Reloading is for more accurate ammo when it comes to bolt action rifles because after you test all the combs, then you test and do a power load ladder test looks for the least vertical group! Then you test to jump, jam, or touch the bullet into or off of the rifling searching for the tightest group which can easily mean 10" tighter groups at 4-500 yards any F class or Prs , bench tester will verify this!! Thought I should throw this out there to help shooters understand! The top truth of some firearms knowledge!
You have to consider as well that ammo prices go up like crazy but if you reload, you have enough components to load 100s or even thousands of rounds that are immune to price increases, since you already purchased them. I watched a box of 308 go from 24 dollars to almost 40. In a few months.
I've been reloading since early 2020, (recently retired) now it is 2022. I reload 1 rifle round, two handgun rounds. This video ignored initial investment and time. You can get started reloading for Maybe 300 bucks including press, scale, dies, some kind of brass cleaning, but cheap and maybe manual. The press won't last for a decade, so you may want to upgrade. So get a nice press in a couple more things and you have spent 600 dollars before making the first bullet. Now to get the raw materials. Lets reload 308 Winchester. Bullets, 35 to 40 for 100 of them. Primers, if you can find large rifle primers, you might pay 130 for a thousand. Powder, again, you have to find it these days, you could spend 30-45 bucks a pound. Some unexpected costs may come in when you ship primers and powder. An extra 20 to 25 a shipment. Do the math, 38 cents for the bullet, 15 cents for the primer, 25 cents for the powder. And you made your first round. (Do you want to check the velocity? another large purchase.) So you made a box of 20 308's for about 610 to 620 dollars You could buy 20 for 30 to 40 bucks. You would break even at somewhere around 600 rounds of 308. But it is going to cost you hours of labor as well. Unless you invest more in equipment, it will take you about 12 to 15 hours to make those 600 308 rounds. (hours includes time picking up brass, deprime, clean, lube, resize, re-clean, ream or swage primer pocket, trim to length, deburr, prime, measure powder, load bullet, crimp, get tools our and set up, getting all the mess put away. Only gonna reload 9mm, I'll skip most of the math, you break even in somewhere between 40 and 60 boxes of ammo, 2,000 to 3,000 rounds. And to make all those 9mm, is going to take you some 25 to 45 hours. You could get the labor time down by quite a bit, but it will cost you. Plus side of reloading, If you stockpile components, (more larger investments up front) it makes it harder to run out of ammo. negative to match, sometimes you have a thousand pieces of brass just sitting around waiting for primers to show up for 6 months. It requires an investment of cash and time. And a willingness and the time to shoot. If you only shoot 500 9mm a year, it is going to take you years to pay off the initial investment. If you reload 3 cartridges and pay off the equipment sooner, if you have time and there is a history of shooting thousands of rounds a year as a family; then by all means, join the club.
It's 2020 and I am reloading 45ACP and 357 Mag. Thanks for the math. I never figured out the savings. On the other hand the reloaded rounds are amazing!
I shoot a lot of 45 ACP and Im currently priced at $0.178 per round. Ironically the most expensive component is the primer at $0.0945 ea. Yes I cast 230 gr SWC and powder coat keeping the price of projectiles at $0.054 ea.
Yes that's pretty much my experience as well. Primers, even in bulk, tend to be pretty static in terms of price and remain the next highest cost after the brass.
I can reload 9mm for .25 a round and .308 for .57 a round. No way with this ammo shortage can I buy ammo that cheap, if I could find it for 19 months during COVID-19. Now it’s getting better, so now is the time to stock up.
I live in southern Ontario as well, its December 2021 I could only find one place with 44 magnum which was Gobles in London they had 12 boxes of hornady lever evolution and were the only place that had 500 smith & Wesson only 1 box. Nobody has 357 magnum except Eli's in simcoe and they only had a few. Ammunition availability re-loading a no brainer if you want to shoot and shoot often. No need to buy casings plenty at the indoor range same as bullets, cast your own, plenty of free lead
In the early 90's when I started reloading I did it to afford shooting. In addition to that there is a sense of pride that I made this round. It is also a second hobby that is coupled with shooting. There is always something new to learn. If you shoot allot you could save enough money to buy another gun😁
All very true. It definitely gives a heightened sense of knowledge and understanding regarding the Firearm, how it works, and what it takes to master it.
Have to argue about your comparison with the 357magnum. You picked one of the most expensive loading to do your comparison. 357 magnum in the USA. Can be purchased for about 30 $ per 50 cartridges .
