Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Two Lee Equipment updates

Updated and/or improved doesn't always have to be about the tool or device itself, as is evident with Lee's packaging change. Okay, this isn't brand new, but worthy of mention. I received a couple of collet dies in the spring and found that they ship single dies in rectangular boxes now! A few days ago I received a couple of QT (Quick Trim) dies in boxes rather than the round, clumsy and hard to open roundish containers.

It's about time! Do you remember when they ditched the round die set containers and put everything in a box?

Case in point: This is an equipment drawer in one of my toolboxes. Their original, round QT die containers were bad. They were difficult to open and didn't fit into drawers or sit on shelves properly. That's changed for the better.





The second update concerns Lee's Auto Bench Prime. I'll wring it out like I did with their first version. The original was a good idea plagued by bad execution. Briefly, primer feeding from the tray was bad. I posted my observations in a thread called, I just ordered a Lee Auto Bench Prime. After futzing with it, and not being able to correct the jams and misfeeds, I tossed it in the garbage - literally! Like many companies, I believe they put it on the market and waited for consumers to grumble. They evaluated the complaints and made changes.

Several months ago, I bought the updated version after speaking with Lee. They told me that improvements were made because of some initial problems. Yeah, I remember...The new one looks like the original, but Lee improved the feed. The problems I had with their original ABP showed up after 100 or 200 cases. Did they fix things? Well, I put everything together, mounted it on a board and started priming cases. So far - after approximately 1400 primers - there have been no misfeeds from the tray, or jams in the body of the primer. The feel is better as well. It appears that they might have corrected the deficiencies. If it makes it through 5000 primers, I will declare it officially fixed.

Time for a poke at the Internet fan boys. If you check Youtube, you will see several reviews from 2016 that praised the original Auto Bench Prime. I think they got a free one to try. It was painfully obvious that they didn't actually check the unit out and test it properly. If you're bored over the holidays, search the reviews. It's one of the dangers of the Web. These folks must think they are television reporters or product evaluators.

"Hi youtube. Welcome back to Doofus Outdoors. Today, I thought I would do a review of..."

These Interweb evaluations aren't all crap, but ABC - always be careful!