you will not equal the speed of even the least capable progressive press on a minute-by-minute basis. But you CAN significantly increase the speed of loading on a single-stage press, without sacrificing any safety or quality. In fact, if you are observant, you may even lessen the chances of "squib" or "double-charge" rounds.
This works well after you arrive at a load with which you intend to remain with. It does work for experimenting, if you are willing to make a fifty-round experiment.
And no, I did not think of this all by myself, though the apron is my idea. I was blessed to be around a lot of old guys who were competitors in the 50's and 60's, and they couldn't have done it either without a system.
All that being said, however . . . .
And even at the cost of a priogressive press, nowadays . . . . . . . .
And at the amount of shooting I do nowadays, . . . . . . . .
And I think of all that work I did for years . . . . . . . . . .
Nowadays, I am glad that I bought my LEE LOADMASTER. I love that thing.
Flash