I hear what you're saying, Christina, but as I live in Canada, the selection is much more limited. The local gun store I typically purchase ammo from has like three brands in that caliber, and this was the 'middle' priced one.
As you know I load and craft ammo for performance. Knowing what is the carriage made up of is a huge part of the craft. also, If budget permits, Just like buying tools for working on your car. if you factor all of that in and your time, You might as well hire someone to do the work you need. Buying tools for loading is like purchasing a fine Rifle, Handgun or shotgun. You buy what you can afford and at the level that you are at. There is nothing wrong with Lee equipment, I an not a Lee basher, There was a guy who was a better shot than I and he used a Lee Pro 1.000 for all his Bullseye ammo, He shot well into the mid-2500's in a 2700 match and broke 2600 more than once. So equipment is a personal thing also and that in itself is a factor. One way or another you will always equal or outshoot factory ammo with your own loaded ammo once you develop an accurate loading. also, We are never short on help finding where that is. "The Reloaders Network" is filled with Help, and not just some Hilljack advice, a published loading that is safe. Good video dude. keep them rolling bud. Dave.
I use a lot of Winchester AA 410 2-1/2" #8 shot target load shot shells which are around $12 locally (before tax) for a box of 20. Ergo I reload them. I am seeing equivalent performance as factory loads.
Agreed; 9mm and .40SW aren't huge money-savers but you're right about being able to customize the load. If you're a competition shooter, that can make all the difference.
Of course you have to factor in the cost of the equipment. I purchased my reloadng equipment about 3 years ago. At the time, I figured that it would take approximately 1150 rounds of 9mm to re-coup the cost of the equipment. The price of 9mm has come down since that date but, so has my cost of reloading. I have added casting and powder coating to my reloading list, giving me a savings of about 14 cents per round. I save significantly more on 380 rounds and, it assures availability when store supplies are low. However, I have not been able to save money on shotgun shells for clay busting. It costs me about $6 per box to make them and I can regularly purchase them at around $5.55 per box.
The problem with trying to calculate equipment costs in a video like this one is there are so many possible combinations of what a person may want (single stage/turret/progressive, brand, etc, etc) and how often they may use it. I decided to do percentage savings per round instead to provide prospective reloaders with the ability to determine for themselves what equipment is worth purchasing and how long it will take to pay for itself. Yes, 9mm probably has one of the lower returns although it's clearly still worth it for most people. I've never owned a .380 but I don't doubt there's significant savings to be had there.
I ended up buying the least expensive progressive built, the Lee Pro 1000, The press gets a bad rap but, I've had excellent results with mine. I've only encountered difficulties loading 5.56 rounds with it. I ended up having to take the priming and resizing offline for the 5.56 only. Of course, the press was really intended for pistol cartridges. I carry a micro-380 as my EDC and so, I make rounds to practice with. They can be quite expensive to purchase but, very inexpensive to make. There is also an issue with availability of 380, especially in some markets. In the area I live in, I can purchase S & B primers for around $0,025 each, and once used brass casings for less than $ 0.01 each. I live in a rather large market so, I have some advantages over people who live in more remote areas, from an availability perspective. The odd thing is that in spite of living in a larger market, I had a difficult time finding slugs for my 12 gauge earlier this week.
Once you get past the startup cost for gear, the gear pays for itself. By modern market prices it costs me roughly $21 for a box of 20 factory Remington .222 50gr. SP ammo and that at Walmart where the cost is already lowered. That is over $1 every time I pull the trigger. I can bring that cost way down below that and even if it wasn't about cost like for .223 factory ammo that is about the cheapest centerfire rifle ammo, I can for sure get better accuracy from my hand loads than from factory. Also more reliable ammo because of my own quality control over the process. Why do I reload? Cost, reliability, and accuracy. One other important reason is it makes even more sense to reload if I am shooting lots of ammo per year to drive cost down. The more I shoot, the more sense it makes to reload. Reloading does take the time to do it so the argument will be how much is your time worth? For me its time well spent for answering the question of why I reload. Can I get low cost, reliability, and accuracy from factory ammo? Maybe and maybe not. But I know for sure I can reloading. Allocate idle time for reloading time. Make the time to reload.
I could not agree more. Another advantage that I think doesn't get talked about enough is how much more of an understanding of firearms you gain by reloading your own ammunition. I always knew how ammo worked, but until I started loading my own, I never really appreciated all the factors that go into making an accurate cartridge or shell.
