What Is The Cost Advantage Of Reloading?

[salvadore]

I would respectively disagree with lost sheep. Progressive presses are not brain science or rocket surgery. If you are going to load bunches of bullets forget the single stage. It's slow and well...slow. I wish when I started reloading real progressives were available. Having someone to call to ask technical questions is not a bad idea, but 'mentors' will give you their opinions and prejudices, much like the some of the peeps in this forum. Find out for yourself and you can be opinionated and prejudiced without outside influences.

[Crosshair]

Yeah, understood. My question was in reference to an earlier post where brass was quoted at .045 per case.
If it is possible, I'd like to know.
Pete

Sorry I was not more clear. What I was inferring is that the post in question said that $.045 was the initial cost. It did not say that the brass in question was new.

Once fired brass can be had for that from local ranges that sell brass locally. The local range I go to does not sell the brass, brass monkeys like me just go and pick it up, meaning that for me the brass has a cost of $0.

[darkgael]

Thanks, That's good to know.
Pete

[medalguy]

The brass I mentioned was milsurp Lake City. I made a deal with a seller listed on Gunbroker for a large quantity of brass. I'd rather not give his name because the deal was between the two of us, but you can bargain the prices down for a significant quantity of brass. I recently sold one guy 20,000 rounds of milsurp .308 for about .085 but then he bought about 20,000 rounds from me. That's a lot of brass.

[Edward429451]

I'm loading 45ACP for ~3.50 per box of 50, a little less for 38's & 9mm's, a little more for 44 mags and Specials.

Cast lead bullets of course. I did the math on casting before, and considering free WW's, and I tracked propane and lube and started with a full jug of gas, and an empty sizer luber and when I was out of gas and lubed them all it was apparent that if I rounded up to make it easy, that the cast bullets cost 1 cent each.

[orionengnr]

I do not cast my own bullets, I buy them in boxes of 500--not the most economical method.
I buy primers by the 1000 at whatever the going rate is--as of today, $35/1000.
I usually buy powder by the pound. If I see a deal, I grab it. Today at the gun show, picked up three older one-pound cans of Bullseye for $8 each
Brass...I pick it up, use it many times.
My average cost is ~ $6/7 per box of 50.
Factory .45acp ammo is about $20/50 rounds. Think I'll keep reloading

[chris in va]

IMO you won't actually save money, but get to shoot a LOT more for the same amount. I went cheap, spent $120 on my entire 9mm reloading setup. It only took about a month of plinking to recoup my equipment costs compared to buying factory rounds at today's prices.:barf:

Don't bother reloading 7.62x39...it won't save any money at all. Just do it if you want more accuracy.

[Guy B. Meredith]

I started off with a Hornady LNL AP progressive press, RCBS powder check die, scale and all the other accouterments plus 2000 pieces of Starline .38 spl brass, a thousand or two of 158 gr plated bullets from West Coast Bullets (X-treme bullets now) and a couple of pounds of AA powder for less than $1000.

I ran the first few hundred rounds VERY carefully on the progressive and have never had a problem.

The press paid for itself within one year. At the time I was in competition and could not otherwise afford the 1000 plus rounds per month so being able to produce them at 30% of the cost for equivalent quality was worth it.

Now I fret about component costs having gone up 100% or more--that is until I see the cost of the commercial ammo.

Even if I were not partial to a combination that I just cannot find commercially, it is nice not to have to depend on the shelves of the local stores being stocked.

[Bud Helms]

In these threads about the cost savings of reloading, you will always see statements that you will not save money, but you will get to shoot more. Chris in va did qualify his statement correctly, so I'm not trying to pick on him. This is just a comment in general about the answers you get to this question.

It depends on how you define "savings". Reloading will definitely lower your cost per round.

So, if you handload to shoot as much as you did before you started handloading, you will definitely see a cost reduction and potentially money in your pocket that you were previously spending over the counter. But for the same amount of money you were spending on factory ammo, you can shoot more. In that case you haven't accumulated any more disposable income than before you handloaded, but your unit (per round) cost is way down. It's your choice how you spend that "savings".

But you have time to invest in learning how to do it and then actually doing it. It's somewhat a function of your values. Do you want to be knowledgeable based on experience. Do you want to know and experience how things work? Or are you satisfied reading about it? For me, the cost savings was a by-product. I would not recommend handloading to save money, even though today the savings is greater than ever. Do it because you want to learn more.

It's an area of experience of being a gun nut that is reserved to a small percentage of us. You will learn more than you ever thought you would.

[salvadore]

Hey if ya don't get the zen part of being a gun nut, you can still do it to save money.

buffalo whatevers or corbon, someone wants $70 for fifty Elmer Keith type .44 Spec. loads, I load em for <ten cents a round. BOOM

[ligonierbill]

I think I owe an apology to all the ingenious cost savers on this thread. You certainly have me beat for costs, and I took a few suggestions back to my logbook. Back to the OP, OK you will save money. Only you can answer the question, "Is it worth the effort?" For me, if it was only the money, I probably wouldn't do it. I started because I was curious, and I do it still because I like it. Sure, I can load "bear buster" .45 Colt rounds at far less than Buffalo Bore prices. I never worry about the availability of 7.5X55 ammo. And if I get my chores done today, I'm out to the range to find the "perfect" load for my .338. But if I didn't enjoy it, I would pay BB's price, scour the internet for Schmidt-Rubins, and ante up for somebody's "custom premium" .338 ammo. That's my point. I hope you give it a try.

[dundonrl]

just using that calculator someone posted.. for me, it was right at 100 loaded cartridges to start saving money, if I'd have bought the same bullets that I can load (Nosler 260 gr Accubonds with 96 gr of IMR 4350 behind them, and a Federal 215 primer) in a 375 RUM, and since I've reloaded a lot more than that, for me it's been a huge savings.

[Terry A]

What an informative thread! These forums are jam-packed with people who know whatever we need to know about our great sport. Whatever one of us is not familiar with, someone else is. And visa-versa.

The reason I'm saying all this is that I was just wondering tonight if anyone ever figured out how many rounds it would take to see a savings after the cost of the reloading materials. I ran a "search" and here was this thread!
Thanks everybody!

[Sevens]

I don't think there is ever going to be a time or day when I stop spending money on tools and equipment. There are a minimum of things you can "get by" with, but it's always more enjoyable to expand your horizons so we spend a little here and there to do that.

If it's about the money, then you have to outlay as much cash as possible to buy as much of your components in bulk. It's simple math -- if you don't buy large lots of the components (primers, bullets, powder) then you won't come anywhere close to the best price.

When you lay out THAT much cash, you end up with a LOT of components, which typically means you end up with a LOT of loaded rounds.

Now, with all that ammo piling up, do you still continue to shoot at the same rate as you did back when you were buying it box by box for factory ammo?

If you can keep yourself from shooting piles of ammo simply because you now have it, then you can save a buck. But for 95% of those of us who reload, you spend a helluva lot more money but you get better ammo, you always have ammo, and you shoot as much as you want.

There's no saving money in this gig unless you shoot competition and you burn through thousands of rounds every month. (and if that is the case, I'd like to hear what you were spending on ammo BEFORE you were reloading!)