To load or not to load...9mm

D.B. Cooper said:

LOL......not me.



I don't need that. I need it reliable and able to hold 2-3" at 20 or so yards, or inside the dots of a Dot Tprture Target at 7 yrds.

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That’s the thing
We’re all different.
Since you know what you like, dislike and what you need it’s easier.

So it seems that you should stock as much as you can afford while it’s cheap. Buy mostly ammo but some components.

Since you don’t enjoy reloading, don’t do it if ammo is available at a decent price. Well don’t except I still think you should load some on a regular basis even if it’s 100 rounds a month or every other month. Not to save money but to keep your skills sharp and current. You probably don’t want to be trying to figure out what you need in the middle of a panic. But that’s just me.

I really started asking myself this question of "Is it worth it to reload 9?" about 10 years ago. So far, I still load 9 on a limited basis, although I have been testing some different powder/bullet loads just to have options in the next shortage cycle.

So for the most part, I purchase 9 blasting/plinking ammo and save as much brass as I can.


9 brass is not in piles on the ground at the range where I shoot. So for any of you fine folks that seem to swim in excess when you go to the range, if any of you would like to fill up a LFR USPS box with 9 brass- Send me a PM and I'll pay for the shipping to get it to me.

D.B. Cooper said:

LOL......not me.

I don't need that. I need it reliable and able to hold 2-3" at 20 or so yards, or inside the dots of a Dot Tprture Target at 7 yrds.

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Right there. I don't target shoot with the 9mm, much the same with 5.56mm blasting ammo, that's why I'd rather focus what time I do have for reloading on cartridges that benefit from it. And, again, I'd rather stockpile components for my cartridges I need to reload for, and just build up a store of loaded factory ammos for cheap.

We have one 9mm pistol. It belongs to my wife. She shoots it about 4 times a year. I already reload for 9 different guns. Don't have the interest in reloading or shooting 9mm. We just buy the ammo she needs. Plus she just bought another revolver so I think the 9mm may stay in the safe for a long time.

I went through the same thing recently. With factory 9mm as cheap as it is, one could argue that it just isn't worth it.

Then again...

Here's my current numbers from my "real world" data for a box of 50 (I already have brass, bought titegroup powder, Winchester primers, and projectiles):

Berry's 115g plated: $5.53/box
Hornady 115g HAP: $8.95/box
Hornady 115g XTP: $9.51/box-$10.50/box (with more $$ powders)

Those are prices that I'm currently getting, no BS, including any tax or shipping I may have paid.

At $110.60/1000 for 115g plinking ammo...I can't touch factory loads for that much. At a quick glance, I'm seeing 1000rd cases go for $159 + tax or S&H.

I'm currently loading the HAP for my own version of "match" ammo. At $9/box...that's less than $19/50 box Steel Match ammo with HAP projectiles.
Concerning XTP loads, at under $10/box...that's WAY cheaper than $18/25rd box of their American Gunner series.

So I guess it all depends on how you look at it.

forty_caliber said:

I have the tooling to load 9mm but I don't load for it. If I pay myself just $10 an hour for my time to reload, I could buy a 1000 round case. Then again 9mm isn't at the top of my list for carry or target practice and as such is a lower priority for m

.40

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If you paid yourself $10 an hour you would be legally obligated to report it as income and have to pay taxes on it. Then it would cost you more to reload so the case becomes even cheaper by not paying yourself. For some reason I doubt that you would really pay yourself.

1KPerDay said:

I'm not taking work off to load ammo so the "once you factor in your time" argument doesn't make sense to me.

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Me either.
I usually answer this thought with something along the lines of, "Yeah, I used to enjoy things like reading novels, hiking, and making love to my wife, but then I thought about how much money I would pay myself to perform those tasks, so now I refuse to do them, and I just stare at the wall all day."

doubleh said:

If you paid yourself $10 an hour you would be legally obligated to report it as income and have to pay taxes on it. Then it would cost you more to reload so the case becomes even cheaper by not paying yourself. For some reason I doubt that you would really pay yourself.

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Maybe it shows up as a 'store credit...'

I load a lot of 9mm. After many different powder / bullet combos, I've hit on a load that I absolutely love to shoot. I order most of my components online, and my shooting areas are the opposite direction of any store that carries ammo. So it just works for me.

