Beginners Guide to Reloading Costs (most cost effective rounds you have)

[Member 5605]

Alrighty, is the thread back on track now?

 

[bbbass]

It's been so long since I bought reloading components that I'd have to price them all over again. But I recently was given a bunch of brass and boolitts, so there's that. I'm also going to have an old Lee Classic Turret given to me, so that will be 3 presses.

Of course, when buying a new press to get started, there are kits or one could buy single components. Amortizing the cost of reloading to include the press could vary immensely. But someone probably already recommended to start with a single stage press and grow from there... I'm not gonna read the entire thread to find out!

 

[P7M13]

It cracks me up when reloaders show how thin skinned they are at the mere suggestion they aren't getting rich reloading and pointing out intellectually HONEST calculations. This thread is titled,
....
Yet how dare someone like me (with an MBA and plenty of economics courses) try to suggest many of you are leaving out key variable inputs in your "costs of reloading"

All that education, and the notion put forth was lost on you. Your original post was not a suggestion -- pay attention to the words you used.
I'm not here to argue (though my actions suggest otherwise), nor threatened by your thinking - it's like arguing over which Christian faith is the "true" one.
I admit, I am irritated by your belligerence and insistence in your 'correct' thinking. But, I think that is part of your nature, as evidenced by your belittling replies when seeking moving options to Boise and respondants suggested using movers. (some folks like the simplest approach).
Your logic is flawed on the lack of recognition of the both stated and implicit fact - it's a H-O-B-B-Y.
I must say, though, I am surprised you didn't bring up time value of money in support of your argument.

 

[Mikej]

I'm also going to have an old Lee Classic Turret given to me, so that will be 3 presses.

But you only have TWO arms!

 

[No_Regerts]

The economic argument is not purely MONETARY. There's also opportunity costs.

10 hours spent reloading *might* save a reloader $500. "Wow," he thinks, look at all the money I saved this weekend reloading. That's 10 hours NOT doing something else, but sitting at a press pulling a lever or similar sedentary...

Meanwhile, this sedentary lifestyle costs him time doing XYZ which might improve his marriage, relations with kids, health, etc. So is it *really* saving money? Dunno. Reloading might be a great money saving venture for someone who cannot earn a living or would otherwise spend it smoking cigars in a casino betting on horses and losing. Or it might actually be more expensive than, say, spending time improving a marriage that might otherwise end in a $50,000 divorce and asset split. Or improving health to avoid that fated cardiac arrest at age 55 from being overweight from sitting at a reloading bench for 3 decades "saving money" pulling a lever.

That's opportunity costs.

It cracks me up when reloaders show how thin skinned they are at the mere suggestion they aren't getting rich reloading and pointing out intellectually HONEST calculations. This thread is titled, "
Beginners Guide to Reloading Costs (most cost effective rounds you have)"
Yet how dare someone like me (with an MBA and plenty of economics courses) try to suggest many of you are leaving out key variable inputs in your "costs of reloading" calculations. Then invariably, folks will come along, attack the messenger for daring to inject reality in the calculation, tell me to go away, and remind me that "it's a hobby," blah blah blah.

If it's a hobby, then fine. But don't pretend that it's all this free money growing on trees when that's a totally dishonest calculation when you refuse to calculation time and opportunity costs.

Or don't be mad when I say I got some free guns today. I just had to work to earn the money to buy them, but they were free because I enjoy my job.

I get what you're saying. I don't reload to save money, I reload to make things the way I want them. Its not a fair comparison to factory ammo because what I want isn't available unless I get it made by a custom ammo company.

I do shoot a lot more as a reloader than I did before. 257 Weatherby can be over $60 a box of 20. 7mm Remington Magnum is as much as $40 a box. I can generally make 20 rounds for $20. Less for more common and/or smaller cartridges using less powder and material per bullet.

 

[Eveskcige28]

The economic argument is not purely MONETARY. There's also opportunity costs.

10 hours spent reloading *might* save a reloader $500. "Wow," he thinks, look at all the money I saved this weekend reloading. That's 10 hours NOT doing something else, but sitting at a press pulling a lever or similar sedentary...

Meanwhile, this sedentary lifestyle costs him time doing XYZ which might improve his marriage, relations with kids, health, etc. So is it *really* saving money? Dunno. Reloading might be a great money saving venture for someone who cannot earn a living or would otherwise spend it smoking cigars in a casino betting on horses and losing. Or it might actually be more expensive than, say, spending time improving a marriage that might otherwise end in a $50,000 divorce and asset split. Or improving health to avoid that fated cardiac arrest at age 55 from being overweight from sitting at a reloading bench for 3 decades "saving money" pulling a lever.

That's opportunity costs.

