Sal1950 said:
DGW1949 said:
Tommy Kelly said:
Well I must be wrong because by figures I am shooting 38 special for about a nickle a pop. Not counting my time of cource. I cast my own bullets and have a bunch of cases several thousand on hand and with the 4.0 gr load of 2400 behind my waddcutter bullets the primer is my most expensive part at around 3 cents apice with 1750 loads comming from 1 lb of powder and figureing the cases will last at least 10 loads. But yes every once in a while I will buy a box or two of cheap remington 38's just to have some more hulls on hand.
Didn't say that I can't reload 9's or 38's cheaper than I can buy them. And yeah, casting your own bullets will save even more. I been there done that too. But when I figured in the extra time involved with scrounging-up the metal, casting the bullets, lubing the bullets, and cleaning/maintaning the equipment I used.....I was still working for a dollar an hour. :roll: .
Can't say that I've ever used a 4 grain load of 2400 in anything though, so I guess ya got me on that one. :wink: .
DGW
9s are about the toughest to save substantially on. But I can buy 1K of genuine jacketed, (not plated) FMJ 124's from Precision Delta for $85 shipped. Plugging that into the calculator with 4.4g of Universal powder at $22 a pound and $30 a thousand for primers and a box of 50 costs $6.44 to build, about half the cost of the cheapest Federals at Wally World. My Dillon 450B will do 200 an hour without pushing it, making/saving me $25.76 an hour. Not a bad wage IMHO.
Now you want to talk about the savings of loading for my 460 S&W Mag and the numbers will make you head spin.
Sal
A 100 pack of Fedral 9MM FMJ's is $19.95 around here, so that makes your reloads close to 2/3 the cost of what I'm buying factory loads for.
I aint got a Dillon, I gots an old single stage, and I'm real anal with my proccess....so it takes me about a hour and a half to do a 100.
All that said though, it does seem that I was mistaken, meaning that I'd actualy be working for about $2 an hour.
Back when I was younger, I did stuff like that because I was raising a family and money was tight. Nowdays, I'm an old guy who aint got a lot of time left, so working for a dollar or two per hour aint on my list of important things to do any more. Neither is combing though the grass out back so's I can reload every stinkin' empty that my gun ejects.
Just sayin' that we aint all the same, so the way we look at things aint the same.
I do agree about the big bores though. All of my 45LC shooting involves reloading. And most all of my rifle shooting.
Heck, if I weren't a handloader, I wouldn't even own most of the guns I have. :wink: .
DGW