Z28roc said:

I load a lot of 9mm. After many different powder / bullet combos, I've hit on a load that I absolutely love to shoot. I order most of my components online, and my shooting areas are the opposite direction of any store that carries ammo. So it just works for me.

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I really think this is the point. There are some rounds that save huge $$ by reloading (like my reloading 44 special, which was insanely cheaper than factory). Other rounds are great to reload because you can customize them to whatever you like.

The 38 special wadcutters I load are way more accurate than factory loads, I hope to do the same thing with 9mm real soon.

doubleh said:

If you paid yourself $10 an hour you would be legally obligated to report it as income and have to pay taxes on it. Then it would cost you more to reload so the case becomes even cheaper by not paying yourself. For some reason I doubt that you would really pay yourself.

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Arkansas Paul said:

Me either.
I usually answer this thought with something along the lines of, "Yeah, I used to enjoy things like reading novels, hiking, and making love to my wife, but then I thought so much about how much money I would pay myself to perform those tasks, so now I refuse to do them, and I just stare at the wall all day."

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Charlie98 said:

Maybe it shows up as a 'store credit...'

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This is such a great thread and provides some really great insight into why people do the things they do

While holding down a really full time professional position where I have been on call 24/7/365 for the last 20 years to provide for a family, taking care of the Forty_Caliber compound, two kids, two dogs, the cars, and THE BOSS while balancing a 1000 other things that need my attention I have to choose what I spend my reloading time on. While choosing "ME" time to hunt, fish, target practice, and reloading something has to give.

I used to load 9mm back in the day. I carried a 9mm when I served as a police officer and have fired literally 1000's of rounds of the stuff. It has become just a plinking round for me over the course of time. Other calibers that I used to load for have also gone by the wayside like .40, .243, 270, 30 carbine, 30-06. In some cases I no longer own firearms in those calibers. In other cases I have them but just don't use them anymore.

I'd much rather spend my time loading up .45 Colt and 30-30 for Cowboy Action or .45 acp to keep my skills up with my EDC and .308 rounds for hunting and the recently acquired interest in 5.56 (thanks to the membership here at THR) These choices may morph into other choices over time as my interest changes. This evolution is a very remarkable thing and is part of what holds my interest over the years.

Assigning an arbitrary dollar figure to my time allows for a more accurate cost/benefit analysis of this endeavor. I know I'm going to spend time, money, and energy on reloading and I enjoy the time I spend but on what basis does one prioritize? It's not all about the money it's about choosing. What gives me the best bang for my buck and my time?

.40

MikeInOr said:

The first cartridge I started loading 30 years ago was 9mm.

I still reload 9mm on my Dillon 650xl. I have roughly 8000 9mm bullets and 8000 rounds of once fired 9mm brass... so I can't really afford to not reload 9mm. With my Dillon I can reload 9mm faster than it takes me to go into town to buy it. When a buddy calls at 8pm on a friday night saying lets go shooting tomorrow, I can crank out several hundred rounds in a half hour or so, I can't make it to town and back in that time even if there were a place with a decent price (or any price) open.

I also have some old guns that I like to load wimpy loads for... P08 Luger, Walther P38, C96, etc. I also like practicing with the loads I carry so I load Gold dots for practice and carry in my carry guns... CM9, DB9, CZ75D compact. I am confident my carry pistols feed my carry rounds. With retail price of defensive rounds who can afford to practice with them?

The best part about NOT reloading is NOT having to bend over to pick up the brass.

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https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/gardening-tools/gardening-tools/7464217

I've got chronic back problems. I can't bend over to pick up brass. I use the tool I linked to. Makes picking up brass easy.

I'm retired and disabled. I've got all the time in the world. I started bullet casting a couple of years ago. With a 4 to 8 cavity mold one can produce numerous bullets in a couple of hours. I mainly use Hi-Tek to coat the bullets.

My cost for 9mm reloads is running right at $5/100.

I currently have two Dillon 650 presses. One large primer and one small primer. That really means one .45 ACP and one 9mm.

I shoot enough every year to cover the cost of a new 650 setup. My .45 ACP loads are coming in just under $6/100. That's a huge savings.

I also load .44 Mag, .44 Special, 10mm, .357 Mag, .38 Spl, .327 Federal, .32 H&R and .32 SW Long.

Once in a while I'll load some .223 and/or .308.

