A New Priming Tool – the Lee Ram Prime, Part 2
Copyright 2020 – Stephen Redgwell

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Lee Auto Prime II

If I could go back in time, I would purchase about 20 of the old Lee hand priming tools with the round trays. They were easy to use and maintain. I never had an issue with any of them. When the last one broke around 2000, I scoured gun shows, stores, and the want ads in the back of gun magazines to find replacement parts. Sadly, there was nothing available, and it was before the Internets was a big thing.

I tried the RCBS and Forster bench mounted priming tools, thinking that they were more expensive and therefore, better. Not so. They had their own idiosyncrasies. The big thing for me was loading the primer tubes. It took too long. I liked the simplicity of dumping 100 primers into the tray of a hand held unit. A few seconds to load and you were ready to go!

I went back to Lee and tried a couple of their creations. The Auto Prime Tool II worked fairly well. I suppose my only criticism of it would be the primer trough. It didn't like to feed the last few primers onto the ram. They had to be helped along with a pencil.

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Lee’s Auto Bench Prime

Lee’s Auto Bench Prime should never have been released for sale before working out some of the problems. The biggest was the priming tray. It was plagued by misfeeds and jams. I never wrote them asking if they had received complaints, but there is no doubt that they got an earful from reloaders. Hopefully, they re-engineered the tray. It was a big pile of bad.

The RCBS Universal Hand Priming Tool was okay, Because of the design, no shellholder was needed. I have two, and use the small primer tool the most. Wear has taken its toll however. Cases and primers have a tendency to jump off the tool, and land where they can't be found. I recently redid my office floor and found a bunch of kamikaze primers hidden under the moulding and furniture. I think the RCBS hand priming tool that uses shellholders might be a better idea.

At any rate, I got fed up with all the broken parts and high prices of the various priming systems. I decided to go simple and cheap, and bought a Lee Ram Prime. It attaches to any press and doesn't have many parts. The Ram Prime is fed one primer at a time using your fingers. I have it on a cast Lyman Brass Smith Ideal press. It was $30 CDN dollars, or $15-$20 USD.

But what about handling primers with your fingers? That’s bad, right?

Years ago (a lot of years ago), I remember reading that you should never handle primers with your bare hands. It was possible that oil (or coffee, or snot) might contaminate them, resulting in misfires or duds (failures to fire, for you young uns). Well, that was a worry in the dim times, but hasn't been for at least 30 years, and probably longer. Still, old habits die hard.

Nowadays, it’s not a problem. Your hands can be dripping with gun oil, but nothing will reach the priming compound. Primers are sealed and protected from spoliation (yeah, you better look that up).

So, I thought I would try a cheap, easy to use priming tool. If it didn't work, or broke, I wasn't out a lot of money. I am happy to report that after several thousand 223 and 6×45mm loads, the tool works as well as the day I first used it.


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What are you using?


Safe Shooting!
Steve Redgwell
www.303british.com

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - Mark Twain
Member - Professional Outdoor Media Association of Canada
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