Mike Treen You can get as complicated with hand loads as you want but its not necessary. I just find my chamber size (using an empty dummy round so the round chambers), then find my lands (rifling start with an empty dummy round checking bullet marks), then finally develop a load the rifle likes from a handbook load using the C.O.L. (cartridge overall length) backed off of the lands (no bullet marks) while staying within acceptable chamber pressure. My fired cases will tell me if the load is or is not within acceptable chamber pressure. That is all there is to it. No more no less. Sometimes if I have a good and accurate factory load, I may try to duplicate or improve that load based on its C.O.L. and its powder charge in fps (feet per second).
17% on shotshells? Smeh. Even it’s 20%, that barely starts to pay for the press. So after you’ve reloaded literally thousands of shells, you’ve paid for the press. Then you have to deal with the time it takes... the storage of it all. I just don’t think it’s worth it to save on the low end in this example 120$ a year (500 store bought shells). At that rate it’s 3 years until you just break even. Cmon. All that time you spend loading has to be better spent at your local gun club, helping out there or even just getting a part time job. Pay yourself 10$ per hour to reload and you’ve lost every bit of “savings”. I think the better approach is knowing you’ll always have shells on hand, you get enjoyment out of crafting your own shells, and you need a reason to sit in the garage for a couple hours. You’re not saving any money at all reloading even tens of thousands times. Everyone’s time is worth more than 3$ hourly. So unless it’s something you enjoy, there is no reason to reload shotgun shells, ever, in any mount, for any reason other than pleasure. And that’s a damn shame because shooting shotguns is awesome and it costs as much or more than golfing a community course. Sigh.
Dangit, I was SUPER excited to find your channel. casting and reloading information in well edited bite sized videos. But comparing Hornaday's critical defense's controlled expansion hollow point projectile to Aim's bargain FMJ isn't apples to apples. You artificially inflated your numbers. You skewed your percentages to make your point and lost your own credibility to do it. I am not arguing against reloading, but I am already into the hobby, and people like me who are already converted, are into hard facts, fair comparisons, measurable results, and quantifiable data. Your audience isn't stupid. We are the calipers and chronograph crowd please treat us accordingly. That being said... subscribed. Thanks for the videos. Keep it up
Cooper Bybee; one of things you may notice if you re-watch the video is that I mentioned everything was quoted using prices from local gun stores. My objective when recording these videos is to provide the most real-world examples I can, particularly for Canadian viewers since there's so little content for us. Where I live in Ontario, there are very, very few gun stores (in fact, there is only one left in my entire city from an original three). At the time of this video they stocked a grand total of two types of .357 Magnum, the lowest-priced of which was the Hornady Critical Defence I used for my example. I stand by the percentages I listed (in fact, you'll note I quoted on the assumption you were only reloading brass five times instead of ten and included prices with existing or purchased brass just to be extra-conservative). Based on this I firmly believe these are fair comparisons but certainly folks are welcome to disagree.
You can't save money... you just shoot more. We all know that buying components is cheaper but you shoot way more often by "testing" it and you always have hundreds of rounds on hand. Trust me, I know lol.
@grumpy old fart oh I completely agree. Reloading also creates a new dimension to shooting, making it more enjoyable. I'd say I like to reload almost as I like shooting.
I figured it out with the calculator on the www.handloads.com reloading cost calculator and I’m loading 44 mag with 2400 powder and 255 gr lead cast from free range scrap for .14 a pound. Technically less because I was given the powder for helping a neighbor. 😎
It really is incredible how much you can save on handgun cartridges. I met a gentleman at a gun show years back who told me he was reloading .50AE for about $0.30/cartridge vs $3 for factory.
I haven't yet found a range that gives or sells range scrap; never had any luck getting wheel weights either. Consider yourself fortunate. Still, I know a guy who sells lead ingots for $1/lb.
A lot of metal recyclers have the local ranges pretty locked down with contracts for 'disposal services'. Lead isn't super-valuable, but brass is worth a *lot*, so they pursue exclusive contracts very aggressively. For WW's, focus on tire shops. I have standing arrangements with several wherein I will beat any price the metal recyclers offer and pick them up for free.
tkarlmann I’m giving away my secrets here 😁 but one place I usually have luck with for wheel weights here in the US is at junkyards. Most could care less if you go through and pull weights off tires on junk cars. Depending on the yard you might have to pay a little for it, but most would rather get rid of them. Only bad part is carrying the bucket! Not sure about Canada 🇨🇦
