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Hi all, I need to get hold of a power case trimmer of good quality - does anyone have anything in stock? I use the Redding manual one at the moment, so the electric attachment for that would be ideal, but I'm open to other solutions. My hands are suffering from the case trimming!

Ta muchly!

Hi Mr_Logic.

I bought the standard L.E. Wilson trimmer to begin with, and over time I bought the stand, swing over clamp and the power trimmer accessory. It works good enough for my needs, but here's a run down of the pro's and con's of this device. I've only used this trimmer so have nothing to compare it to, especially the Redding device. The device can be a pain using it manually but I've not put it down as a con here because that's inherent to all trimmers, not this particular device.

PROS
+ Very accurate trimmer. I find my case length post trimming is very repeatable such that any difference is not picked up by my calipers (display +/-0.0005)
+ Simple and straight forward to set up.
+ Affordable.
+ Each calibre has a body which the case slides into, held in by the taper of the case. This ensure cases are perfectly centre and the case mouth is perpendicular to the cutter (straight walled rimmed cases such as .357 magnum have special case bodies which use the the case rim along with a peg to keep it in place)
+ Power tool accessory is much cheaper than equivalent of RCBS/Lyman tools. It's literally a replacement for the handle which can be chucked into a power screwdriver.
+ Option to buy micrometer adjustment should you need that level of precision.

CONS
- By design each calibre requires its own case body. These are around £13 each so if you load a lot of different calibres that don't share the same case body then it can get expensive quickly.
- Trimmer accessory can be a bit cumbersome. You need to constantly hold the power tool during use, cannot leave it rested on the bench.
- Without the case body clamp the only way to keep the case body from moving is your hand pushing down during cutting. Batches larger than 50 can prove to be tiresome very quickly, also it's easy to slip and introduce variations in case length, or worse, cut yourself.

Hope this helps.



-- EDIT --
Amended the price of the case body. Originally put £15, but found online for £13

Dear Mr_Logic,

Have you thought about this one ?

http://www.littlecrowgunworks.com/trimmers.html

They do ship direct to the UK. (Although mine took ages to get through UK customs, for no apparent reason)

Works well and its fast.

ETA - I also have the LE Wilson, its accurate - but much slower even in powered form.

Thanks guys.