stihl88 wrote:Nice sounds like you're getting the most out of it. People say you don't save much reloading but i reckon if you're frugal enough and shooting frequently you certainly can, if you don't factor in your time that is. There's something about reloading that ticks the boxes for me, I find it quite enjoyable especially when you're working on a particular load like subsonic, the maths/science geeky side of it i find enjoyable also.
Absolutely, if I were taking time off work to load ammo it wouldn't be worth doing, my biggest "saving" though isn't in reloading at all, it's in doing most of my practicing and training with .22LR, which for some years has cost me under 14 cents a shot, and is currently 11 cents a shot. I shoot .22LR out to well past 300m so when I do bring out the centrefires for some practice I don't have any issues hitting what I'm aiming at. I have no doubt at all that I save plenty of money over factory centrefire ammo (except 12ga., that's about break even I think), I'm well ahead of the equipment outlay, except that I have tens of thousands of dollars worth of brass, bullet, powder, and primer stock, plus hundreds of kilos of lead and 50+ moulds. I've gathered up significantly more of all since I last attempted a stocktake so I really need to do it again quite soon for insurance and to see if any holes need filling. I'm using a single-stage press as well, each round gets inspected after sizing/decapping, flaring/priming, charging, seating, and crimping so the chances of a bad round is minimal compared to progressive loading .I did find a still-primed fired case in the box of primed/flared brass, so one slipped through somehow - probably fell from my hand during the process as I have a handful of brass I'm running through the press. And I crushed one primer that I didn't like the look of so I popped it out and tossed it into the stove for a nice pop. Because I'm doing such a huge batch I've been trying to do something of a time study and have found places to make up time. Pistol ammo has two additional die steps, flaring and crimping, so it does take longer than rifle ammo, but I don't have to worry about shoulder bumping, trimming or lubing.
I get all the brass and run it through the sizing/decapping die, this is pretty boring (1000 pieces takes me about 90 minutes, including finding all the ones I drop), and bloody annoying when I get one that's been put through a tumbler and is packed solid with media like cement. Then, as I have to run it through a flaring die for the cast bullets, I do the priming on that stroke. This takes me around an hour to flare and prime a thousand, some, like Geco, almost funnel the primer into the pocket, others like S&B need a jiggle to align them.
I had never tried the powder thrower with Trailboss "donuts" as I just assumed it would struggle with the shape. But it was taking me nearly twenty minutes to trickle up 50 charges on the scale which was ridiculous. So I tried the thrower and it's fine, perhaps once or twice through every 50rd batch the handle gets tight as it crushes a donut in the side of the drum. But it throws within the expected .1gn accuracy - I don't want to drop any lower than about 1.8gn or they might not come out the muzzle reliably. Using the thrower brought charging fifty down to about four minutes. I scavenged a pile of .40S&W boxes after Police had been training, the trays are perfect for standing 1000 pieces of brass in as I move through the die steps, but I discovered it also allows me to pass the tray of brass under the thrower nozzle (just barely), which halved that time as well, and being so compact I can look over them to inspect that the powder levels are consistent in a few seconds.
Then I seat the bullets in batches of fifty and stack them, a hundred rounds takes under ten minutes, it goes very quickly. I toss the seated round into the box then grab another case while my right hand is grabbing the next bullet. Then I run them all through the crimp die, which is very quick, quicker than seating the bullets. There may be a time saving here in that I can try setting the seating die to crimp at the end of the stroke. I'm not a fan of this method, but for the loads I'm doing here it won't have any discernible detriment to the ammo quality.
Once I have a big box of primed and flared brass, I can come to the press any time and turn out 100 rounds to completion (charge, seat, crimp) in about fifteen minutes, then go on with whatever I interrupted. Doing this a few times through the day quickly pumps out ammo without entering boredom territory. From charging to seating the bullet is the only period I won't allow any distractions, so it's good to do this step to completion in small batches of 50rds or 100rds. It is possible that I might forget to crimp them if I do get distracted after seating, but it would be patently clear as soon as I tried loading a rifle or revolver with them so wouldn't really be an issue.
I do these steps across separate days but it all adds up to, I think, somewhere around five hours of my time to turn out 1000rds of .38 Special. I don't know what wages rates are but at $30/hr that would add a cost of about 15 cents to each round I guess?
But I stream radio shows during loading which removes any boredom at all - The Goons, Cabin Pressure, Hut33, Sorry I Haven't a Clue and others.
I did do some time measurements on casting and powdercoating batches of bullets years ago but I don't recall the numbers and am not going to guess now. I'm almost set up to throw at least 10,000 .358" and .356" bullets so I'll time how long that takes once I start. I found 400 .38 bullets that I cast and PC'ed about six years ago that look terrific so I really want to get back into it. I must check that the PC powder is still good, and perhaps order some more. I have thousands of copper-plated and jacketed .38 bullets I could use for practicing, but it seems very extravagant when they cost me up to forty times the cost of casting my own bullets.
