what is the best press to load 9mm efficiently?
- Thread starter Mr. Friendly
- Start date
- Location
- British Canuckistan
hey Hotwheels, my friend that reloads ran the numbers and the savings add up quickly to pay for the gear vs. factory ammo, even if it's case lot.
at $170/1000 with reloading, and $300/1000 factory, the costs to get the gear would equalize within a year if you shot a case worth of 9mm every month.
the only thing that is hard to quantify is the value of your time taken/used to do the loading. if you enjoy it as a hobby, like the shooting itself, time is immaterial...however, if you'd be making more money doing whatever it is you do than the savings, obviously you'd need to rethink your position.
at $170/1000 with reloading, and $300/1000 factory, the costs to get the gear would equalize within a year if you shot a case worth of 9mm every month.
the only thing that is hard to quantify is the value of your time taken/used to do the loading. if you enjoy it as a hobby, like the shooting itself, time is immaterial...however, if you'd be making more money doing whatever it is you do than the savings, obviously you'd need to rethink your position.
hey Hotwheels, my friend that reloads ran the numbers and the savings add up quickly to pay for the gear vs. factory ammo, even if it's case lot.
at $170/1000 with reloading, and $300/1000 factory, the costs to get the gear would equalize within a year if you shot a case worth of 9mm every month.
the only thing that is hard to quantify is the value of your time taken/used to do the loading. if you enjoy it as a hobby, like the shooting itself, time is immaterial...however, if you'd be making more money doing whatever it is you do than the savings, obviously you'd need to rethink your position.
People also say you'll shoot more while reloading so you might not really save money.
Have a 550b and it's great. Don't shoot 9mm but use for 45acp and 223. It meets my needs. I can reload 500 an hour if I really push it but most times do 400. That's no case or bullet feed. I generally don't push it. Nice to have a visual on each case to see powder charge.
Decide how much you will be shooting. High volume on a 650 or Hornady with case and bullet feeders save time. Extra station for powder check.
How many rounds a month will you go through.?
Decide how much you will be shooting. High volume on a 650 or Hornady with case and bullet feeders save time. Extra station for powder check.
How many rounds a month will you go through.?
For sure need a case feeder for higher production rate. That leaves only manual bullet feed which is easy and will barely slow production vs. bullet feed.
Having to feed case and bullet is a real drag as two actions can be distracting and hard to get into a rhythms.
Having to feed case and bullet is a real drag as two actions can be distracting and hard to get into a rhythms.
- Location
- British Canuckistan
HOLY HELL is the 650 big! damn thing would take up more space than I have to stand in my kitchen!
I live in a 'tiny' bachelor pad. by tiny I mean that I've got about 330sqft including kitchen & bathroom.
my usable living space is 11' x 16', so I use it wisely and sparingly...
I live in a 'tiny' bachelor pad. by tiny I mean that I've got about 330sqft including kitchen & bathroom.
my usable living space is 11' x 16', so I use it wisely and sparingly...
- Location
- West Quebec
HOLY HELL is the 650 big! damn thing would take up more space than I have to stand in my kitchen!
I live in a 'tiny' bachelor pad. by tiny I mean that I've got about 330sqft including kitchen & bathroom.
my usable living space is 11' x 16', so I use it wisely and sparingly...
Your going to need more space lol
mississaugagunnut
Regular
- Location
- mississauga
Hands down the Dillon 650. Go big or go home!!!
I started reloading with this press and have never looked back. I reload 9mm, 45acp, 38spl, 44 mag, 357 mag, and 223. I mostly shoot 45acp and can load 100 rds. in 7 minutes.
I started reloading with this press and have never looked back. I reload 9mm, 45acp, 38spl, 44 mag, 357 mag, and 223. I mostly shoot 45acp and can load 100 rds. in 7 minutes.
hey Hotwheels, my friend that reloads ran the numbers and the savings add up quickly to pay for the gear vs. factory ammo, even if it's case lot.
at $170/1000 with reloading, and $300/1000 factory, the costs to get the gear would equalize within a year if you shot a case worth of 9mm every month.
the only thing that is hard to quantify is the value of your time taken/used to do the loading. if you enjoy it as a hobby, like the shooting itself, time is immaterial...however, if you'd be making more money doing whatever it is you do than the savings, obviously you'd need to rethink your position.
You have some good points, with 9mm costing about 20 cents a round, you have to find out how much its worth to you before you invest in all the equipment.
