Is it worth reloading?

[SCJ429]

Depends on your expectations from your primers. I pay the extra for the BR4.

[juststarting]

*rolls eyes*

[Bills Shed]

Depends on your expectations from your primers. I pay the extra for the BR4.

I suppose that is the perfect answer to the OP question. You can make what every you want. If it does what you need, perfect

Bill

[bladeracer]

10 cents a primer? You need to buy in bulk and get away from those prices!
As to is it worth it, As others have said you always seem to get better gear, then you try something else and then you want to make your own projectile .....and then it is to late... you have moved to the dark side. There is no turning back. Just do it and get it over with.
Bill

I pay $80/1000 for primers, even buying several thousand at a time. I don't mind though, I'm not going to try to screw my local out of his pocket money.

[Oldbloke]

I buy Winchester or S&B, $45-47 depends on size lol. I bet they work the same, sungazer.

+1. Read an article yonks ago. Crux of it was that primers are primers. They either ignite the powder or they don't. For the average reloaders it makes no difference. For long range target, perhaps it matters.

[sungazer]

In the scheme of things if I was saving 5 cents a round its sweet FA. You can see the difference on paper and it can come down to mm and each and every shot counts. I cant just say "O that one is a flyer disregard it" I shoot a lot when it doesn't matter so much but again to buy a $50 /1000 or a $100/ 1000 then to load rounds that are just for fun with other components its just not worth it. I spend more in fuel getting where ever. I do use my older brass for the not important days.

[SCJ429]

Changing primers can double your ES. Yes they all go bang but they don't al perform the same way. Why not use PPU brass instead of Lapua or Sierra Roo Load instead of Sierra Match King. People are using the best components they can to improve their groups. If Winchester primers work for you that is great.

[Sergeant Hartman]

I have recently started shooting. And decided to go reloading, it is a very interesting topic and I like tinkering whether I get better results than factory I honestly don't really care. I find it fun and interesting.

As far as cost is concerned I think with federal primers and my current zmax is under a dollar excluding brass, I do save $$ except I think I have shot lot more rounds testing loads so money lost there...rotfl but still fun shooting

Then I'd you add time to make 50 rounds and suddenly go um getting the box from gun shop is cheaper...hahaha

[Gwion]

Changing primers can double your ES. Yes they all go bang but they don't al perform the same way. Why not use PPU brass instead of Lapua or Sierra Roo Load instead of Sierra Match King. People are using the best components they can to improve their groups. If Winchester primers work for you that is great.

And this is the beauty of reloading your own ammo: it can be built to suit your needs. Cheap plinking rounds, premium hunting rounds or ultra anal target loads. High velocity 'hot' loads, minimum charged loads to ease up on barrel wear, low velocity loads with Trailboss or similar... handloading your own ammo really extends the versatility of your rifle.

That said, as others have mentioned, you have to be shooting a certain amount or wanting specific results to really make it worth cost of set up and time outlay.

[sungazer]

Just got a new set of scales today. Well not new but a second hand set off ebay and probably ten years or more old. But they are a slight step up from the set i bought last year.
The time spent to set up the reloading as Gwion said and the time spent in the actual reloading Ziad mentioned are two components of the time. The time involved in learning and continuing to learn has to be taken seriously. It has to be something that you are going to enjoy if you dont enjoy it it is not worth as you wont save money and you wont invest the time needed to get the results above what factory can give you.

Gwion did make a very good point on the range of loads that can be put together for a single rifle. Not everyone like to do that either but that is the real advantage so a tinkerer you must be.

[Oldbloke]

Horses for courses.
Can be cheaper. OR/&
More accurate.

Don't forget, fun, interesting, relaxing, shoot more.

[Flyer]

You don't reload to save money - there is plenty of cheap factory ammo out there, especially for .223 and .308.

You reload to improve accuracy, tailor hunting loads, or simply shoot the best ammo you can for your firearm.

Whenever anyone tells you how cheap it is to reload, they usually don't add the cost of their time - reloading is nearly always more expensive if you value your time at $30 an hour or more.

If you reload multiple calibres, it becomes a bit more cost-effective.

[bladeracer]

Whenever anyone tells you how cheap it is to reload, they usually don't add the cost of their time - reloading is nearly always more expensive if you value your time at $30 an hour or more.

Unless you are shooting professionally, why would you put a price on your time?
Do you charge yourself by the hour to go and kick a ball in the park, or spend a few hours on a beach?
If you are shooting for pleasure, the shooting _is_ the value. Reloading your own ammo just adds to the time you spend shooting.
If you've ever built your own engine you would know the pleasure that comes every time you fire it up, even years later, I find reloading to give that same sort of pleasure. Being a part of the machine rather than simply an end user.

