Is reloading even worth it now?

I Dont Care About You said:
The OP basically ignores that pistol brass is reusable and then goes on to complain that reloading is too expensive compared to factory.

The entire point of reloading pistol ammo is that the cases can be used many times. Basically the cost of the cases gets amortized out and becomes virtually zero.
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My point was that 15-20 years ago reloading was around 1/5-1/4 the cost of factory and now it's around 3/4- 7/8 the cost. The people stating the obvious 'buy it cheap and stack it deep' aren't staring at 2 bricks of .22s from 2013 with a sticker that says $17.99. I now understand the old guys in the 70s opining over the cost of everything BACK IN MY DAY.
 
ted_dent said:
Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. The bullets are cast, powder coated, not commercial (obviously Campros are more than 2 cents each). The primers are the Argentine small pistol that were available a few months ago for about $60/1000. Even if you go with the Ginex primers they can still be had for about 8-8 1/2 cents each so that still only adds about $1-$1.50 to the cost for 50 (so $8.50-$9.00/50, still far less than even the cheapest commercial ammo).

As I also noted, buy in bulk when the opportunity arises. The Argentine primers were shipped free because we ordered over $300 worth. If you can get 3 or 4 buddies to jump in it's usually easy to meet the minimum quantities to qualify for free shipping. A few years back (not too long before Covid) you could get the Russian Dominion primers in bulk for $28/1000 with free shipping. Over the course of 3 bulk buys my friends and I purchased 140,000 primers. I'm still using them up but if stored properly they last indefinitely so current price fluctuations don't have as much affect. Using those a box of 50 9mm are only costing me about $5.
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With my numbers based on accessible components you are still saving money but the numbers I used are more reasonable for the average joe and still significantly cheaper than buying factory ammo :)

My buddy casts for 9mm, he has run into tons of problems with leading with his 9s, not other pistols but in the 9mm, I am happy with Campro and the price leaves that as a very good price.
 
Fox said:
With my numbers based on accessible components you are still saving money but the numbers I used are more reasonable for the average joe and still significantly cheaper than buying factory ammo :)

My buddy casts for 9mm, he has run into tons of problems with leading with his 9s, not other pistols but in the 9mm, I am happy with Campro and the price leaves that as a very good price.
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Hey, I'm just an average Joe too and not doing anything special except keeping an eye out for deals, something anyone can do.

As for your buddy, I can tell you from my experience as well as that of several of my friends that if he used powder coated bullets it's a near 100% guarantee that leading in his 9mm would disappear. It's actually quite amazing how much using PC'd bullets eliminates barrel fouling (not to mention how much less smoke is generated compared to using conventionally lubed lead bullets).
 
handofzeus said:
My point was that 15-20 years ago reloading was around 1/5-1/4 the cost of factory and now it's around 3/4- 7/8 the cost. The people stating the obvious 'buy it cheap and stack it deep' aren't staring at 2 bricks of .22s from 2013 with a sticker that says $17.99. I now understand the old guys in the 70s opining over the cost of everything BACK IN MY DAY.
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It is not though.

Look at rifle, 3006, 55gr of powder, 180gr SP bullet.

Brass - reused - Free
Primer - Remington Large Rifle 100 pack - $0.12
Powder - H4350 @ $108/lb - $0.85
Bullet - Speer Hot-Cor - $0.52
Total cost per round - $1.49
Total cost per box of 20 - $29.80

Factory ammo costs *On Sale* - Federal 180gr - $44.00

Factory ammo for base rifle ammo costs 1.5X that of reloads.

Now lets look at precision ammo, which you always get with reloading if you know what you are doing.
3006, 55gr of powder, 180gr Accubond bullet.

Brass - reused - Free
Primer - Remington Large Rifle 100 pack - $0.12
Powder - H4350 @ $108/lb - $0.85
Bullet - Nosler Accubond - $2.04
Total cost per round - $3.01
Total cost per box of 20 - $60.20

Factory ammo costs *On Sale* - Federal 180gr - $90.00

Factory ammo for precision rifle ammo costs 1.5X that of reloads.