It cracks me up when reloaders show how thin skinned they are at the mere suggestion they aren't getting rich reloading and pointing out intellectually HONEST calculations. This thread is titled, "
Beginners Guide to Reloading Costs (most cost effective rounds you have)"
Yet how dare someone like me (with an MBA and plenty of economics courses) try to suggest many of you are leaving out key variable inputs in your "costs of reloading" calculations. Then invariably, folks will come along, attack the messenger for daring to inject reality in the calculation, tell me to go away, and remind me that "it's a hobby," blah blah blah.

If it's a hobby, then fine. But don't pretend that it's all this free money growing on trees when that's a totally dishonest calculation when you refuse to calculation time and opportunity costs.

Or don't be mad when I say I got some free guns today. I just had to work to earn the money to buy them, but they were free because I enjoy my job.

If reloading is the sole cause of a divorce, strained relations with kids, or a reason to get fat then I wanna see their bench!

 

[P7M13]

But you only have TWO arms!

That snake of his has a tail !

 

[Certaindeaf]

Down in California you gotta get down on your knees and suck knob like they like if you don't reload. Priceless!

 

[thorborg]

Got oo heavy for me!
I'm keeping my head down while I reload some 300 savages because no way am I gonna let anyone accuse me of being dishonest!
intellectually or otherwise.
In order not to distress anyone, the reason I reload will be a secret I'll take to my grave.
As an aside;
My hearing is easily distorted. Tooting ones own horn comes off as noise keeping me from hearing the point.
(Unless you're filling out a resume)

 

[tac]

My name is tac and I'm a reloader.

I reload -

2 different .308Win.

2 different 7x57 Mauser.

3 different .45-70 Govt.

2 different .357 Magnum

1 x 6.5x55 Swedish

2 different 7.5x55 Swiss

I cast .457 ball, .577 Minie and .600 Snider.

I have two presses - my forty-y/o Rockchucker and a thirty-y/o Lee turret. The first is used for everything except the Snider. The second is used just for the .357 Magnum.

Given the cost of stuff over here, I don't suppose I'm actually saving much, except in the rarer stuff, like the .45-70 Govt and Snider. The first is merely costy, the second is totally unobtainable, and MUST be handmade. But trust me here, you get all your equipment for peanuts, especially ANYTHING made in the USA, like most reloading stuff actually is.

Fact - a box of 100 Hornady 168gr BTHP is around $50 here, and any US-made powder virtually double your usual price. The US price for Vihtavuori powder is an amazing 75& of what WE pay, and with the recent EU ban on certain US-made propellants Europe-wide, we are having to buy costy French or Swiss stuff when we don't buy Finnish.

The only centrefire calibre I'm sure of getting a whole lot cheaper is the .357 Magnum, using 158gr hardcast instead of FMJ - they work out at around 26% of the cost of factory ammunition.

I enjoy it as an adjunct to my sport and pastime, and TBH, if I had to buy factory stuff, I'd be broke in a New York minute.

 

[Legion489]

I was going to say that the common/cheap ammo will not save you a dime if you buy top of the line reloading presses and dies, plus components, powder, primers, bullets, etc. Even the "free" cast bullets need moulds, dipper, lead pot, electricity or some sort of fire to melt, lube, and often a sizer die. Unless someone is bringing you the lead for free, and you are not going out and scrounging it, which involves paying for gas, and time to look for it, or just buying it, either from the local tire store or foundry, and you melt it all down over a fire - no electricity, but someone has to cut and split all that wood, and pour it into ingots, - another expense for the ingot mould! - and stack it and store it, it still requires your time and labor, (which might or might be "free") and amortize the costs over how many thousands of rounds you load. (How was that for a run on sentence!) You could load a million 9mm Luger rounds and the it would not be a break even for you money wise.

Look at Mike Ventrino, he keeps talking about his "free" cast bullets, with his $10,000 worth of bullet moulds (What? Only $9,734 worth of moulds? WHATEVER!), thousands of dollars worth of lead furnaces, thousands of dollars worth of bullet sizing machines and inserts, special cast bullet expanding/crimping dies, etc. Of course it is a hobby for him and he enjoys melting down the lead (which he now buys in bulk from a foundry to his specs. I still can't figure out how buying lead from the foundry is "free", but he keeps telling me the cast bullets are "free", so he knows something I don't). firing up the electric (which, of course, the electricity is free!) furnaces, and pouring his own bullets and lubing them with his own brand of lube (which he and a pardoner invented and sell so it is "free") so of course HIS bullets are free!

If you reload for odd ball/unavailable/proprietary rounds (OK, odd ball), or other stuff that you can't just buy off the shelf and can't really order either (well you CAN order a lot of it, just wait for a year, or two, or three, or longer, for the next run of brass to be made so they can load it and pay through the nose per round), yes reloading CAN pay for itself. If your time and labor is free.

