Area419 Zero Press compatibility with large bore cartridges and various shellholders

[rookhawk]

The Area419 Zero press is awesome, but it only accepts 13/16" aka 0.810" standard sized shellholders. This complicates matters since various shellholder manufacturers build shell holders to many sizes. Custom RCBS (special order) shell holders and CH4D shellholders will often not work. Other brands such as Redding will work if they support the cartridge in question.

I've made a chart to bring sanity to the situation:

 

[rookhawk]

@Tanks

 

[Tanks]

It seems no issues for the calibers I use and my Hornady shell holders, pictured is #55 with .500 NE case.

 

[rookhawk]

It seems no issues for the calibers I use and my Hornady shell holders, pictured is #55 with .500 NE case.

View attachment 461885

Correct. A Hornady #55 will work, or a Redding #31, or an RCBS #46, but a CH4D or a RCBS "Custom Order" shell holder will not.

 

[rookhawk]

$200 of testing right here in this picture. As you'll note, 3 of the 5 shellholders pictured are not compatible with the Zeropress. Hence, the cross reference chart and the buyer-beware warning on custom shellholders and largebore shellholders.

 

[ET1775]

Timely information, thank you.

 

[375 Ruger Fan]

I hadn't heard of Area419 Zero Press before reading this thread today. Went and found a good video on it. Interesting and expensive!

 

[Challer]

But they are awesome. Work up a load with all the steps on a nine slot turret. Setup the second time is as consistent as a Blaser scope mount!

 

[rookhawk]

Just like installing claw mounts, you only get one shot to drill holes and make a permanent decision. You won’t have to drill multiple sets of holes in your reloading bench due to buyer’s remorse if you own a 419 press.

Other candidates if your funds are less than needed for a 419.

The Redding Turrett press plus the aftermarket turret ball bearing upgrade.

The single stage Ammomaster2 from RCBS.

 

[Tanks]

Just like installing claw mounts, you only get one shot to drill holes and make a permanent decision. You won’t have to drill multiple sets of holes in your reloading bench due to buyer’s remorse if you own a 419 press.
...

Yeah, it is a one time cost, though I need another turret head.
In regards to cost, heck it costs less than my annealing machine.

 

[rookhawk]

Yeah, it is a one time cost, though I need another turret head.
In regards to cost, heck it costs less than my annealing machine.

Indeed. The only thing I don't like about 419 is their very poor R&D judgment. When they built the press they beta tested it and wrote functional requirements amongst their little clique of like-minded people. The outcome was very pathetic oversights that needlessly limited the press.

Examples:

They make a turret to handle 1.25" dies such as 577NE, 600NE, and many others. But they only tested them with Cheytac dies before going into production. Yeah, great thinking guys, except your proprietary shellholder ram can't handle a 577NE, 600NE or a variety of other shellholders. That was dumb-dumb-dumb and it never occurred to them.

They foolishly assumed that everyone is F-class oriented that will buy their press and as such, you'd spend $600 on a priming device for your high-volume precision loadings. They never considered that we might be loading 5 rounds with a value of $200 or more on their press where we'd want to actually prime a case in the press. I solved this with the RCBS priming setup for single stage presses but this is just another example where the R&D team should be beaten with a rubber hose. They didn't look at the world with "how many use cases and customers can I sell this to and what are their requirements?". Instead, they just considered their little micro-bubble of the reloading universe and went into production.

Its a wonderful press, better than most any other, but their missteps speak volumes to their lack of professional design experience for failure to canvas the market and take in requirements from a broader swath of potential customers. When I spoke to them, they didn't know what double rifles were and were unaware shellholders even exist that aren't standard size.

 

[Tanks]

Well, in their defense other than progressive presses I quit priming on the press a couple of decades ago. And just about everyone I know that shoots in volume does the same. My priming device did not cost $600 though. I used to use Forster Co-Ax primer seater but switched to the RCBS Auto Priming Tool recently.

I mounted it to a wood block and clamp it to the bench whenever I need to prime cases.

 

[rookhawk]

For low volume largebore handloading, This is what I use on the zero press. It's pretty simple. Put the primer in the ram, put the brass in a shellholder on top of the turret, seat the primer. You can get consistent seating depth with it if you'd rather not use a hand primer. I struggled with some brass in my lee hand priming tool as they were just too hard to seat whereas the ram based primer seats perfectly due to the extra mechanical advantage.

