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What would I need to get started? What is the difference between progressive and others? Im assuming a progressive completes each stage of the reloading for each respective caliber, fill me in?
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The main difference between a Progressive Press and a Single Stage Press is the amount of time required to load and individual bullet.
A single stage must perform each step on however many cases you have. Lets say you have 50 cases. You will mount the decapping/sizing die and run all 50 cases through it. Then you take that die off and you place a belling die in it. This "bells" the case mouth so that you can place a bullet in it easily. You do this for all 50 cases. Then, you must fill each case with powder. After doing that, you must set the bullet to the correct depth with the bullet seating die. Some dies do this and crimp the bullet at the same time, others like Dillon is a separate step.
You have roughly about an hour of time to load 50 bullets. Compare this to the progressive press, which happens like this..
The Dillon has a tool block in which 4 dies are set. You pick up a case and and place it in the first die which resizes and decaps. Pull the lever and move the case holder with your thumb.The second die bells and places the powder in the case.Pull the lever, move the caseholder.The third die seats the bullet to the correct depth then you pull the lever and move the caseholder. The fourth and final step is the crimp. Doing this for all 50 cases will take aproximatley 10 minutes vs. 60 minutes for the single stage press.After the 4th time that you pull the lever, a loaded bullet falls out into the tray because the cycle is repeated each time.
The progressive press is more expensive, but how much is your time worth ? The less time you spend reloading, the more time you have to shoot. Many times I have walked out into my shop, loaded a few hundred rounds and went out to shoot.
The average capacity for the 550 is 550 rounds per hour. The average capacity for the 650 is 650 rounds per hour and in both cases, if you have primer tubes already to go, and have your stuff situated where you can get to them easily, these averages can be easily exceeded. The main difference in the 550 and 650 is that on the 550 you must move the shellplate by hand, whereas the 650 does it automatically...and the 650 also feeds the case into the shellholder.Naturally, the 650 being more complicated is more expensive, but I personally would'nt reccomend it for a beggining reloader.
Hope this helps...