[Bills Shed]

If I counted my tine for everything I do, I would not get out of bed. It would cost to much.
I build everything I can, because I enjoy the process, reloading, fixing my tractor, etc. it is all a learning process to me.

Bill

[JimTom]

Yep I tend to agree mate.
The components may cost however I do the reloading for free.

[Gwion]

If we charged ourselves out for everything we did we couldn't afford to do anything.

A lot of people have some strange idea that their time is worth X because that's what they get paid at work.

I look at it this way, a designer charging $120/hr at work is worth less than apprentice when doing home renos and a builder charging $120/hr on site is worth less than a work experience student in the design studio... High hourly rates are for expertise.

[bigrich]

Like others have already eluded to, it depends on how much you shoot if you are doing it purely for financial reasons.
I do it so as to get the best accuracy for my rifles and I also find it a bit therapeutic so it’s more like a hobby than a money saver for me.

+1

[Gwion]

It's not a hobby for me... I would rather watch grass grow or blow dry paint... but it does give me good ammo and save me at least %50 on ammo costs. Finding a reliable supply of good ammo locally is tedious and near impossible as well as being expensive, both for the ammo and fuel to go to the shop.

I bought 20 rounds for my 7-08rem when I first got it... 60 something bucks! I estimate that bullet, powder and primer has me at about $1.25, then allow 25c for brass ($170 for 100 then allow 7 loadings: now on load#5 and all looks good). That's $150 for 100 rounds. Same 100 rounds (actually worse because I just have to buy what they have at the time) would cost me a minimum of $300 in the shop. It takes me between 1-2 hours to load 100 rounds (because I'm anal about charge weight). Even if I charge myself $30/hr for 2hr (which I don't), I'm still $90 better off.
So. In the 500 rounds I've put through my 7mm08rem, I estimate that I have saved approximately $700.
I haven't amortised the reloading gear against that because that was paid off by the roughly 2500 rounds I have loaded for my 223rem. Again, roughly 1/2 price or even less. Before reloading I was paying about $1 per round of 223 plus fuel to shop, etc... So my $600-700 worth of reloading gear saved me about $1200. Minus the cost of gear is $500, plus the $700 from 7-08 savings is $1200...

Think I just convinced my wife I can afford that new GRS stock for the 7-08!
I wish....

[SCJ429]

Reloading is a must be rare or wildcat cases, owners of a 378, 416 or 460 Weatherby Magnum are faced with paying over $300 for a box of loaded ammo if they can find it. At $16 every time you pull the trigger you can bring that down to around $3 not counting the (expensive ) brass.

[bladeracer]

Reloading is a must be rare or wildcat cases, owners of a 378, 416 or 460 Weatherby Magnum are faced with paying over $300 for a box of loaded ammo if they can find it. At $16 every time you pull the trigger you can bring that down to around $3 not counting the (expensive ) brass.

Those are the sorts of rounds that I wouldn't consider reloading to save money though, simply because you're unlikely to shoot enough through them. But they would certainly be worth reloading so you can shoot them a lot more at less painful energy levels than being stuck with full noise factory loads all the time.

[SCJ429]

They are the sort of thing that you need to shoot regularly to keep your eye in. I shot 18 416 rounds on the weekend. There is a guy here who is on his second 505 Gibbs barrel after he shot out the first one. It had over 4,000 rounds through. I shot it and it was quite a handful on the bench, jumped off the rest every time. It really pushed my recoil tolerance, made me appreciate my 416 pussy cat. I was considering a 500 A Square but though better of it. A set of Redding dies is $150, pills are around $1.50 each, a shovel full of powder and go and have some fun. Reloading big cases can be more difficult, need to get the lube right. You don't want to get one of those expensive cases stuck in your dies.

[Rod_outbak]

We use about 50/50 of factory ammo and reloaded stuff.

My preference is for the reloaded ammo, if I have the time to do it.
In the case of my 7mm-08, I am highly unlikely to get factory ammo that performs as well as the 120Gn V-max loads my mate worked up for me.
[Most factory loads for the 7mm-08 are around the 140gn mark, and even those are like rocking-horse poop in outback QLD...]
Even in the case of the old .223 rifle we use around the station, the reloaded recipe we use, seems to out-perform the factory rounds I buy every so often.

The number of rounds you are shooting each year, is going to be a big decider on whether you spend the money on rolling your own.

However; as others have pointed out, it's hard to say that reloading has been a cheaper option, as there is ALWAYS something else I'm considering buying for the gunroom/reloading.

But if you want to get the best you can out of a particular rifle, I'd say there is a 90% chance you'll need to go into reloading.
[Obviously, I'm talking centrefire; bloody tricky reloading those rimfires...]

