LEE Pro 1000: Unboxing, Overview, Setup, Loading 45 ACP

[Music] this is where it all started for me gavin g here from ultimate reloader.com i'm talking about the lee pro 1000 station progressive reloading press this was my very first reloading press i saved a lot of money shooting 44 magnum when i got this press and it kind of got me hooked on reloading in this video i'm going to take an in-depth look at the pro 1000 i'm going to revisit my roots in reloading by doing an unboxing video we're going to get it all set up load some 45 acp and then shoot that ammunition so let's get started by getting this box open i've not taken a look in here there's been a few changes i've seen since i had my pro 1000 some things have been upgraded let's see exactly what those things are okay got some staples here all right here we go of the powder measure here okay top of the powder measure here is the rest of the press oh wow the colors are kind of different the frame used to be red and now it's it's bare aluminum with a little kind of lee logo badge on there i kind of like that okay and we've got a die set here let's take a look in there there we go it's got the updated lock rings which i'll have content on here shortly and then we've got the handle it looks like the discs for the autodisk powder measure the primer tray this is an integrated flip tray looks like the tray that you find on some of the other new bench primer and so on and so forth okay so here is what we've got all the basics it's got the updated ergonomic roller handle i have not tried that from lee yet get all of our powder measure parts here out all together okay so i'm going to read the instructions i'm going to get the press mounted on an inline fabrication quick change top plate for the ultra mount system i will note that lee also makes an affordable bench top mounting system with cleats that fit into a v-shaped pattern and they also make a free-standing reloading stand that's also quite cost-effective and rigid i use the inline fabrication system here in the shop and so i'm going to read the instructions i'm going to get everything set out and ready to go get it mounted and then we'll go through the process of getting it set up and ready to load ammo so i got the press mounted to the quick change plate for this inline fabrication ultra mount and i thought to myself it looks like there might be something missing i looked in the box and it turns out there's a couple more pieces here so let's take a look at what we've got here okay case feed tubes i was wondering where those were and spent primer collector tube okay so now that we've got the press mounted we are ready to put things together and we're gonna start with the handle the handle for the pro 1000 can be mounted either on the right hand side or the left hand side so it is an ambidextrous setup to mount the handle we're just going to take this steel block and then we've got a bolt here with a half inch head we're just going to feed that through i'm right handed so i'm going to put the handle on the right hand side here we're going to get that close drop the handle in and then do a sort of a finger tighten and as we tighten let's go ahead and switch directions there we're going to want to make sure that the handle is straight square with the press essentially and then i'm going to crank this down fairly well and then give it a little bit of a test we want to make sure that the handle is not going to twist looks like we're solid okay now that we've installed the handle on the press let's do a basic function check and then walk through each of the three stations on this press to talk about what's going to happen in each of these stations when we're reloading ammo so if we lower the handle that's going to raise the ram and then when we raise the handle that lowers the ram you'll notice here at the bottom of the stroke towards the bottom of the stroke this shell plate indexes to the next station so the shell casing goes into station number one it goes through a succession of operations and it comes out as a completed cartridge every time we raise and lower the ram a completed cartridge gets kicked out and goes into the completed cartridge bin down below station number one is where we do sizing and depriming so the brass is brought back down to its specs so it's going to fit in the chamber of your firearm and the old primer is poked out in station number two for pistol cartridges like the 45 acp we're going to be loading in a moment here the case mouth is expanded it's flared out a little bit so that the bullet will sit on top and for hard cast lead bullets the lead doesn't get shaved when the bullet is seated and we're also going to dispense our powder charge in station number three we're going to do two things we're going to seat the bolt we're going to shove it down so that it's at the appropriate cartridge overall length and then we're going to crimp now for auto loaders that's basically going to be taking out the flare and you'll have a nice straight wall for revolvers we're going to roll that into the crimp groove so that we have a nice tight grip on that bullet okay now we're ready to do powder measurement configuration okay it's time to put the powder measure together what we need to know is what load are we using in what powder so this is a 45 acp load that i'm shooting suppressed from my 1911 it's working well i'm using here six grains of hydrogen cfe pistol powder and what we need to do is take the reference sheet that comes with the powder measure this is essentially the owner's manual and on the back side you'll find this chart and all we really need to do is go to the hodgdon section here go to cfe pistol and then go over to where we're very close to six this is 6.1 which is going to be plenty close and we go up here to the volumetric reading that's 0.46 now we take our disks four of which come with the measure and we look for 0.46 which is right here now the way this works is this is going to slide as this linkage is actuated it's case activated so i'm going to