What I discovered about the Dillon Square Deal
In another thread, I noted that I was searching for a new progressive. Well, I found a Dillon SD for a price too good to pass on and bought it. After cleaning it and going through it, I have some observations. Let me first preface by saying this is not my first rodeo. I've been an active handloader of pistol, rifle, shotshell and 19th century BP rounds since the 1970s. I have owned Lyman, RCBS, Redding, Hornady, Pacific, Star, Lachmiller, Ponsness Warren and Lee presses. I also have a Huntington hand press. When I say Lyman, I mean everything from the turret press, the 310 tools and even an old arsenal press. In short, I have a PhD in loading presses. All get the job done, in one fashion or another but a few really stand out in the excellence of their design and the utility of their function. The T-7 is one of those. If you load long BP shells with heavy, long bullets, this press gets the job done and done very well. It can even be used as a simi-progressive, much like the PW press in that you can take a round through all of the stations before taking it off the ram. It's faster than a traditional single stage but using it this way is not the ideal system for maintaining accurate powder throws. The shaking as you rotate the turret head settles the powder. Some powders are worse than others. For BP though, this difference is too small to be a concern.
My first venture into progressive reloading was a Hornady pro-jector press. that was a fiddly boat anchor and I gave it away. Next I bought a LNL ammo plant. A fine press with regard to case retention and advance. Splitting the advance into half rotations up and down reduced the abruptness of the rotation cycle and prevented a lot of powder spillage from smaller cases. The powder measure was also excellent. Of course, having 5 holes was necessary because in the early days, you had to use a case expander die as the PTX feature hadn't been developed. Eventually, the PTX system fixed that but...you had an expensive conversion kit and a host of PTX dies and turnbuckles etc that added up to big $$ early on. The case ejector wire made using Lee taper crimp dies impossible in station 5. Hornady fixed that by redesigning the ejector system, Great, but now to use it you had to buy yet another conversion upgrade and every one of your old shell plates had to be modified back at the factory! Ugh. The two biggest system failures were related to the primer feed and the case feed. The case feeder is a Rube Goldberg assemblage of adapters, tubes and chutes that works, sort of. The case feeder tube is noisy, and you need multiple case feeder plates to go from pistol to rifle. It is expensive, needlessly complicated, overly noisy and it fails, a lot. Misfed cases are a common issue. It either fails to drop a case, drops all the cases or fails to properly insert a case into the shell plate. Either way, it will cause you to curse.
Then there's the priming system. I did every trick, kept things perfectly clean and still, it rarely ran 200 primers in a row without misfeeding. When it did, you got powder flakes into the shell plate and the system had to be torn down and cleaned right away. What a PITA!
I tried their inline bullet feeding dies too. Geez, what trash. No lead bullets would feed. Jacketed bullets would either fail to feed or feed the entire tube. I did every trick in the book and a few of my own. They were trash. I bought a Mr. Bullet Feeder mini and never looked back. Flawless feeding every time.
The other issue was the cost of replacing broken/failed parts. Every conceivable thing that could break did. Primer system guide rods were especially prone to failure. Hornady would replace them, but at my cost. The same was true of the springs and parts in the priming shuttle and case retainer. All very expensive over time. The LNL ammo plant continually got upgraded with primer alarms, low powder sensors, a counter, press lights etc. but it was always a finicky, breakage and stoppage prone press. Very disappointing.
That brings me to the Dillon SDB. I can tell that every step of this press was designed with function and durability in mind. First, it's pistol oriented. Thus, it has a small footprint on the bench, and it has a very short press stroke. This point becomes even better after one gets accustomed to using it. It's easy.
Second the entire ram system is square and guided on four sides by warranty covered (no cost) Delrin guides that reduce friction while keeping the ram aligned within the frame. It's brilliant. In fact, anything that rotates, slides or moves is guided by Delrin. It's slippery, tough and easily replaceable under warranty for life. Mike Dillon got that right from the get-go.
The case holder rotates just fast enough and there is sufficient room on the right and left of the press for inserting cases and bullets. The retention pins are indestructible and easily removed. The ejection system is simple, easily replaced if need be and it works 100% of the time.
The powder measure has a failsafe feature. Many times, on my LNL, the drum would jam and no powder would drop. A fix required a removal of the measure, emptying the powder and cleaning. Often as not, the cause of the failure could not be determined, and it would come and go without warning. Very frustrating. I'm not crazy about the Dillon slide bar system for measurement but it seems to work. I can see it was a carryover from the Star system. Removal of the measure is easier than the LNL bushing system. The Dillon integral case expander is another stroke of genius. No separate die. Just a drop in powder funnel that is caliber specific. No need for adapters, spacers, springs etc. It's simple, functional, fool proof and, time and cost effective. It is far superior in all areas to the Hornady PTX or RCBS systems. The only thing as simple and functional is that new Lee measure. If that proves to be durable it will be a game changer.
The most unique feature of the SDB is that it uses proprietary dies. At first this, and the conversion price was off putting. However, after closer inspection, I can see the true genius in this system. Set up is a breeze with minimal adjustment and almost zero fiddling. No bushing dies, no sizer adjustment. Just fill the case head, adjust seating and crimping and off you go. Yes, a caliber change is $145 but, it's a single life time purchase and it's got everything you need in the kit. I like that. It's easy and gets me back to shooting ASAP. I just wish it came in 32-20.
So, you pay more for the Dillon, but not really more when you consider how much special stuff Hornady and RCBS require you to buy to do the same work. There is no question, Dillon has the better warranty. I would had just one consideration. If you shoot .223 or .308/3006 in volume, buy the 550C. It does everything the SDB does plus it will load bottleneck cases. The trade off is in the press footprint. The 550C is a full sized press and takes up some space. Both will do 300 rounds per hour. That's a fair amount of loading for such a simple, flawless design.
I think the Dillon press is the better progressive press. I also think the SDB is an excellent compromise between size, function, and reliability. That's my $.02.
