A lot of folks think the roller handle is great.
I am wondering "What's so great about it". What are the benefits of it over the ball handle.
The larger handle displaces the force over a greater area of the palm and involves more fingers. Plus the shape and pivoting motion of the grip are simply a lot more natural. If you're just going to reload two hundred 9mm once a week, then its use is a toss-up, but if you resize bottleneck cases or anything that takes a lot of force, or simply do a lot of volume, then these things will really pay off in less shoulder and elbow pain. If you're ~50 years or older and ripe for repetitive motion joint issues, then you ought to think about one of these.
? Now, there are at least
2 sources which you ought to consider:
Dillon and
Inline Fabrication. I purchased the Dillon with the
nylon handle for my 550, mainly because the Inline Fab product wasn't available at the time. Then, when it came time to upgrade, the roller handle got moved to the new 650. (Actually, quite a few of the fancy options on my 550 got moved to the 650, but that's another story.)
Side NoteDillon offers 2 different versions: aluminum handle and nylon handle. I wanted the best one (obviously) and one might naturally assume the higher-priced aluminum version to be the better choice. However, aluminum doesn't like to bear directly on steel, so there would need to be a nylon bush, needle rollers, or some way to add lubrication to separate the 2 materials. I could never figure out (and still can't to this day!) what, if anything, separated those 2 adversaries, and so I simply opted for the version that was self lubricating. So here we are 8+ years and thousands of rounds later, and the nylon handle is still rolling along, seemingly no worse for the wear, with zero maintenance. (And PS, I still have no idea how Dillon assembles the darn thing !)