Some of those pistol rounds I'm saving over $40/100. It doesn't take long to pay for new molds, furnaces, and other stuff at that savings.

I don't really save any money reloading. It just allows me to shoot as much as I want. I took a friend to the range a couple of months ago. I had a couple of .30 cal ammo cans full of 9mm. I told him he could shoot as much as he wanted. His jaw just dropped. We ran through over 1k of 9mm that day.

Arkansas Paul said:

Me either.
I usually answer this thought with something along the lines of, "Yeah, I used to enjoy things like reading novels, hiking, and making love to my wife, but then I thought so much about how much money I would pay myself to perform those tasks, so now I refuse to do them, and I just stare at the wall all day."

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In reality our time is only worth what someone is willing to pay us for it. I'm not willing to pay me anything and I haven't been able to find anyone that is willing so I guess my time is worth $0.00... Now if I had to take time away from a paying job to do this then I could claim it is costing me money.

Then if you are going to break it down to time spent and the value of that time are you then also going to add in a rent for the space you take up? Include the cost of utilities like electric and heat/air conditioning? How about the cost of just traveling to the range to shoot and the range fee's, targets?

Once again it's not up to me to advise people how to spend their time or money when I have enough trouble managing my own. You have to justify all the costs to yourself and no one else.

fxvr5 said:

CCI brass for $9 - https://www.targetsportsusa.com/9mm-luger-ammo-c-51.aspx#Ma29|

If you're just using 9mm for blasting, it's not worth the effort to reload, IMO. There are even some very accurate rounds out there - if your gun likes it - that are not that expensive. See this article for suggestions/examples: https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2019/1/18/38-different-9mm-loads

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The OP can get Speer Lawman for the same price if there is a perceived difference between the two

https://www.targetsportsusa.com/speer-lawman-9mm-ammo-115-grain-tmj-53650-p-662.aspx

I am willing and able to load 9mm 147 gr "subsonic" for a good deal less than factory, probably a bit less than econoball.

fxvr5 said:

CCI brass for $9 - https://www.targetsportsusa.com/9mm-luger-ammo-c-51.aspx#Ma29|

If you're just using 9mm for blasting, it's not worth the effort to reload, IMO. There are even some very accurate rounds out there - if your gun likes it - that are not that expensive. See this article for suggestions/examples: https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2019/1/18/38-different-9mm-loads

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I missed this response, that's a really interesting article. If anything, it make me feel MUCH better about my own shooting. If a really accurate pistol like the one they used (I'm assuming it is really accurate given the parts list), strapped to a ransom rest could only generate a sub 2" group at best with std factory loads...I don't feel as bad about my shooting.

Hi...
I am tooled up to load 9mm and have enormous amounts of brass but we can buy loaded 9mm in bulk for not much more than the cost of plated bullets, powder and primers.
My son buys 9mm online by the thousands and says that he would rather use the time it would take to load 9mm to load .45ACP, 10mm and .357Mag on the Hornady LnLs, while I load all of our big bore revolver cartridges on one of the RockChuckers.
We may transition the big bore revolver loading over to the Dillon 550 once I get it set up and running just to save time.
I actually enjoy loading on the RockChucker...I usually run about 3-500 rounds of a given caliber at one time over the course of several days.

My son says that he wants to use the LnL that is set up for small primer for 9mm eventually but that is up to him. I only shoot a few hundred rounds of 9mm per year, so the cost if factory 9mm isn't a big deal to me.
My son shoots thousands of rounds of 9mm and while he doesn't think it is cost effective to load it at this point in time, he does understand the reality that the price and availability could change quickly in the not to distant future.
So we stockpile components for 9mm just like for every other cartridge we shoot. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

I started reloading 9mm back in 2014 during the last panic. I was ordering remanufactured (reloaded) ammo from a distributer at the time and the wait to get 1000 rounds was almost 3 months. You literally could not find the stuff. I had a friend who already reloaded and had plenty of supplies and thankfully sold me some to get me started. The ability of being able to shoot when I wanted to and as much as I wanted to was liberating. I promised myself then that never again would I buy factory ammo. As supplies loosened up I was able to shoot more. I've joined the local range a couple years ago and last year I reloaded almost 5000 9mm alone. I now try to keep enough components around to last a couple years. Reloading has allowed me to shoot more for the same dollar spent. It has opened me up to a new hobby which I truly enjoy. I do not look at it as a cost savings, but as entertainment and freedom.