- Location
- West Quebec
I do the same except for the 223 goes on a Forster it's a great combination
hey Hotwheels, my friend that reloads ran the numbers and the savings add up quickly to pay for the gear vs. factory ammo, even if it's case lot.
at $170/1000 with reloading, and $300/1000 factory, the costs to get the gear would equalize within a year if you shot a case worth of 9mm every month.
the only thing that is hard to quantify is the value of your time taken/used to do the loading. if you enjoy it as a hobby, like the shooting itself, time is immaterial...however, if you'd be making more money doing whatever it is you do than the savings, obviously you'd need to rethink your position.
You have some good points, with 9mm costing about 20 cents a round, you have to find out how much its worth to you before you invest in all the equipment.
if you enjoy it as a hobby, like the shooting itself, time is immaterial...however, if you'd be making more money doing whatever it is you do than the savings, obviously you'd need to rethink your position.
You hit the nail on the head. Reloading is its own hobby. If you don't enjoy reloading, you will be wasting your money on an expensive press as it does take way more time than people report to build ammo. People don't make 1000 rounds in an hour, it's hogwash. It takes time cleaning, sorting, examining, then lubricating the brass. Time spent filling primer tubes and fiddling with the press is always there too.
As for recommendation, I had a Hornady LnL and sold it got a Dillon 650 and wouldn't ever go back. The LnL had a crummy bullet feeder which turned out to be expensive plastic garbage. A 650 with case feeder and Mr. Bulletfeeder is a far better system.. but it's going to cost 4 grand by the time you're done. When I did the math, it was a good 30,000 rounds to break even, so about 2.5 years for my own shooting just 9mm. I also reload 45 and 223 which is far better savings.
If money and space is tight, then a Dillon Square Deal is great for single calibre reloading. If you want to do 223 or other rifle calibre reloading, get a single stage to prep brass before putting it on the progressive. I always prep my brass on a single for rifle loads (I know it's not the topic of conversation but these are investments, and you may want to in the future) If you're doing multi calibre i'd go straight to the 650 and skip the 550. You hear it often - buy once, cry once.
I use the Lee products, but you stated that you're interested in efficiency, which everyone including myself has assumed that it's time efficiency you're after.
Considering you have a space constraint, and if you also have a time constraint, maybe you should just take the "loss" for a year or two and just buy bulk ammo until you have either more time or more space?
The other variable that is not clear to me is the volume you're interested in. If it's only 1000 - 3000 rounds per year, your product may not need to be a progressive. For example the Lee, or any current press would fit the bill between space, cost, volume and time.
-Jason
Considering you have a space constraint, and if you also have a time constraint, maybe you should just take the "loss" for a year or two and just buy bulk ammo until you have either more time or more space?
The other variable that is not clear to me is the volume you're interested in. If it's only 1000 - 3000 rounds per year, your product may not need to be a progressive. For example the Lee, or any current press would fit the bill between space, cost, volume and time.
-Jason
Hotwheels81
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- South of GP
hey Hotwheels, my friend that reloads ran the numbers and the savings add up quickly to pay for the gear vs. factory ammo, even if it's case lot.
at $170/1000 with reloading, and $300/1000 factory, the costs to get the gear would equalize within a year if you shot a case worth of 9mm every month.
the only thing that is hard to quantify is the value of your time taken/used to do the loading. if you enjoy it as a hobby, like the shooting itself, time is immaterial...however, if you'd be making more money doing whatever it is you do than the savings, obviously you'd need to rethink your position.
Your at $0.10 a bullet and $0.05 for a primer plus $0.08 for once fired brass and roughly $0.02-3 worth of powder per charge before shipping and taxes....
If you can do it for less then your doing good, range brass and cast bullets are the way to make it affordable....
If you can't then your break even point should be around 60,000-70,000 rounds... It sounds a lot better when you load for other caliber's... Like .45's, .380, .223, .308 etc etc etc...
^^^^^^
Yep, at $1 per round of .44 Magnum my Turret Press paid for itself it no time, plus, creating various load of .44 Magnum to suit my different moods allowed me to enjoy my guns much more thoroughly.
Sorry to ramble OP, but there's an aspect to reloading that is much underrated when looking that dollars, savings, etc.
Yep, at $1 per round of .44 Magnum my Turret Press paid for itself it no time, plus, creating various load of .44 Magnum to suit my different moods allowed me to enjoy my guns much more thoroughly.
