the one single thing that bothers me about any progressive system is quality control. Everyone of us has done a bad round here or there. If you spit out twenty five rounds and from number six on the seating depth changed or the charge changed two tenths of a grain. If your lucky you catch the error and get to break the ammunition down. If not, you know what happens.
I will check very third round unless I doing something like a 44mag. I can see what's going there almost by eye sight. I dump all powder into a pan that's weighed. Just never like the trauma ward all that much.
gary
...Of course modern long guns have those 2 holes machined in the sides of the receivers just to keep you out of the trauma ward whereas older rifles and handguns don't.
When the 'fire' comes out, it's time to reevaluate your loading regimen.
I'm like you in the fact that I check constantly, in fact I weigh EVERY load on my beam scale but then I don't load willy nilly either.
I'll load say a box of 50 for hunting and that box lasts a couple seasons. When hunting, typically I shoot a fouling shot and the next one is for an animal, maybe one more and thats it.
My only wholesale expenditure of ammunition is load workup and sighting in and onee a rifle has an optimum load and is sighted in, it's in the gun cabinet, coming out post hunt to dend one to make sure nothing has changed....s
If I want to 'recreational' shoot on my range or at the 'club', I shoot a 22 or a .17, certainly not one of my hunting sticks.
My loading bench consists of:
A Rockchucker single stage with torque wrench actuation arm
Beam Scale (a Pact electronic scale for weighing pills)
Bench Source Annealer
STI and Thumlers Tumbler for cleaning cases
Manual powder trickler
2 sets of Starrett Calipers
Sinclair Runout gage
Hornady Concentricity gage
Hornady Headspace gages
Shop made Ogive gages to use on calipers to gage COAL relative to bullet ogive
RCBS and KM hand priming tools
Various case prep tools (I chuck them in one of the smaller lathes to use on cases)
Lee collet crimp dies for select calibers
Sinclair neck turning tool and arbors
WFT case trimmer and inserts
Of course various die sets (mostly Whidden bushing dies) with RCBS front load seaters (I machine my own seater plugs and pill insertion arbors to match the tip and ogives of the various pills I use). I toss everyone's die lock rings and replace them all with Hornady lock rings, Lee and RCBS are junk....
...and a flashlight to look in cases to be sure the powder is at a consistent level across all and for setting the micrometer heads on the seater dies because I'm old and don't see that well anymore....
......and a whole bunch of other stuff sitting around I use ocassionally as the need arises. My loading bench is in the machine shop in the corner and off limits to any employee but close enough to have access to a lathe or surface grinder....
Before I switched to Whidden dies I roiutinely chucked dies in a vertical fixture and ground 0.002-0.003 from the base before I ever used one so I could 'bump' cases back. Factory dies of the non bushing sizer variety are designed with the base long to have an interference fit on the shell holder while maintaining SAMMI case dimensions. I want to bump so it's imperative to shorten the die accordingly.
I don't 'cam over' any die, ever. Not even lowly pistol dies (and I use Lee pistoll dies for my 44 and 45LC handloads).
I must do something right in as much as I'm the 'designated loader' for our entire group. I build 'em, they shoot 'em.