Assuming free brass and time I'm at about $6/box of 50.

-Jeff

forty_caliber said:

While holding down a really full time professional position where I have been on call 24/7/365 for the last 20 years to provide for a family, taking care of the Forty_Caliber compound, two kids, two dogs, the cars, and THE BOSS while balancing a 1000 other things that need my attention I have to choose what I spend my reloading time on. While choosing "ME" time to hunt, fish, target practice, and reloading something has to give.

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I certainly understand the time issue friend. No doubt, life just decides for us that something has to give sometimes.
I'm not on call 24/7/365 but I do understand time being a rare commodity.
I work full time. Monday thru Thursday, after I get off work at 4:30 I drive to law school where I am until 9:30 pm. As you can imagine, this doesn't leave much time for studying during the week, so Saturday and Sunday are treated like a job. I set the clock and dedicate 8 hours a day to studying for the upcoming week. Somehow during all of that I have to find time to be a husband to a fantastic lady and a dad to an amazing 16 year old girl.

I'm with you. We prioritize what little spare time we have.
I'm fortunate to actually enjoy reloading. Some see it as a chore, but sometimes when I'm stressed from school work and need to clear my head, I'll go prep brass for a couple hours or fire up the lead pot and cast a few hundred bullets.

I really enjoy reloading because I can sit back and say yeah, I made that and look what it did (accuracy) compared to something I would spend more $ on. As far as 9mm goes I load on a LCT with an auto drum and case kicker. Its faster then single stage or powder drops but still time consuming. I usually load a bunch of 9mm during the winter, rainy days, etc. and don't much care how much time it took. I wait until I have a bunch of it and then shoot it. Right now I have about 400rds completed and I will be saving those until my stash gets to 1k and then I will pick away at it. Yeah, the cost savings aren't much but my ammo is more accurate, cheaper and it gives me something to do on crappy days other than watch TV. Yes its worth it to me.

Typetwelve said:

I missed this response, that's a really interesting article. If anything, it make me feel MUCH better about my own shooting. If a really accurate pistol like the one they used (I'm assuming it is really accurate given the parts list), strapped to a ransom rest could only generate a sub 2" group at best with std factory loads...I don't feel as bad about my shooting.

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You really did not miss much. Just more Hocus Pocus Statistics by Brad Miller PhD (in what no one seems to know)

It is a test of one gun. With typical disclaimers after all the gibberish

"That’s a fairly big difference but not unexpected, because there can be a significant difference in how well a gun will shoot one load compared to another.

The test result applies to the specific ammunition used in this comparison. Different ammo, or a different gun, could produce different results.
A different gun might have a larger, or smaller, difference in accuracy.

The bottom line
Accuracy is elusive, and requires testing different loads in your gun to see what it likes. As shown here, a gun’s preference for one type of ammunition over another can be significant, and can be the difference between hitting or missing your target."

doubleh said:

If you paid yourself $10 an hour you would be legally obligated to report it as income and have to pay taxes on it. Then it would cost you more to reload so the case becomes even cheaper by not paying yourself. For some reason I doubt that you would really pay yourself.

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Lots of people use that 'my time is worth something' point when comparing the costs of reloading v. buying ammo.

It's OK to just come right out and say you look at reloading as a task that you can pay somebody else to do like mowing your lawn.

I usually smoke a $5 cigar and have a beer when I finish mowing. I love mowing my lawn.

D.B. Cooper said:

Well I appreciate everyone's thoughts. I kind of felt like I had answered my own question in my original post, and, apparently, I did. The general consensus seems to agree that, at least for the time being, it's not financially beneficial.

.

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It is worth it if your only choice was to buy ammo at the LGS, but with bulk online purchases the benefits sure do diminish, don't they. The only real reason I still reload 9mm is that I enjoy the process. I load on a progressive so it doesn't take much effort.

CoalTrain49 said:

I usually smoke a $5 cigar and have a beer when I finish mowing. I love mowing my lawn.

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I hate mowing my lawn. But I love sitting on my patio with a cigar and beer afterwards. A reward so to speak for a task completed.

I can buy brass 9mm locally for under $9 a box, not worth reloading to me. I save my reloading time for the twice as expensive .357 and especially the $50-$75 a box retail .38-40.