put that linkage somewhere in the middle and then we're going to take the 0.46 there's a little slot on the back here and we're going to drop that in so that it is connected essentially to the linkage that slot has the linkage coming up into the bottom and we're just verifying that it is essentially connected then we drop the powder measure on top here okay and we've got two brass nuts we're going to tighten these on so that it clamps it together all right now let's confirm that we can actuate this with the linkage okay which we can now we're going to come back to this after we install the powder through expanding die we're going to screw this into the top of the die put our return chain in place and we'll be all set now we're going to install the dies we're going to start here at station number one with our sizer d primer we start by screwing it down we're going to raise the rim up to the top of the stroke and just crank this die down until it touches the shell holder just gently is fine and then we've got the lock ring here which we're going to start to tighten this is new these are newly locked rings there's this wrench the lock ring wrench that comes with the pro 1000 we can use that to do our finish tighten okay do a little bit of a cycle to press just to confirm good to go on to station number two here we're gonna install the powder through expander die we're gonna install the powder major on top of that and then confirm our case mouth expansion okay so i'm just going to snug that down we then drop the powder measure down right on top and use this knurled ring to tighten things down into place now if memory serves me the chain is going to go down the back here so i'm just going to kind of pre-orient this and then we've got a shell casing a once fired shell casing we're going to insert that behind the spring-loaded finger in station number two raise the ramp to the top of its stroke and we're going to see what kind of case mouth expansion we get there this is something you're going to need to play with you're going to want somewhere for auto loaders around ten thousandths of an inch larger at the case mouth than the body of the case it's something that you're going to need to experiment with with the bullets that you're placing you're going to want them to set nice and straight and not do too much tipping and you also don't want to over flare because that's going to work the brass excessively so here we are around the back side of the press i'm just going to double check that our lock ring is snug that's good we've got our return chain i've attached the bell end here about two links from the very end of the chain i'm just going to take the cushioning spring feed the chain through that and then we're going to pull it up through the hole in the press frame that everything bottoms out against like that okay so let's see where we're at here okay we want to be at the bottom of the stroke we want to have the linkage at the bottom of its travel and i'm just going to feed the chain in through the innermost hole here okay now if we hold this down a little bit we can actually simulate what's going to happen when we get to the bottom of the stroke i'm going to give it i'm going to give it one more i think link here like so let's just hold that there and see that we have spring compression at the very bottom of the stroke i think i like that i'm just going to take that and feed it back through the other hole in the linkage make sure that everything is seated down tight that looks good good that snapped into place we've got just a little bit of spring compression at the bottom of the stroke that's exactly where we want to be last but not least we've got the seating and crimping die which is going to go in station number three i'm just going to swing the powder measure gently out of the way there and we'll turn this into the press and in order to set this up what i've got is one of the completed cartridges from that load i talked about and we're going to use this as a reference and this should help us to get this die set up really quickly so what we want to do is to back out the seating stem because we're going to work on the crimp first and we're going to get the die body positioned appropriately okay so we're going to raise the ramp to the top of the stroke i'm going to turn this down until i feel some resistance which is right about there and then i'm going to go just a little bit more and this is something that we're going to have to check when we get our first round off the press and if we need to adjust the crimp we'll do that first and then we'll adjust the seating depth accordingly now we can turn in the seating stem and give it a nice tight fit we might have to finesse that just a little bit when we're done but we will do so after the press has run up with ammo next we're going to attach the spent primer collection tube there's a plastic connector here we're just going to raise up the clip it's kind of a little hole in the back of the rim then we just push down on the clip that should do it we're going to load some primers with this new style lee folding flip tray you just click this little switch to open and we're going to go ahead and dump our primers in i will note here that lee recommends using only cci or remington primers for more information on that you can click on the first link in the video description and i'll have a bit more context there so we're just gonna keep shaking this until all the primers our facing anvil up and just gonna get those last couple there there we go okay and then what we can do is go to lock and we're going to wait to go to on until we get this installed on the press then the primers will fall down so there's a little plastic chute here where the primers fall down we're just going to take the flip tray insert it firmly in there and then switch the switch to on as the press is cycled the primer flip tray is agitated and it fills up the entire trough with primers so now that we've completed the basics of the press setup and we've got our primers