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First, lets briefly talk about how I came to be looking for a new priming tool. For the past 4 years now I've been dealing with advanced carpal tunnel syndrome in both of my hands and in the last 6-8 months it's really had an affect on my ability to use a hand priming tool. Where I used to be able to sit and prime hundreds of cases in a row without issue, now I'm lucky if I can do twenty or thirty before my hand strength deteriorates to the point I have to start using two hands to squeeze the lever. Being the stubborn Neanderthal-type that I am I naturally refuse to go see a doctor about it until I'm completely miserable and don't have any other choice, so my only option was to start looking at other types of priming tools.
Like most reloading equipment from Lee Precision, the new Lee Auto Bench Prime is low cost and does exactly what it's supposed to do. The main housing is cast aluminum and painted red like most Lee hardware, and the lever is a stamped metal piece about 8-9 inches in length. Included are two clear plastic assemblies, one each for large and small primers, a single folding primer tray, two mounting bolts and instructions. The plastic assemblies just slide into the cast housing, then you depress them slightly to insert your shell holder. Fill the tray with primers and insert it into the slot on the assembly and you're ready to go.
The folding primer tray is another simple yet interesting bit of engineering. The tray features a locking tab with three positions: Open, Locked and Feed. The open position allows you to unfold the tray to load it up with primers. The locked position locks the tray in the folded position but still won't allow any primers to feed (basically the storage position). Naturally the Feed position lets the primers slide down the shoot to the button to be seated in a case. Rather than trying to explain how the tab works in the tray I'll just point you to the video below that shows exactly how it works.
Setup is quick and easy and takes all of 10 seconds once you have the tool mounted to your bench. Simply slide the appropriate plastic assembly into place, depress it slightly to slip your shell holder into place and release, attach the tray full of primers and you're ready to go. In my case I mounted it to a board that I can clamp down to my bench via T-slot rails.
Working the priming tool you'll notice it's a little noisy and almost sounds like plastic cracking, but don't worry - it's supposed to sound like that. The noise you're hearing is the sound of the agitator spring sliding back and forth across the ridges n the back side of the primer tray to ensure they slide down rather than hanging up.
The lever provides great feel and requires minimal effort to fully seat a primer. In the video below you can watch me go through and prime 50 virgin Lapua cases pretty effortlessly, and I was able to prime 100 cases in roughly 6-7 minutes with the primers only hanging up on me twice. Like all tray-fed priming tool hang-ups are quickly resolved with a tap or two or a shake.
The only real nit-pics I have with the Auto Bench Prime are that the pocket for the shell holder is pretty loose and the folding tray is going to take a little getting used to. The tray naturally wants to return to a partially folded position which makes it a little harder to use when shaking to get the primers all facing the right way, but I'm sure I'll acclimate myself to it after a few more uses.
Overall I think Lee Precision really hit it out of the park with the new Auto Bench Prime, and for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, at $25-30 from most online retailers it's one-third the price of the other bench priming tools on the market which makes it an exceptional value. Secondly, it doesn't require you to use tubes or strips to hold the primers which saves you even more money as well as the time to load them up.
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