These numbers are with some of the least cost effective reloads and comparing apples to apples when you could easily replace the 180gr Accubond with a Barnes TTSX and save another $6.40/box or move to a Federal Trophy Bonded tip and save $10.80/box more than the accubond but still have a bonded bullet.
 
ted_dent said:
Hey, I'm just an average Joe too and not doing anything special except keeping an eye out for deals, something anyone can do.

As for your buddy, I can tell you from my experience as well as that of several of my friends that if he used powder coated bullets it's a near 100% guarantee that leading in his 9mm would disappear. It's actually quite amazing how much using PC'd bullets eliminates barrel fouling (not to mention how much less smoke is generated compared to using conventionally lubed lead bullets).
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He plays with all of that, he is on here and may actually chime in but the guy has so many molds and played with some many things he is almost at the point of giving up cast in a few of the 9s. He has had the powder coating melt in the barrel, ha ha, not just leading but melted powder coat in the barrel. We were talking about it today, my old guns that I cast for never show leading, even the pitted guns but he has run in to weird issues with some of the pistols.

I picked up an extra toaster oven to powder coat myself too, but again Campro make it easy and inexpensive to not bother casting unless you are already in to it.

I would say you are above average and just modest :)
 
My sympathies are with you.I bought powder,bullets, and primers when they were reasonably priced. The bullets and brass were also reasonably priced. Therefore I can reload at reasonable cost. This is about the only way I can think of reload at a reasonable price. The fellows that are buying the components today cannot afford the cost of the reloaded ammo they produced, unless you're well off financially











































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Bob Price said:
My sympathies are with you.I bought powder,bullets, and primers when they were reasonably priced. The bullets and brass were also reasonably priced. Therefore I can reload at reasonable cost. This is about the only way I can think of reload at a reasonable price. The fellows that are buying the components today cannot afford the cost of the reloaded ammo they produced, unless you're well off financially
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No different than stocking up on ammo 20+ years ago, ha ha, if you could have made that happen you are laughing now.
 
Fox said:
He plays with all of that, he is on here and may actually chime in but the guy has so many molds and played with some many things he is almost at the point of giving up cast in a few of the 9s. He has had the powder coating melt in the barrel, ha ha, not just leading but melted powder coat in the barrel. We were talking about it today, my old guns that I cast for never show leading, even the pitted guns but he has run in to weird issues with some of the pistols.

I picked up an extra toaster oven to powder coat myself too, but again Campro make it easy and inexpensive to not bother casting unless you are already in to it.

I would say you are above average and just modest :)
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I think if his powder coat melted in the barrel he is doing one of the following:
1. allowing insufficient cure time for the bullets (usually around 15 minutes)
2. keeping the cure temperature in the oven too low (some cheap toaster ovens are notorious for inaccurate temperature settings which is why I bought a proper oven thermometer)
3. using poor quality powder. Some of the Princess Auto/Harbor Freight stuff is not great. Emerald or Eastwood powders tend to work well.
4. I suppose it's possible to drive the bullets at high enough velocities to melt the powder but considering that people are shooting PC'd bullets at 2000 fps and higher without difficulties and we're talking 9mm here I doubt this is the reason.

It seems there is always an anomaly in any group but aside from some people complaining about poor PC coverage (usually attributable to the type of powder they are using) no one I know has had any complaints about powder coating.

Maybe yomomma who is a bit of a PC guru on this board can chime in with some other possibilities.
 
ted_dent said:
You're on the right track but that doesn't answer why it's censored. Anyone else? Bueller? Bueller?
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sal is fine.
ertaffy is fine.
The problem in the middle is pretty apparent to me.

I just finished powder coating about 800 .45 semi-wadcutters, and my complaint is it time consuming as I can only fit about 60 on a tray at a time in the toaster oven, so it was a lot of batches. I do like the finished product though.
 
As soon as I started powder coating bullets for four different rifles in both Smokeless and BP, my fouling problems decreased dramatically, it's amazing how well it works for me . I just use the dial on the toaster oven and use clear powder coat, "shake'n'bake" style.
Cat
 
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How would powder coated bullet keep black powder fouling moist or under control? Are you cleaning between shots?




To original poster
I donā€™t care what loading components cost. Same with diesel. I love my old iron and Iā€™m going to keep them running. F Ottawa
 
BattleRife said:
sal is fine.
ertaffy is fine.
The problem in the middle is pretty apparent to me.