Sorry to ramble OP, but there's an aspect to reloading that is much underrated when looking that dollars, savings, etc.
Cheapo 9mm that scatters like a shotgun will run you $0.25, mid-grade commercial (Am Eagle) $0.32-$0.35 and the good stuff $0.45 and more. That's for plain FMJ/TMJ bullets. I think I've calculated my current 9mm reloads at about $0.22 if I reuse the brass 10 times. Half the cost is the bullets.
So the savings is about $0.10-$0.13 per round on commercial loads, about 35%. I've shot almost 3k rounds last year, I'd have paid for the reloading equipment in about 3 years if I was only shooting 9mm... I'm also doing .357Mag, where the savings are larger: I estimate a cost of about $0.29 to reload, vs $0.70-$1.10 a shot for mid-grade commercial.
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$1,000 is only about three cases, give or take, of 9mm ammo, depending on whether you are buying factory ammo or commercial reloads. Assuming $300/k for commercial reloads versus $160/k component costs to reload with plated bullets, the cost savings will pay for $1,000 worth of press ancillaries in about 7,000 rounds. This is a reasonable ballpark price for a Dillon 550. Figure about $1500 for a Dillon 650 for a break-even point of around 11,000 rounds. If you shoot 2 boxes/100 rounds a week, the 550 will have paid for itself in less than 18 months and the 650 in a bit over two years. Obviously, the more you shoot, the sooner you get your money's worth out of the machine. I would call that pretty cost-effective for equipment that should last for decades.
I'm happy with my 550 for ammo consumption in the range of hundreds of rounds per month. 500 rounds of pistol ammo in an hour is feasible, starting with pre-filled primer tubes. I also use it to load a variety of rifle and pistol calibres besides 9mm. If you want to load in larger volumes (or just spend less time reloading) and dedicate a press to one or two calibres, the 650 with case feeder would be the way to go.
This is a good summary of the different Dillon presses that goes into a little more detail:
http://www.brianenos.com/pages/dillon.html
fingers284
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Alberta Cowboy Ranges
The 650 can be used as a single stage as well, converts back and forth between a single to a full progressive in about ten seconds. Two ways to make the conversion, remove the advancing dog from the press body (two short screws) or remove the long 'advancing collar" spring from under the ram head. you can use any of the five stations singularly very easily.
How many rounds a month do you shoot? Really shoot, not what you'd like to shoot. If you've done this for a while now you should have a good handle on reality and how often "real life" let's you go and play.
What other things do you do at home? Wife and kids or single and dull your brain watching TV? If you've got a busy home life you may not have time to use for reloading. Or your time might be rather limited. On the other hand if it's a case of giving up a couple of hours of TV to reload I'd say your IQ will thank you for switching the flat brain buster off and reloading with some good tunes in the background.
Or do you have a job where you can ask for and work overtime pretty much whenever you want? If so then it's likely easier to just do that if you don't hate your job than to buy the reloading gear.
If you do decide to get into reloading because you have the time and you don't want to or can't work overtime to buy reloaded ammo then how many hours can you put into reloading? That might direct you to your press choice based on fitting the amount you need into the abiilty of the reloading press. If you can easily reload all you need for a month in an hour or less on a totally hand fed Dillon Square Deal progressive then you really don't require a 650 with all the bells and whistles. Or maybe if spending an evening at it lets you build up a 3 month's supply easily then here again you don't NEED a bigger, faster and more expensive option. Ask and answer these questions to yourself and don't just buy big because someone else did. Fit the solution to what is really your present and short term future needs.
I've got a Dillon 550 and I find that even hand placing the casings and bullets I can comfortably load 400 or a hair less per hour. A Dillon Square Deal would be the same. What you give up with the Square Deal is being able to use regular dies. But the Square Deal is intended to be primarily a one caliber machine. A 650 with case and bullet feeder would cost more, take up more room but it would let you run off up around 600 or so per hour. But without the casing and bullet feeders a 650 will run at only slightly faster than a 550 or SD just due to the auto indexing. It's the self feeders that ups the game with that press and the other higher end options. A fully set up 1050 is up around 1000 per hour. Or maybe more like 1500/hr if you set it up with the power lever and simply need to keep the primers, bullets and casing stages filled up.
Keep in mind that you need to include time taken for stocking the bullet and casing feeders and primer tubes. It's not ONLY about pulling the lever.
