Quick-ish change press setup

oafpatroll · 2024-10-20T12:50:07Z

This is a cross past from Gunsite for anyone interested who doesn't go there.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------As my number of presses has grown bench space has become an issue. I previously made a quick change plate based setup for a Pro 1000 and single stage Lee press but that was triangular in shape and sized for the Lee footprints and my MEC 12G press is quite a bit longer in footprint so it didn't work on the plate.Decided to spend the afternoon cooking up a solution as I now have 5 presses all of which I only use one at a time. Objectives were to have a rock solid mount and for the plate to enable storage of fully assembled presses on the wall in a standard bracket.I initially toyed with the idea of making a 'shoe' style of fixture like the previous one that would have the plate engaging with c channel on three sides and then being locked in place by a single clamp on the fourth side but decided against it due to the need for precision fitting being required to make it really rigid and play free and the fact that mild steel bits wear pretty quickly regardless of how well they are fitted to begin with. A twitchy press mount does my head in so I decided to go more medieval and blacksmithy. The plates and clamps are 5mm mild and and the presses are secured to the plates with M6 socket screws in countersinks. The clamps are secured with M8 carriage bolts hammered in from the bottom. If I feel lazy enough after a few press changes I may may replace those with bicycle axle or machine fixture style quick release cam nuts.The combination of strap and tab clamps is to accommodate for two different lengths of plate. The 4 Lee presses all fit on the short plate but the MEC requires a longer one. Both slide under the strap which has springs under it to make clearance automatically and the tabs fit within the constraints of the operator side shapes of all three press types while exerting more than enough clamping force. I tried out the single stage press with only the strap clamp while full length resizing .270 Win brass and there was just a hint of flex so I added the tabs and it was completely eliminated. The clamp bolts have washers under them that were ground flat on the plate side and then drilled, countersunk and screwed to the bench top to locate the standard width plate so there is zero play side to side. I didn't get to it today so I still need to finish off the MEC and single stage press plates and bend up and weld the wall storage brackets from some perfectly sized C channel that I have left over from a data network installation business I had. They will go on the wall and my mother in law has generously volunteered to make me waxed cotton covers for them. Will be lekker as I'll be able to mount them on the wall fully assembled and ready to go with none one the roundphuckery that comes with a forest of presses getting in the way of everything or the need to disassemble presses for storage.

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Mohamed

(@mohamed)

Posts: 92

Estimable Member

Very nice! Well done.

Posted : 03/11/2024 11:47 pm

oafpatroll

(@oafpatroll)

Posts: 1108

Noble Member

Topic starter

An unplanned but in hindsight pretty obvious additional benefit of this plate system is that given a stout enough top I can clamp the presses to any table or shelf and have at it. Spent most of Saturday sitting at an outdoor table in the winter sun decapping 9mmP, .38Spl and .357 Mag cases while listening to Robert Service's Lenin.

Posted : 14/07/2025 2:43 am

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Quick-ish change press setup

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