For those of you out there looking to upgrade from your single stage press to a more sophisticated turret or progressive press, this is a setup to take a serious look at. When the discussion of progressive presses comes up, everyone right away jumps to the big Dillons, Hornady and lastly the LoadMaster. Which is fine as they are great presses and do a lot of work. But many will skip over the Dillon SDB. It is my belief that this press is forgotten and does not get the credit it deserves.

The SDB (Square Deal B)

The Dillon SDB is a pistol caliber only Auto-Indexing (the shell plate automatically moves to the next position) progressive press. It can crank out incredible amounts of ammo in a short period of time in its base configuration. When I started getting into reloading years ago I knew 2 things. One was that I would mostly be reloading pistol calibers and the second thing was I knew I didn’t want to keep doing it on a single stage press.

Accessories

The SDB Bullet tray

The press comes standard with a single conversion kit of your choice. It can be mounted to a workbench via some nuts and bolts or even screws. The press can be significantly upgraded with Dillion’s own modifications to make your reloading experience more pleasant. The Strong Mount Stand is easily the most popular accessory. The strong mount puts the press at a more comfortable height without building a custom bench for it.

Caliber Conversions

For those that want to expand the capabilities of the SDB beyond a single caliber, caliber conversions are available for common straight walled handgun and carbine cartridges from 32 S&W Long through 45 Colt. A caliber change takes only a few minutes with some experience. The main limitation, however, is obviously that the SDB is incapable of reloading bottlenecked cartridges.

All Dillon SDB Conversion kits come standard with a Carbide Sizing Die

Progressive presses can be intimidating at first but the SDB can provide even beginner reloaders with the volume they need in a small, compact and simple package that takes the complexity of larger progressive presses and distills it into an affordable package. With other features like a low primer warning buzzer, the SDB makes for a great beginning progressive press.