[in2anity]

Reloading is a must be rare or wildcat cases, owners of a 378, 416 or 460 Weatherby Magnum are faced with paying over $300 for a box of loaded ammo if they can find it. At $16 every time you pull the trigger you can bring that down to around $3 not counting the (expensive ) brass.

This. For example my latest craze is the 32H&R (through a rifle); I love this cartridge for so many reasons other than the obvious. And good luck finding factory 32H&R ammo in Australia, yet I handload it for a mere 29c/cartridge. And it will be significantly less when I eventually fall back to Trail Boss, probably in the realms of 20c/cartridge. And you can cook up weird s***t, for example I load checkless 30/30 pills over TB in my 308w - perfect plinking round for 30c/cartridge with near zero wear-and-tear on your rifle.

[Flyer]

Unless you are shooting professionally, why would you put a price on your time?
Do you charge yourself by the hour to go and kick a ball in the park, or spend a few hours on a beach?
If you are shooting for pleasure, the shooting _is_ the value. Reloading your own ammo just adds to the time you spend shooting.
If you've ever built your own engine you would know the pleasure that comes every time you fire it up, even years later, I find reloading to give that same sort of pleasure. Being a part of the machine rather than simply an end user.

I do build engines, and I very much enjoy rocking up to the drags in my 11-second Charger and saying "I built that".

But I don't fool myself that it cost nothing in time and that it was pure pleasure. Never mind the fact that learning how to build that engine in the first place took time and money . . .

I didn't take time off work to build that engine. Would you take time off work to reload?

So it all comes down to how much you value your free time.

In the above example, if I was a lawyer earning $300 an hour and had no idea how to build engines, then I'm better off earning $300 an hour and paying someone $50 an hour to build something for me.

In terms of reloading, you're competing with a machine that reloads thousands of rounds an hour or whatever at fractions of a cent per round (energy and tooling cost).

If you're going to spend hours of your time cleaning, weighing and trimming cases, deburring flash holes and uniforming primer pockets, depriming, sizing, neck turning, weighing charges, loading, seating and checking OAL and concentricity, then you're fooling yourself by saying you're "Saving money".

You're not - it's a false economy.

Arguing that it's time well spent because you enjoy it or that it's part of your hobby does not address the fact that you really haven't saved anything in fiscal terms, because if you spent that time earning money and buying factory ammo, you'd be way ahead.

I reload because yes, I do (in some masochistic way) enjoy the process, and because I get pleasure and reward from loading consistent and accurate ammo that's reflected in my scores at the target range.

But I certainly don't reload to save money. And I always have to balance time spent reloading against what other pleasurable activities I could be doing in that same time.

It's your time - spend it how you will.

[Flyer]

It's not a hobby for me... I would rather watch grass grow or blow dry paint... but it does give me good ammo and save me at least %50 on ammo costs. Finding a reliable supply of good ammo locally is tedious and near impossible as well as being expensive, both for the ammo and fuel to go to the shop.

I bought 20 rounds for my 7-08rem when I first got it... 60 something bucks! I estimate that bullet, powder and primer has me at about $1.25, then allow 25c for brass ($170 for 100 then allow 7 loadings: now on load#5 and all looks good). That's $150 for 100 rounds. Same 100 rounds (actually worse because I just have to buy what they have at the time) would cost me a minimum of $300 in the shop. It takes me between 1-2 hours to load 100 rounds (because I'm anal about charge weight). Even if I charge myself $30/hr for 2hr (which I don't), I'm still $90 better off.
So. In the 500 rounds I've put through my 7mm08rem, I estimate that I have saved approximately $700.
I haven't amortised the reloading gear against that because that was paid off by the roughly 2500 rounds I have loaded for my 223rem. Again, roughly 1/2 price or even less. Before reloading I was paying about $1 per round of 223 plus fuel to shop, etc... So my $600-700 worth of reloading gear saved me about $1200. Minus the cost of gear is $500, plus the $700 from 7-08 savings is $1200...

Think I just convinced my wife I can afford that new GRS stock for the 7-08!
I wish....

I don't want to argue the maths, but don't you also spend time and money on fuel when you buy powder and primers? Other things you can get in the post (and pay for it). And yeah, it probably takes me 1-2 hours to load 100 rounds of ammo, too. But that doesn't include all the preparation to get to that point. At the very least you have to deprime, clean, dry, resize and trim before you start weighing charges, loading and seating.

I'm not trying to argue for the sake of arguing - I'm just being completely honest about how much time and effort it takes. Something that not everyone - myself included - takes into account when they first start reloading.