i'm going to add some powder then we'll confirm our die setup run a few cartridges through the press then take a look at the case feeder so i'm gonna take some hodgdon cfe pistol this is the copper fouling eraser i've got my powder measure off right now we'll turn that on right before we go to validate the powder charge i'm just going to very carefully use my hands to guide the powder here and with any luck it will be spill free there we go just takes a little bit of care all right so let's take some cartridges validate this entire setup and then we'll be off and running so i'm just going to raise the ramp to the top of the stroke place the case right by the inserter make sure that's fully inserted we're going to size and then we're going to go to station number two press forward and that's going to prime now i'm going to pull this case out and we're going to zero it on the scale so i'm going to place the primed case on the scale turn it on that's going to zero things out now we can reinsert the case at station number two dispense a powder charge and then remove the case from station number three we want to do this a few times to get the powder measure run up now we can weigh our sample charge we're looking for six grains let's see where we landed 6.1 that's going to be close enough for this load all right back to the press let's confirm our seating depth i'm going to take my dummy round the sample from my previously loaded collection of ammo 1.2465 for simplicity i'm just going to zero it out on that sample round now we can take our shell casing we can top a bullet on this go ahead and seat things let's see where we're at looks like we're three thousandths of an inch long so i'm just going to crank that down just a little bit reinsert the cartridge station number three and we'll see where we're at here negative three looks like we need to split the difference we should be good we can now run up the press and start to load progressively i'm just going to insert a shell casing here so the inserter can push it in each time now when we get to station number three i'm gonna do a powder check and then drop on a bullet looks like things are going pretty smooth here maybe it's time to add case feed so once you've validated your press setup and you're fully comfortable with the operation of the pro 1000 it's time to get the case feed system installed this is a really simple procedure you're just going to take the spring and disconnect it from the inserter remove the inserter place the shell casing on the slide plate put a coin on top of that for proper spacing lower the feed tube base down so that it contacts the top of the coin tighten the appropriate bolts ready to go you can then slide the tubes into the tube base and fill them like i have done here when we're loading we can just rotate these into place as each one is empty so let's start some fully progressive loading now all we have to focus on is bullet placement and powder checks which is great so here we are i've got a good powder charge i'm going to place a bullet [Applause] as you can see this is a lot faster than loading manually pressing cases because we've got one hand on the press handle and we've got one hand placing bullets doing a powder check each time good to go okay now i'm also keeping an eye on this feed tube because when that case feed tube is empty we've got a couple more rounds to go that's when we're going to need to flip the tube looks like we're there so now we rotate the tube it's going to index another one into position off and running again that way you can handle cases all at once looks like our completed cartridge bin is getting full so we'll go ahead and run the press down we've loaded some fine looking 45 acp ammo there's only one thing left to do before we conclude this video and that's go shooting so it's actually raining quite a bit outside so i thought why not just shoot from right here that's the joy of owning your own property so here we go i've got my 1911 i've got the osprey 45 suppressor here we're going to load the magazine the elegant way right out of the completed cartridge bin and what i've got is i've got a new plinkin swing target so i thought it'd be kind of fun to give that a try there we go and i guess i should open the door let's do this still a little loud with the suppressor indoors so we're gonna do some ear pro all right here we go that's pretty fun i'm liking this great rainy day activity all right that was fun nothing like some good old-fashioned 1911 shooting i hope you've enjoyed this video this unboxing overview and demonstration of the lee pro 1000 a couple quick notes first if you click on that first link in the video description there's going to be a full article write up that's going to include a lot more information about this press some facts and figures some specs links to product pages and so on and so forth also later in 2020 i'll be publishing the world's most insane progressive reloading press shootout it's going to feature the pro 1000 it's going to feature the loadmaster it's going to feature every progressive reloading press in common use today make sure you're subscribed with notifications because you're not going to want to miss out on that also note that i'm using capital cartridge once fired brass in this video if you want to save 10 percent use my discount code also what do you think of the pro 1000 what do you think of 45 acp do you like glocks do you like 1911s do you like reloading for them drop a comment and we'll discuss until next time happy shooting and happy reloading [Music]

Channel: Ultimate Reloader

Views: 327,224

Keywords: Reloading, Ultimate Reloader, Reloading Blog, Reloading Videos, Reloading Press, 45 ACP, 9mm Parabellum, m1911, AR-15, AR-10, .223 Remington, 5.56 NATO, 6.5 Creedmoor, 224 Valkyrie, Glock, 1911 Pistol, Budget Reloading and Shooting, Lee Loadmaster, LEE Precision, LEE Pro 1000, M-1911, lee pro 1000, lee precision, lee precision classic turret press kit

Id: gaXhj4RmZec

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020