Made a decision: No more .38 Specials for me.

[Clark]

The value of time and money:

Say you were an engineer that billed at $100 /hour under your own 1099 form.

After double social security, workman's compensation, industrial insurance, federal income tax, biz tax, medicare/ medicade tax, and overhead, like clothes and calculator that leaves:

$35/ hour take home.

Once your wife sees that money in the bank, she will buy a new mini van.

That leaves you with $5/hour x 40 hours = $200/ week gun money.

If there are two gun shows per month and you buy 1 gun / month at $350.

That leaves $50/ month for ammo.

There are ~ 160 work hours per month, so in figuring reloading costs, one needs to compare apples with apples, and that engineer's time worth while reloading is:
$50/ 160 = $0.31 / hour

You cannot afford not to reload.

 

[noonanda]

I reload for almost every gun I own. Most of em are Milsurps with calibers that (1) either ammo is hard to find, expensive, or the surplus ammo sux (examples .303 british, 7.7 Japanese, 7.62 nagant) or (2) reload for em just to see what accuracy I can squeeze out of them (examples 7.62X54R, 8mm, 7.62X39 for my SKS or .30-06 for my Garand,)

I buy surplus ammo for some calibers and just use them for components. Perfect example is either Turk 8mm or Albainian 7.62X54R. The turk ammo is loaded very hot, so by pulling the bullets and reducing the powder by 20% I have a great plinking/hunting load. The Albainian powder is great when reduced by about 10%, the loads are consistant and a little bit easier on the shoulder, as well as being more accurate. Now I only use surplus powders in the Calibers I extracted them from, Im not much for experimentation with these old powders.

Being a US Marine Im getting paid by the government 24/7 so Im still getting paid while I reload ammo, so the cost isnt an issue. My 2 oldest daughters
5 & 4 also "help me" when I am depriming boxer brass, so I also am spending time with them and they are ejoying themselves.

I initially started reloading to save money, but reloading has become a hobby within my hobby of collecting Milsurps.

 

[armoredman]

I gotta throw in a ditto on - " If you're getting rid of reloading stuf, I'll be happy to "dispose" of them for you!"

 

[caz223]

Quote:
PMC: noticeably different powder levels across the same box. Like bang BOOM pop bang bang pop...

I blew my tea out through my nose. (I needed that...)
I borrowed a friend's chrono on 9mm WWB ammo and it had the widest SD I had ever seen. Don't remember it anymore, but I stopped buying it from that day on...

Gospel truth, that whole post.
But after running 20K of blazer (9mm, 357SIG, 10mm, and .45 acp mostly), 2 case failures are not bad.
Is that .0001% ?
It's just that I've never had a case failure of any kind with brass cases.

 

[thatguy]

To all making kind efforts to unburden me of my reloading gear, thanks but I still need it. I am only talking about buying plinking ammo. I will still need to roll my own performance loads. Plus, I own several guns using obsolete and wildcat cartridges.

To those suggesting the progressive loader, as I stated in my 1st post, I can't really justify the cost for the small amount I load. If I loaded several hundred rounds per month it would make sense. I don't. I shoot maybe 500 38s per year.

The bottom line is time vs. money. At this stage of my life, my time and effort is worth more to me than $4.50 per hour.

I don't think this thread is an oxymoron, BTW. It's about reloading. It's about when to choose not to do it.

It has been a fun discussion and I thank all who participated.

 

[The Bushmaster]

Thatguy...You are most welcome. And it was a little fun too. But I'll still let you send me any reloading stuff you don't want. And I promise that I will not share with P95carry...

 

[Rico567]

To me, this is a lot simpler than some people have made it out to be. The original poster has several things going on. One is that he's only being paid $4.25 per hour to reload. The simple cure to this is to just follow "jdberger"'s advice and get a progressive; certainly I would also regard my Dillon XL650 as a great choice. (Note: there are many other good choices, like the RCBS 2000, Hornady LNL, Lee Pro 1000 or Loadmaster...no "color religion" here) But the more important issue here is that the original poster also says he doesn't really like to reload. This makes all the difference. I am far less willing to spend the time I did at age 25 (35 years ago!) to crank out reloads. My answer was to invest in more productive equipment. but another person's solution might be to just buy the stuff, especially since the issue here revolved around .38 Spl. plinking rounds, which are available cheap commercially.