[bladeracer]

I do build engines, and I very much enjoy rocking up to the drags in my 11-second Charger and saying "I built that".

But I don't fool myself that it cost nothing in time and that it was pure pleasure. Never mind the fact that learning how to build that engine in the first place took time and money . . .

I didn't take time off work to build that engine. Would you take time off work to reload?

So it all comes down to how much you value your free time.

In the above example, if I was a lawyer earning $300 an hour and had no idea how to build engines, then I'm better off earning $300 an hour and paying someone $50 an hour to build something for me.

In terms of reloading, you're competing with a machine that reloads thousands of rounds an hour or whatever at fractions of a cent per round (energy and tooling cost).

If you're going to spend hours of your time cleaning, weighing and trimming cases, deburring flash holes and uniforming primer pockets, depriming, sizing, neck turning, weighing charges, loading, seating and checking OAL and concentricity, then you're fooling yourself by saying you're "Saving money".

You're not - it's a false economy.

Arguing that it's time well spent because you enjoy it or that it's part of your hobby does not address the fact that you really haven't saved anything in fiscal terms, because if you spent that time earning money and buying factory ammo, you'd be way ahead.

I reload because yes, I do (in some masochistic way) enjoy the process, and because I get pleasure and reward from loading consistent and accurate ammo that's reflected in my scores at the target range.

But I certainly don't reload to save money. And I always have to balance time spent reloading against what other pleasurable activities I could be doing in that same time.

It's your time - spend it how you will.

I have not said anywhere that recreational activities don't cost us money, try racing motorcycles for several years if you have heaps of money you want to turn into noise. Although I have wondered if even that might not have been cheaper than my current firearm hobby

If you were earning $300 an hour you could indeed save money by paying somebody else to build your engine, and totally miss out on adding that to your life experience. I consider doing that a loss, not a saving. The point of earning $300 an hour is so that you can enjoy life more when you aren't working, otherwise why bother? Why on earth would anybody prefer to go to work just to be able to pay somebody else to get all the enjoyment out of doing our recreational activities for us?
I had a good mate who had the same view, and he did indeed love working, with a passion - it truly was his recreation. But I eventually realised that his passion for "work" revolved around accumulating wealth, not the actual working at all.

[sungazer]

You blokes can reload pretty quickly. 100 an hour is getting along. I rekon I am at about 50-70 in 2 hours. Thats not including the prep time.

[Flyer]

I agree. But it's all a matter of perspective, no? If the lawyer likes racing, but doesn't like getting his hands dirty, then it's obvious where he values his time. Same with the hunter or target shooter.

I started loading .243 because I thought it would be cost-effective, and because I had a limited choice of factory ammo where I lived at the time. Some ammo is always going to be more cost effective to load than others, but you probably wouldn't include .223 in that when you can buy it for as little as 50c a round in some places.

So for a long time I did not reload .223 because I didn't see the point. Until I did see the point - that was the point at which I started to outshoot my factory ammo and needed something more accurate and better at resisting cross-winds. So I started reloading .223, even though it costs me more than buying factory ammo.

If I were purely hunting, then it might be a lot harder to justify the outlay of reloading gear if I was only shooting dozens of rounds a year instead of hundreds.

Perspective.

Where I certainly agree is that money = freedom. It's the freedom to do what you want when you want. So all you really need to ask yourself is: what do I really want? Are the results of reloading worth my time and effort, or can I get similar results buying factory ammo?

[Flyer]

You blokes can reload pretty quickly. 100 an hour is getting along. I rekon I am at about 50-70 in 2 hours. Thats not including the prep time.

I've got a Chargemaster Lite that throws as I load and seat. It's a great bit of kit. Two nights ago, I loaded 120 rounds of .223 in a bit over two hours with only one overcharge and one undercharge that had to be re-thrown. It's pretty consistent. I've got a mate who uses a manual powder-thrower and he's pretty quick once he gets into his rhythm, but I'm so anal I couldn't do it because I'd have to weigh every charge!

[JimTom]

You blokes can reload pretty quickly. 100 an hour is getting along. I rekon I am at about 50-70 in 2 hours. Thats not including the prep time.

I've got a Chargemaster Lite that throws as I load and seat. It's a great bit of kit. Two nights ago, I loaded 120 rounds of .223 in a bit over two hours with only one overcharge and one undercharge that had to be re-thrown. It's pretty consistent. I've got a mate who uses a manual powder-thrower and he's pretty quick once he gets into his rhythm, but I'm so anal I couldn't do it because I'd have to weigh every charge!

I know what you mean mate. I am the same, I weigh every charge which is why I have just recently invested in a RCBS charge master lite.
Hopefully that will speed it up a little.