I'd put the Hornady AP at around the same ability level as the 650 depending on if you set it up with auto feeding options.
So which round count per hour fits in with your needs and time?
You say that you need to consider the cost of your time. That only applies if you have the option of working overtime instead of reloading. Otherwise trying to price your spare time in dollars is meaningless. You're not getting paid for doing anything else so you can't try to pin a cost onto any substitute activity such as reloading.
If you want to put a value on your spare time then it's only valid to consider the time cost for reloading time if it takes away from family, friends or some other activity you'd be doing if you were not reloading.
WHO BUYS 9MM BRASS ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ?
If you shoot in any sort of organized handgun matches 9mm is free for the effort of staying behind and picking up after all the equipment is put away. And the brass is good for a dozen or so reloads before it starts splitting. I've got thousands of 9mm casings and never paid for a single one other than the effort needed to bend down and pick it up. Just start saving now and you'll have a couple of thousand by the time you decide to buy a setup or not.
What other things do you do at home? Wife and kids or single and dull your brain watching TV? If you've got a busy home life you may not have time to use for reloading. Or your time might be rather limited. On the other hand if it's a case of giving up a couple of hours of TV to reload I'd say your IQ will thank you for switching the flat brain buster off and reloading with some good tunes in the background.
Or do you have a job where you can ask for and work overtime pretty much whenever you want? If so then it's likely easier to just do that if you don't hate your job than to buy the reloading gear.
If you do decide to get into reloading because you have the time and you don't want to or can't work overtime to buy reloaded ammo then how many hours can you put into reloading? That might direct you to your press choice based on fitting the amount you need into the abiilty of the reloading press. If you can easily reload all you need for a month in an hour or less on a totally hand fed Dillon Square Deal progressive then you really don't require a 650 with all the bells and whistles. Or maybe if spending an evening at it lets you build up a 3 month's supply easily then here again you don't NEED a bigger, faster and more expensive option. Ask and answer these questions to yourself and don't just buy big because someone else did. Fit the solution to what is really your present and short term future needs.
I've got a Dillon 550 and I find that even hand placing the casings and bullets I can comfortably load 400 or a hair less per hour. A Dillon Square Deal would be the same. What you give up with the Square Deal is being able to use regular dies. But the Square Deal is intended to be primarily a one caliber machine. A 650 with case and bullet feeder would cost more, take up more room but it would let you run off up around 600 or so per hour. But without the casing and bullet feeders a 650 will run at only slightly faster than a 550 or SD just due to the auto indexing. It's the self feeders that ups the game with that press and the other higher end options. A fully set up 1050 is up around 1000 per hour. Or maybe more like 1500/hr if you set it up with the power lever and simply need to keep the primers, bullets and casing stages filled up.
Keep in mind that you need to include time taken for stocking the bullet and casing feeders and primer tubes. It's not ONLY about pulling the lever.
I'd put the Hornady AP at around the same ability level as the 650 depending on if you set it up with auto feeding options.
So which round count per hour fits in with your needs and time?
You say that you need to consider the cost of your time. That only applies if you have the option of working overtime instead of reloading. Otherwise trying to price your spare time in dollars is meaningless. You're not getting paid for doing anything else so you can't try to pin a cost onto any substitute activity such as reloading.
If you want to put a value on your spare time then it's only valid to consider the time cost for reloading time if it takes away from family, friends or some other activity you'd be doing if you were not reloading.
WHO BUYS 9MM BRASS ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ?
If you shoot in any sort of organized handgun matches 9mm is free for the effort of staying behind and picking up after all the equipment is put away. And the brass is good for a dozen or so reloads before it starts splitting. I've got thousands of 9mm casings and never paid for a single one other than the effort needed to bend down and pick it up. Just start saving now and you'll have a couple of thousand by the time you decide to buy a setup or not.
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Hotwheels81
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- South of GP
Glad you can roll 9mm for that price... Not sure where you get your components from but last time I looked 1000 Campro 9mm bullets were $100 plus tax and shipping, CCI SPP are going for $50-$55 per 1000 plus tax/shipping.... Pound of powder does give you approx 1400 rounds but that's still $40+\- and if your buying brass that's around $80 per 1000 1f from most vendors...
Like I said... With a half price cast bullet and range brass it is economical... Need a sharp pen... Because to reload at a per round saving of $0.05 takes a long time to pay for a Dillon.