The bench priming tool you have is very nice. That said, there was no reason 419 shouldn't have offered a simple priming option on their platform, even if they just private labeled or copied the RCBS ram primer below.

Ram Priming Unit | RCBS

Buy Ram Priming Unit at RCBS, the leading producer of high-quality reloading equipment supplies for over 60 years.

www.rcbs.com

 

[Tanks]

...

The bench priming tool you have is very nice. That said, there was no reason 419 shouldn't have offered a simple priming option on their platform, even if they just private labeled or copied the RCBS ram primer below.

...

Well, seeing that solution costs only $34 and available from a 3rd party I can see why they would not offer it. Especially, the limited market for it (based on their user base).

 

[rookhawk]

But that's sort of my point, @Tanks Area419 knows nothing by listening to a broad set of customers. They know their nitch as consumers of certain requirements. (F-Class, long range high power shooting, etc.)

They had never heard of the RCBS item above. That was one of many examples where i spent many, many hours trying to find solutions with limited help from the manufacturer.

I get it, I'm not the center of anyone's universe and my needs may not be the same as other's needs. But as a manufacturer, hopefully, a GREEDY one (compliment) you'd want to sell as much product for as much use cases as humanly possible. That means understanding the 50BMG guys, the Cheytac guys, the Black Powder users, the Nitro Express crowd, and the standard caliber high-budget shooter too. These guys are losing sales because they don't have a "playbook" on how to solve various product issues like my solution to priming outlined above. (and by the way, you can prime oversized shellholders with that solution too.

 

[Tanks]

Well, we'll disagree, I guess. I had not heard of your solution either, also I hate priming in the manual presses. I gravitated to the priming setup I use over the years because it requires the least amount of setup work for me, and I do not have to handle each primer individually.

As an owner of multiple businesses, I am greedy as heck as well. However, I will not take on projects that have a projected return on investment below a certain amount especially when I have limited amount of resources.

 

[rookhawk]

Would you not agree having a $200 feature to buy a 1-1/4” die turret without testing shell holders or ability to de-prime was a huge misstep?

If I was going to get into the press business I’d sure as heck understand what the competition and partners build and why so I’d have an answer for customers other than “never knew that” and “we hadn’t considered that”.

The Shellholder situation really bothers me because I own a 1-1/4” turret I will never use because of the shell holder incompatibility. No 577, no 600, no 600 rewa, no 700, and no host of other vintage double rounds.

they literally made an 8-die turret that works with two cheytac caliber dies.

Sorry, just very annoyed about that even though I like the press very much. Amateur move. I spent $500+ buying a variety of parts and converters seeing if there was a solution. Nothing will work, even if they made a custom ram adapter to place a large shel holder slightly higher in the ram, then the primer hole wouldn’t function to dump spent primers into the drawer. Epic blunder. Only solution would be a new custom designed ram that uses a normal shell holder system to slide them in without a thread down proprietary cap.

 

[Challer]

Let me suggest that the 577 and up crowd is the long tail of the curve. And if you transition to InLine Fabrication, all your gear mounts on one station without more holes in the bench. 419, single stage, priming station, vise, etc. One mount.

Welcome to InLine Fabrication Performance Reloading Equipment – Inline Fabrication

InLine Fabrication builds reloading equipment including dedicated and quick change press mounts for RCBS Dillon Hornady LEE Redding Frankford arsenal Area 419 Short action customs Forster bench organizational gear, LED press lighting lots of helpful accessories and parts. Reloading bench Strong...

inlinefabrication.com

 

[Tanks]

...

The Shellholder situation really bothers me because I own a 1-1/4” turret I will never use because of the shell holder incompatibility. No 577, no 600, no 600 rewa, no 700, and no host of other vintage double rounds.

they literally made an 8-die turret that works with two cheytac caliber dies.

...

Actually, there are a number of precision dies that also come in 1-1/4" thread for a variety of calibers.
An example:

Triebel: Creedmoor Sports Inc.

Birthplace of the Creedmoor cartridge, Creedmoor Sports has been serving the precision rifle shooting community for over 40 years. During that time, we have manufactured only the best products to give the dedicated shooter the confidence needed to win at every level of competition.

www.creedmoorsports.com

 

[Wyatt Smith]

The big problem I’m seeing with @rookhawk complaints, is that none of the issues would have been expensive to correct if done properly in the first place.
Now that they have invested a bunch of money doing it the wrong way, it will cost too much to fix these issues.
A little foresight goes a long ways.