newbie help please

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blues picker

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I have never done any reloading and i know there is a very wide range of differences but maybe some of you can give me a general idea. My question is roughly what would it cost per round to load just some decent accurate .308 not counting the brass? Not looking at match thread the needle type stuff just general target and plinking fmj rounds. Plus how many times can I expect to be able to use the brass? Any help you can give me is greatly appreciated thanks.
 
Well 308 bullets are about 20-25 per 100 if you don't buy bulk. primers are $3-$4 per 100, and you can load about 150 rounds roughly on a $20 dollar pound of powder. If you buy bulk you can save a bit, but there are pretty close to average estimates if you aren't really pinching the pennies.
 
First: I'm not reloading myself yet but have done alot of research. Here is my best answer to your question; as always YMMV.

Number of times you can reload the brass depends on a couple of factors: what you are shooting the rounds in (semi vs. bolt), which determines if you have to resize the whole case or if you are using a bolt action and can just collet neck size the brass (this will also improve accuracy). If its a bolt action, and you are only reloading brass that was fired in YOUR gun you can neck size and supposedly get up to or a little more than 10 reloads. Other major factor is how you are loading, how hot, pressures ect. Hotter higher pressure loads = more stress on the brass = less times it can be reloaded.

Good luck, be safe, read a reloading manual / book like ABC's of reloading.
 
Home-made ammo will cost you around 50 cents a round (assuming you have the tools to do so).
308 Federal Gold Medal Match is about a $1 a round...no tools, time or effort required.
Federal uses Sierra Match King bullets, new brass and match primers.
I doubt that you could exceed the quality or accuracy of Federal GMM as a novice.
 
You can load hand loaded ammo like Federal GMM cheaper, and well worth your time and effort. Its not hard to do, the only hard thing to do is just try it. You can get brass free. There are plenty of places to get out there and get it.
 
Not counting brass, I can load 100 .308 rounds for right at $30.
I don't buy in bulk, so if you did, you could shave a little off that. Especially if you use the surplus powders that you can get for $90/8 lbs.
 
Arkansas Paul, care to share your bullet/powder sources? I duplicate the Fed GMM load and my cost per round is a total of $0.50. Cost per bullet is .30 bullet, .17 powder, .03 primer.
 
As I primarily shoot cast boolits in CF rifle and handgun. The cost of that item in reloading for me would be whatever a five gallon bucket of WW (wheel weights) costs, smelted, then extrapolated out to number and weight of individual boolits cast from it.

IIRC, a 5 gallon bucket of reasonably clean WW weighs around 120 pounds, assuming 25% trash loss after smelting, would work out to around 90 pounds of ingots

7,000 grains in a pound, divided by 150 grain boolit = 46

90x46 = 4,000 150 grain boolits from a 5 gallon bucket of WW

As I have several hundred pounds of WW smelted out, I am good for awhile.
 
Using the Ultimate Reloader website calculator, I came out to about 8-10 dollars a box of 20 for .308 or .30-06.
 
It is not the cost per round, but how you tailor the reloaded shells to your rifle/hand gun. Factory stuff is loaded to a performance level, you do not have to load to that level but rather some what lower. Less recoil, muzzle blast, better shooting over all.
 
It depends on if it is for a bolt or auto. In a bolt action I can load for around 8 cents a piece & I don't think there is a end to the brass life. I have only lost 1 case in 15 cycles of loading. It was on its 2nd firing & the neck split. If it is going in the auto that powder cost me a little more so about 15 cents a round. Hunting ammo for the bolt action goes up quite a bit. It cost me 20 cents a round. I buy these bullets at Walmart 100 at a time. Everything else I buy in bulk & get cheap.
 
I have never done any reloading and i know there is a very wide range of differences but maybe some of you can give me a general idea. My question is roughly what would it cost per round to load just some decent accurate .308 not counting the brass? Not looking at match thread the needle type stuff just general target and plinking fmj rounds. Plus how many times can I expect to be able to use the brass? Any help you can give me is greatly appreciated thanks.
Thanks for asking our advice, but we need some information from you.

If you would list the prices you can buy your components (powder, primers, bullets and brass) and give us an estimate at what power levels you would be loading for (so we can estimate how many times you will be able to re-use the brass) we could go to one of these web sites and in about 30 seconds tell you.

Or you could.

But without the prices available to you, we are shooting in the dark

http://www.google.com/search?q=hand...F-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7DMUS_enUS244

Lost Sheep
 
Arkansas Paul, care to share your bullet/powder sources? I duplicate the Fed GMM load and my cost per round is a total of $0.50. Cost per bullet is .30 bullet, .17 powder, .03 primer.


That's not with $30/100 match grade bullets. That's where I'm cutting the cost a little.

Powder - $22 per pound locally
Primers - $32 per 100 locally
Bullets - Midway USA. We'll even count them at the normal price, not the sale price. $22.99/100

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/21...50-grain-spire-point-box-of-100-bulk-packaged


Primers - $3.20
Powder - $14.00
Bullet - $23.00


Total - $40.20
Yep, it was a little more than I was thinking. :)
That's why country boys like me shouldn't attempt math in their heads I guess.
 
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