.380 Ammo

[vis-à-vis]

Everytime I shop for .380 ammo it is always $13 a box. I've been to Wal-Mart, Dicks, and Bass Pro. Ammoman has 500 Federal rounds for $139 and 500 Wolf Brand for $75. Also, does anyone reload this round who can testify with regard to savings?

Is this the best that can be had for .380? How is the Wolf brand?

 

[Soybomb]

Most reloaders won't do steel cased ammo.

If you don't mind mailorder, www.natchezss.com has remington UMC for $9 a box or blazer for $8.19

 

[Dave R]

My experience is that Wolf .380 is either a little large, or US-made firearms have tighter chambers. Either way, I get a lot of failures to feed and failures to eject with Wolf.380. The same guns work fine with brass-cased ammo.

If your gun was made in the Eastern Bloc (like my Walther clone) it will probably feed Wolf just fine.

 

[GRIZ22]

Also, does anyone reload this round who can testify with regard to savings?

I reload 380 for practice with either a 90 grain cast lead or 95 fmj for practice. It cost me about 6 cents a round for the cast lead (buy these commercial) and about 7 1/2 cents for the fmj (I buy them from midway).

P.S. These are with brass cases not steel.

 

[GunNut]

I'd have no problems shooting it in a range gun, but probably wouldn't let it touch a CCW/Self Defense gun.

The steel cased ammo can break parts, and i'd prefer not to accelerate that wear on a carry gun.

 

[vis-à-vis]

I reload 380 for practice with either a 90 grain cast lead or 95 fmj for practice. It cost me about 6 cents a round for the cast lead (buy these commercial) and about 7 1/2 cents for the fmj (I buy them from midway).

P.S. These are with brass cases not steel.

That is very affordable. I am going to start reloading just as soon as I can afford a press, which should be later this year. Would you mind telling me exactly what you purchase to produce rounds at that price?

 

[19-3Ben]

check out:

bestshotammo.com

I buy from them. so far, they are iffy with .38/.357 rounds, but the .380 from them functions perfectly.

 

[GRIZ22]

Would you mind telling me exactly what you purchase to produce rounds at that price?

I checked Midway and didn't realize the price went up to about $80 a thousand which makes the fmj load go to 10-11 cents a round. There are times they have these on sale. If you load 9mm they also are a good bullet to drive to 1500-1600 fps with Unique. I've been getting the cast bullets locally for about $30/1000. National Bullet has lead for $45/1000 (would make the lead load about 7 cents a round). They also have copperized for about $6-7 more per 1000. Use Bullseye and you can get over 2500 rds pound making your powder cost less than 1 cent per round.

 

[Dave R]

Here's my recipe, which comes in at 8 cents a round:

Any .380acp brass. I like Winchester, Remington, don't like IMI.
100gr. Berry's plated bullet (I buy at Cabela's locally)
4.0gr. Unique powder
CCI small pistol primer.

An alternative for the Berry's bullet is the 95gr. Laser-Cast bullet from Oregon Trails.