The underrated Lee Ram Prime

[big5ifty]

I've always had at least one Lee Ram Prime. I've just never used it beyond testing it out.

At some point in the distant past I bought one, tested it, and put it away. Over the years, I've acquired more with the occasional used press or reloading equipment that I would buy, but always sold them off.

It doesn't have a primer tray, or a primer tube, and picking up primers with my fingers seemed unsanitary for the primer. Having a tray seemed much cooler.

I then bought a hand priming tool, and primed my rifle brass that way.

From that hand primer I moved to a RCBS press mounted APS tool, and it became my favourite priming tool. So much so that I looked for a second one, but they are so long out of production, they can't be bought new anymore, and other than the one I got, I've never seen another one for sale.

So taking the long way back to the Ram Prime - I was recently offered an old orange Lyman, and in the process of patching with epoxy where the casting was broken, I figured out an easy way to give it a proper hard stop, which I did. A hard stop on a press + Lee Ram Prime is great for priming, because you can control the seating depth precisely by adjusting the height of the shellholder holder  that screws into the press.

I then started looking for my Ram Prime, which I was sure I had, but couldn't find anymore. So I bought a new one. And today I found my old Ram Prime, in a box with decapping die spares. Now I have two.

The handling of primers with fingers is not a problem when you have tweezers and know how to use them. Align the primers in the primer tray, and tweezer them into the primer cup. No mess, no fuss.

The old Lyman now sits as a dedicated backup priming station for rifle, with a Lee Ram Prime.

[Againstthegrains]

Hell Yeah. The Lee auto prime is a rather flimsy little toy that is best suited to small rifle primers that go in easily. But when you go large rifle primers, and your pockets are a bit tight, its a sure way to get blisters on your hands, and eventually break the thing. In these situations, the Ram Prime is the bomb.

[Treeman]

The Lee Bench Primer 2022 abouts model onwards is just the bestest to me, perhaps I got lucky, got a really good one, but man it works so flawlessly. Keep a few moving parts spare and 1000's of primers later