As a hobby it doesn't matter how much you spend, if you are happy, home at night, your wife is happy,, the kids are happy and home at night, it's worth it. It will never "pay" for my hobby of loading my own ammo to shoot, but I enjoy it, "save a few bucks" over store bought and am happy. That in itself is worth quite a bit to me.

 

[tac]

Quote - As a hobby it doesn't matter how much you spend, if you are happy, home at night, your wife is happy,, the kids are happy and home at night, it's worth it. It will never "pay" for my hobby of loading my own ammo to shoot, but I enjoy it, "save a few bucks" over store bought and am happy. That in itself is worth quite a bit to me. '

Nailed it.

 

[Certaindeaf]

Jerry Miculek is sponsored by and gets "free" ammo from ammo companies.. yet he still casts and loads for 9mm etc. using his old gang molds and a cement mixer to clean the brass.

 

[leadcounsel]

All that education, and the notion put forth was lost on you. Your original post was not a suggestion -- pay attention to the words you used.
I'm not here to argue (though my actions suggest otherwise), nor threatened by your thinking - it's like arguing over which Christian faith is the "true" one.
I admit, I am irritated by your belligerence and insistence in your 'correct' thinking. But, I think that is part of your nature, as evidenced by your belittling replies when seeking moving options to Boise and respondants suggested using movers. (some folks like the simplest approach).
Your logic is flawed on the lack of recognition of the both stated and implicit fact - it's a H-O-B-B-Y.
I must say, though, I am surprised you didn't bring up time value of money in support of your argument.

Sorry, but you can't make an ECONOMIC argument, leave out critical variables, and then when pointed out you're wrong, fall back on moving the goal posts and claim "oh, it's a hobby."

If the title of the thread was "let's talk about our hobby of reloading," you sir might be correct. Maybe you're in the wrong thread. THIS thread is about the ECONOMICS of reloading. Not how much you enjoy your hobby. You plainly don't get it. That's not 'condescending.' That's just reality of THIS discussion. TIME is a critical variable in ECONOMICS. Concepts like "time value of money," and "opportunity costs," and so forth are real fixed or variable inputs. You cannot get the answer if you leave out inputs. ___ + 4 = ??? You cannot get the correct answer without the "blank" filled in.

As for the moving thread, you again don't know what you're talking about. THAT thread - people kept wanting to change the equation. Turns out I was using movers to do part of the move. THAT wasn't the question so I dismissed those answers to focus on what I needed to personally move and how to best do it (and I did take the advice of many and rented a moving box truck afterall, so I do take sound advice after thoroughly weighing options).

If you feel facts and accurate information are "condescending," then my apologies. But reality can be hard for some folks.

 

[leadcounsel]

Each of you making the following or similar statements is making an ECONOMIC argument and leaving out the "time" variable input, so every time you repeat it you are being intellectually dishonest.

"I can make a box of XYZ for 1/2 what the store sells it...". That is a lie, unless your time has absolutely no economic value, and you have nothing else to do and no other better opportunity costs. In that same hour, you could go to the gym, and improve your health which might add years to your life on a recurring basis.

So, again, try to learn something about economics. If it makes you feel better thinking you saved $10 during that hour, then so be it. But you aren't being honest.

 

[leadcounsel]

I'm not trying to start a fight, or offend folks. And I'm genuinely sorry to burst some of your bubbles that your math is wrong. I'm simply attempting to dispel oft repeated myths of the reloader who is making all this ammo for 1/2 price or whatever because it's just not so if one is being honest and including real input costs (equipment, space costs, time, etc.) with real honest figures.

 

[P7M13]

then when pointed out you're wrong, fall back on moving the goal posts

You plainly don't get it.
...
you again don't know what you're talking about.
...
so I dismissed those answers
...
That is a lie,
...
try to learn something
...
you aren't being honest.
...
your math is wrong.

Buwhawhawha !! That was too easy!!

 

[Camelfilter]

I'm not trying to start a fight, or offend folks...

Yes you are.

And I'm genuinely sorry to burst some of your bubbles that your math is wrong...

No, your not.

...I'm simply attempting to dispel oft repeated myths of the reloader who is making all this ammo for 1/2 price or whatever because it's just not so if one is being honest and including real input costs (equipment, space costs, time, etc.) with real honest figures.

Your assuming folks whom are intelligent enough to skillfully reload, are not intelligent enough to calculate the costs of doing so. That's kind of silly.

As an attorney, you enjoy arguing, that's your chosen career.

 

[Kruel J]

Why does this thread all of a sudden remind me of this (yet I'm not sure who's who! )

NSFW

 

[CountryGent]

Why does this thread all of a sudden remind me of this (yet I'm not sure who's who! )

NSFW

LOL!