Hi, thought I had all my stuff together for reloading an old 8x57 Mauser I bought and couldn,t find my rcbs priming tool ,then I remembered I had given it away years ago when I thought I would never reload again !! Anyway now I have to find a priming tool and money is tight so I was thinking about maybe one of the Lee ram prime tools. I see I can get one on either Midway or Graf and Sons for about $10.00 plus shipping and was wondering if one of them would serve my purpose of hunting ammo for the old Mauser ? Thanks,Craig
I use the ram prime system, and I prefer it over the system that came with the press (a Rockchucker). It allows you a very good "feel" of the priming operation, and you can tell when the primer has bottomed without using too much force.
I have considered one of the hand held units, but am quite happy with the ram-prime setup.
It is much slower than the Lee Auto Prime to end up with the same results as you can feel the primer seat with the Lee Auto Prime too. I have used both and IMO, I'd save a couple more bucks and get the Auto Prime. With the Ram Prime, you are having to handle the primers in some manner to get them in the cup (I used tweezers) and your chance of contaminating a primer is much greater. While the Ram Prime did a good job, I found it somewhat tedious.
The Ram Prime works very well. Mine came with my Hand Press, so I've had it quite a while. Excellent feel and low effort required. I don't use it much, because I have an Auto-Prime, which is dramatically faster for me. The exception is that I use the Ram Prime on my WSM and WSSM cases, because the Auto-Prime is too narrow to get those wide cases in without grinding some metal off. That's ok to do, but it's not like I shoot thousands of WSSMs so I just use the Ram Prime for that.