 

[dmftoy1]

I think you pretty much have it figured out. It makes a big difference as to what "stage" in life you're in. 5 years ago when my kids were all doing high school sports, etc, I didn't even think about reloading. I had too much going on and any free time was absolutely precious.

NOW . . . . . my kids are all in college and I find that I've got ALOT more free time. (although less money. ) In terms of hourly rate, I don't ever look at things like that . . . . .my job is very high stress and I find that an hour or 2 at the bench with the required "concentration" completely removes my stress. I would PAY to have that done. In the last 20 years my hourly rate has climbed to the point where there aren't many things that would pay for me to do it myself but I just find that I enjoy doing the "work" more than I would enjoy adding another 2-3 hours to a 10-12 hour day.

Just my .02

Have a good one,
Dave

 

[Gewehr98]

To each their own.

Why anyone would want to reload .38spc or 9mm or 7.62x39 is beyond me. The stuff is available so cheaply commercially that it just doesnt make sense. Unless someone had some very special load they worked up.

Because I can make a better round cheaper. I just made a big batch of 148gr HBWC ammo for my S&W Model 52 for a hell of a lot less than store-bought, and I know it will live up to the tight grouping qualities of that particular handgun.

As for 7.62x39? I'm cleaning up after myself, not leaving a bazillion steel cases on the ground at the range, and making 123gr ammo that will go into 2 MOA in my Bugarian SLR-95. Try that with steel-cased cheap surplus Wolf and report back to me when you achieve that level of accuracy routinely.

Of course, at one time I owned up to 4 Dillon machines. Now I'm down to just two.

 

[bakert]

To each his own. I can buy ammo on sale at Wal-Mart, Dicks or even order it from different places at very reasonable prices. But if circumstances were that I could only have a Lee Loader or a hand tool I would still be reloading handgun ammo.
Baker

 

[only1asterisk]

caz223,

I'll back up your 9mm WWB results with mine, SD off the charts.

Like Gewehr98 said, where else can I get match quality loads for pennies a shot? Even if I bill $100/hour of reloading time and only load 300 rounds/hour, I still get ammo at about the same price as factory match except I can tailor it to my needs. If ever get back to shooting any volume chances are I'd reload every round.


David

 

[HKGuns]

Its all a matter of where your priorities lie. For you its the right decision.

I earn a really good living and can afford to buy the ammo I need/want. I like to reload and find it amazing to create my own bullets that I can tune to the level of recoil I shoot best with......I've recently started shooting IDPA which will make it an even smarter move to roll my own.

 

[WayneConrad]

my job is very high stress and I find that an hour or 2 at the bench with the required "concentration" completely removes my stress.

That's just it. For me, reloading is meditation without all the chanting.

 

[armoredman]

Ditto.

 

[Jayman]

Heh, I meditate while shooting. Read Brian Enos' book, he talks about that.

 

[VonFatman]

I too enjoy reloading. I look at it as my indoor hobby. I have a progresive and make enough ammo up in a given caliber to have plenty on hand.

My time at the reloading bench is valuable to me...my wife enjoys shooting with me so we share the fruits of my hobby.

It's also such a great learning experience.

I've quit "figuring" the costs per round. I buy as smart as I can (I have a C&R FFL so I can buy at dealer cost, I take advantage of group buys with friends, I buy in bulk, I use range brass when I can, I don't shoot HOT stuff so my brass lasts a long time....etc).

My reasons are my own. Some people work on cars, or guns, or do woodworking etc...I reload.

Bob

 

[goalie]

I recently outfitted myself with a Dillon 550B for loading .223 ammo. Since I already had dies for 9mm, I bought a caliber conversion and went to town. If I buy in bulk, I will be paying about 65 bucks to load a thousand rounds of 115g FMJ round nose bullets (in brass that I already had) over 6.2 grains of Power Pistol. I shot up 350 rounds of that load to test it in my G17 yesterday, and it was much, much cleaner and accurate than WWB ever was in that gun. It also functioned flawlessly, but to be fair, other than when I used metal magazines and ruined my mag release (I had magazines dropping out during recoil...DOH!!!) my G17 has been flawless with everything else as well.

Will I ever save money? Heck no!!! Will I shoot more? Heck yeah!!!