I just finished powder coating about 800 .45 semi-wadcutters, and my complaint is it time consuming as I can only fit about 60 on a tray at a time in the toaster oven, so it was a lot of batches. I do like the finished product though.
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When I first started PC'ing I was pretty anal about getting perfect coverage to the point where I would stand each individual bullet on its base to avoid any flaws so it was pretty time consuming and tedious. However, after some conversing with my friend hatman1793 I found he was just dumping the bullets randomly (on their side, on their base, etc.) in a steel mesh basket and baking them that way. At first I though it would cause a lot of imperfections but found the following:
1. due to their weight and the shorter shooting distances pistol bullets suffer no ill effects accuracy wise from minor surface imperfections. The caveat here is that rifle bullets may see a decrease in accuracy due to lighter weight and longer shooting distances.
2. if you use medium coarse mesh (1/4" seems about perfect) only a very small surface area of the bullet actually contacts the mesh so imperfections are minimal and many of them are smoothed out when I size the bullets. Stainless mesh works well (you can get it on Amazon) as the bullets don't seem to stick to it as much as galvanized wire.

Now my process is pre-heat the bullets, swirl to coat them, dump them on the mesh placed on an aluminum oven liner ($1 at Dollarama) to collect the excess powder for re-use, place the mesh with the bullets in a metal pan and bake. If you place them one layer deep there is very little marring of the PC coating. If they are more than one layer deep they do tend to stick together in clumps but are easily separated and, as I noted, accuracy doesn't seem to suffer.

It's far faster than how I used to do it and even in a small toaster oven you should be able to do a couple hundred at a time.

I run two ovens at once, a single tray one I had sitting in the basement and a dual tray model I found at a thrift shop so I have three trays of bullets baking at the same time which means PC'ing 700-800 bullets only takes me 20-25 minutes.
 
9-ball said:
Worst case scenario Using today's store prices, ie $100/lb of powder I can load campros for $1.08 / round. (Not included brass, but mine are over 7 reloads and going strong)

Of course shopping around you can do it much much cheaper.

Vs factory is $55 - $100 per 20 or $2.75 - $5 per round
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brybenn said:
Varget is like $115/lb
I use 405gr rem fnsp I paid a .75cents each for
Winchester large primers im still using old stock but I think theyre like 15 bucks per 100 now
Starline brass is about buck each and lasts for ever
So $1.77 using brass 20x
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Interesting...recently picked up S&B 405 grain stuff for just over $40 a box on sale. Maybe the gap is getting more narrow...
 
brybenn said:
Varget is like $115/lb
I use 405gr rem fnsp I paid a .75cents each for
Winchester large primers im still using old stock but I think theyre like 15 bucks per 100 now
Starline brass is about buck each and lasts for ever
So $1.77 using brass 20x
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We just bought two 8 pound kegs from Andrew Higginson , all in it worked out to less than $82 a pound .
Cat
 
handofzeus said:
I just spent a pleasant afternoon finally reloading some 44 mag after many years of not shooting too much and not reloading at all. I looked at the new prices of powder and nearly threw up. Luckily I had more than a few pounds of 4227 and a whole brick of large rifle primers but I looked at the prices on my old supplies compared to today and it was disgusting. My cans of 4227 were $19.99/lb before tax and the primers were $29.99/1000 before tax. Comparing those prices to $100 more or less for a pound of powder and nearly $100 for a thousand primers at today's prices. With the purchase of 500 cheap cam pro plated bullets and some new starline brass it cost me $1.31 to reload 44 Magnum per cartridge. Searching online the cheapest new factory ammo I could find was $29.95 for 25 rounds making it $1.35 per round for factory new. The only way I can see saving a little bit is to buy the factory ammo and shoot it and then reload the brass like I used to. This would give a break at $061.6/rnd. I remember 15 or 20 years ago doing a similar calculation and as I recall reloading was a quarter of the cost of factory new ammo in general. Sad times!
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Well...it's a hobby ya know. I do a lot of fishing.....I am NOT going to calculate how much my lake trout and walleye cost me per pound compared to buying it at the shop.
 
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