How much will it cost?

[corney]

I don't really want to go cheap, but at the same time I don't want to have a 1000 dollar setup for someting simple. No I don't have any .223 brass, But i'm looking at a nice little bushmaster. So If anything I would buy stuff in the 5000 round quantities. Oh ya how much time a round does it take to load? Or lots of 50 I don't care.

The way you are talking in later posts you want to pound rounds faster than you can say your momma. To get set up with powder, bullets, brass, primers and a progressive set up you will send a G note. But if your going to do that for the next 10-20 years it worth it.

If you want to shoot alot of 223 rounds cheap buy cheap rounds and let er buck

 

[outoftowner]

The way you are talking in later posts you want to pound rounds faster than you can say your momma. To get set up with powder, bullets, brass, primers and a progressive set up you will send a G note. But if your going to do that for the next 10-20 years it worth it.

If you want to shoot alot of 223 rounds cheap buy cheap rounds and let er buck

What I meant for the 1000 round setup is just the equipment, not the ammo. What have you guys seen for .223 sales. The darn near closest thing I saw was 50 cents a round. That is still too expensive for a round that I want to go just go out one day and maybe put 300 rounds through a rifle if I feel so inclined...

 

[volks_r_us]

I reloaded my first brass for exactly $330 . Thanks to Higginson Powders

 

[cement head]

cost of reloading

look buddy if I were you I would pickup a RCBS rock chucker kit . sm macdonald sells the kits or pickup one from a store . or watch for an estate sale . if you have never reloaded before start with your basic kit and be careful . the nice thing about reloading is you can make as many rounds as you want whenever you want to . follow the specs in your reloading book . don;t go over the amount of powder they say you can use and don;t go under the lowest amount of powder the book says you can use . sm macdonald can be found in the ammo for sale post section . as for the cost of getting started your looking at around $750 or so . but once you have the stuff it will pay it;s self off in no time . take care and don;t procrastinate. buy the stuff if you can swing the cash .

 

[GeoTrekr]

I recently bought a Rockchucker Supreme Master kit from Bass Pro USA which will come in around $360.00. They say it has everything you need to get started, but in my case that wasn't necessarily true. All of my brass was over the max length, and needed trimming, so another $140 at Russell's Sports got me a trimmer, which isn't included in the kit (I would've gladly paid more for the kit to get a trimmer as well, as I don't see how a kit that is supposed to have "everything you need" doesn't come with a trimmer ).

My next biggest cost was a tumbler, again from Bass Pro USA (almost 1/2 price of here in Canada). Now a tumbler IS an optional item, but I didn't feel like rubbing and scrubbing crap off my cases when I could just set it and forget it, and come back to sparkling brass a few hours later.

You can buy cheaper equipment, but I look at it as an investment, as you will have it for a looooong time, and most of it will depreciate very little if given some care. All in all, I am into it for about $750 or so, for all the tooling for 3 calibres: .30-06, .223 Rem and .38 Spec/.357 Mag. The components are extra, but are pretty cheap: Around 30-40/lb of powder (7000 / amount of powder per charge will tell you how many rounds you can load with a pound of powder), around $20-40 per hundred bullets depending on calibre and type, and 30-40/1000 primers, sometimes more.

Finding some of the components will be frustrating, as right now you cannot go to your local gun store and pick and choose components listed in your book on a whim, you will experience shortages in the most popular powders, primers have been tough to find, and .308 and .224 bullets are especially tough to find (except for the premium hunting bullets if you're desperate, but there are cheaper (and less available) alternatives for target shooting/plinking.

Overall it's very satisfying putting your own ammo together, and knowing that it is very consistant shot-to-shot (directly proportional to the care and attention you put in to each round).