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Rick_a
| | Posted on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 09:54 am: | 
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I'm cheap, and easy. I have a Lee single stage and hand press. I load one or two hundred at a time...enough for a decent range session in a given caliber. For me it's a comfort to go stage by stage with a batch of ammo for quality control purposes.
As much time as I waste watching programs on TV and perusing the interwebs, spending a couple hours loading up some practice ammo is no big deal.
Blake, your prices seem to reflect the current market. Some careful shopping would drop that down significantly. Most of my reloads cost something along the lines of 1/4 of factory ammo. For pistols I use my own brass, shotgun powders, pre-panic priced primers, and cheap boolits from wherever I can find them. |
Reepicheep
| | Posted on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 09:58 am: |
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I highly recommend the Lee Classic turret press kit, especially for the money. It comes with the auto disc setup and primer setup. I think I paid $260 new or something for the whole rig. It will do rifle or pistol.
Get a .001 gram accurate ebay digital scale (.01 grains). $20 maybe. I can point you to the one I got and found to be very accurate.
I like the little dial adjust upgrade for the auto disc powder measure. $20 or something, nice little design.
With the Lee classic turret, you can get things like the "head" plate for $12 or something, and have all your different calibers already mounted and adjusted to just do a bayonet quick change.
The Dillon stuff is fantastic, and if you are loading thousands of rounds a month a 1050 is the way to go. But you will pay a fortune for it, both in terms of original purchase, and for every new caliber ($50 base plate adapters, etc).
Cost wise? I can get 1000 rounds of copper plated .38 lead to my door for around $100. I can stock up on one or two kinds of powder, and two sizes of primers, and bullets. Then I can use the primers and powders for whichever caliber I end up shooting more.
I take the price of the brass "out" of my calculations. I don't buy empty brass, I just save brass from rounds I or my friends would shoot anyway. So it's "free". Then, as you observe, the costs are what they are.
Blake, the part I don't understand is how you get ammo to your door so cheaply, I thought there were "dangerous chemicals" type surcharges for primers, powder, or loaded rounds that make the cost stupid expensive.
9mm and .32 auto are probably not worth it, but I do it anyway.
There is kind of a Zen peace about reloading... I enjoy it for it's own sake. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 11:14 am: |
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I probably have around a couple thousand cases in their original boxes. But it's Glocked. Meaning it's been abused and requires full length resizing.
It's that unsupported part of the chamber on Glocks is one of the things that I don't care for with Glocks. Apparently not an issue with new ammo. I've seen pretty big bulges in brass shot from Glocks though. I would personally be uncomfortable with when that brass will eventually fail, sending hot burning gasses through the plastic parts of the gun. However, I don't (and won't) have personal experience with that. Again, read what you can find and decide what your level of risk aversion is.
I take the price of the brass "out" of my calculations. I don't buy empty brass, I just save brass from rounds I or my friends would shoot anyway. So it's "free". Then, as you observe, the costs are what they are.
If I need brass, I simply purchase it as a package deal with lead, powder and primers. You can find sales on it packaged that way often. They even assemble it all for you too. In all seriousness, buying cheap cartridges is a very cost effective source for the brass, and you get to shoot it the first time without having to load it. If you compare 1,000 rounds of built ammo to 1,000 rounds of new brass (or even the once fired brass) you see that manufactured bullets are pretty cheap in comparison.
Blake, the part I don't understand is how you get ammo to your door so cheaply, I thought there were "dangerous chemicals" type surcharges for primers, powder, or loaded rounds that make the cost stupid expensive.
For some reason there's no hazmat charge for manufactured ammo. Powder and primers on their own though... Those are hazardous. It kind of makes sense to me if I think hard enough. At least the powder part does. |
Reepicheep
| | Posted on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 11:45 am: |
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quote:For some reason there's no hazmat charge for manufactured ammo
*forehead slap*. I just assumed and ruled out mail order. I never thought to check. |
Reepicheep
| | Posted on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 12:05 pm: |
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Sigh. $15 to ship $20 worth of .22 rimfire. Sigh. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 12:14 pm: |
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Buy more... If it fits, it ships! |
Reepicheep
| | Posted on Saturday, December 14, 2013 - 09:39 am: |
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Had to try a new local mom and pop place to get a few bits and pieces... they had a FANTASTIC selection, and fair prices on powders and primers, which I was thrilled about because that's the stuff you can't mail order.
They also had a Hornaday "Powder Cop" die on the shelf for $29, so I snapped that up to replace my kludged version. Its fantastic, even measuring 2.7 grains of Bullseye in a .38 case (behind a hollow base wadcutter).
Nice that I have a local place with a fair price on primers and powder. |
D_adams
| | Posted on Sunday, December 15, 2013 - 07:30 pm: |
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I just loaded some .40 a short bit ago. I can definitely hit 400 rounds/hour (loaded 200 in 30 minutes) but I'd need more primer pickup tubes to do it any faster. If you have them pre-loaded, then it goes fairly quick. I did stop to check the powder on every 50th one with the scale, all were right on 7 grains. I visually check them all and know roughly where it should be in the case. 500 rounds/hour is probably within reach assuming the planets and stars all get properly aligned and the moon is in the house. I'm not really after super speed, I want accuracy and repeatability. |
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