Dear Og I love reloading!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve been reloading for my Kimber Custom II .45 ACP for over a year now, and it’s made the .45 almost as cheap to shoot as my .22 rimfires

.22 is around 3¢ per round or less, but it has to be bought commercially, it can’t be handloaded

commercial .45ACP generally runs $30 per 100 rounds, approx. .30¢ per round
my 45 ACP reloads* run $12.40 per 100 rounds, approx .12¢ per round

I just picked up a Lee Loader in .30-06, a little neck-size reloading die system, and I just figured out the costs for my '06 reloads

commercial .30-06 is generally $20-25 per 20 rounds, roughly $1 per round
my .30-06 reloads** run .42¢ per round, $8.40 for 20 rounds, 50 rounds for $21

Finally, my .30-06 is affordable to shoot now :slight_smile:
*.45ACP load; 5 grains of Win231 under a 200 grain lead semi-wadcutter bullet
**.30-06 load; 52.8 grains of Hodgdon 4381SC under a 160 grain jacketed soft point bullet

2

I’ve always wondered, what makes reloading so much cheaper than buying factory ammo, or having some sort of business that reloads ammo? Most things like that are more economical done in a factory rather than some guy’s basement. The only part you’re re-using is the brass, after all. Is it the logistics of transporting everything? Or, is it that factories can’t reload brass due to liability concerns?

3

I’m guessing it’s the cost of the components (brass, lead, copper, primers, propellant), plus the cost of the labor (or machinery to load the shells), the cost of designing a retail box, the packaging, and finally, the transportation and shipping costs as well as the hazmat certifications

when you reload, you don’t have to extrude new brass cases, you reload your empties, there’s a savings there, you don’t have to create fancy retail packaging and eye-catching boxes, and you don’t have to ship the completed ammo from some far-off location to you, when you reload, you’re simply replacing the consumable parts of the metallic cartridge, the primer, propellant, and bullet

plus, you’re recycling, reloading is better for the environment (better, not good, you’re still shooting lead projectiles and primers have lead styphanate as a by-product of the combustion process), but you’re not throwing away a perfectly usable brass case

plus, when you reload, you can custom-tailor rounds for your specific needs, I build super-accurate, low-recoil target rounds, my .45 reloads have less felt recoil than commercial 9mm cartridges, and I’m planning on loading the same type of cartridge for the '06, a light, accurate target load

4

Ah. Time to bring out Joe Bethancourt.

5

There are commercial business that specialize in reloads or re-manufactured ammunition. I buy several thousand rounds a year from Atlanta Arms. But I reload as well. I currently load .40 S&W, but save my .223. 9mm, and .45 brass for future use.

6

Ohhhh…Ok, this makes more sense than my first thought.

“A thread about hitting F5? The hell?”

7

I’m right there with you, Hal.

8

I know basically nothing about reloading your own ammo (although i have seen it done once or twice), but like many other areas of DIY, whether or not it’s worth doing comes down to an individual evaluation of how valuable your time is.

If you have plenty of time on your hands, and money is a bit tight, then reloading (or any other DIY) makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, if you’re not really struggling for money, but you have a busy life and time is at a premium, then DIY might not seem worth the effort.

Takes the OP’s case. By his own figures, reloading his .45 saves him $17.60 per 100 rounds. My next question would be: how long does it take to reload 100 rounds?

Of course, there’s also the fairly intangible “satisfaction factor” that you get from doing something yourself. Maybe the very act of doing the reloading is enjoyable, and the OP would do it anyway. I can think of some things where this might be the case for me, and other things where i’d just as soon have someone do it for me.

9

Me too. I read the thread title and saw the OP’s name and thought “restore”, not “reload”, and expected a tale of a successful reload of a Macintosh hard drive from backup.

10

If I mailed you some silver, could you crank me out some .45 rounds? I’m anticipating a serious werewolf problem in the not-too-distant-future.

11

My dad has been reloading since before I was alive. I have very fond memories of hanging out in the basement with him when he was reloading. It was nice because it didn’t require much conversation. Occasionally he’d point out something neat to me like brass halfway through being polished or explain how he’d use Cream of Wheat as filler and talk about the physics behind a bullet. Mostly we were just quiet together. A lot of times he’d let me help pull the lever on the press, which was kind of cool.

So, moral of the story, despite the fact that I don’t think I’ve shot a gun since I was ten or eleven, I love reloading too!

12

If you’re taking orders, I’d like some of those nitro tipped ones that Chief Brodie used. 45 or 9mm, I’d like to do some shark fishing. :smiley:

I’ve seen reloading gear for handguns and rifles, can you load your own shotgun shells as well?

13

Mr. Salinqmind spent literally years of his life reloading bullets for his annual hunting trip. He is seriously OCD, though. Well, at least I always knew where he was every night - up there, reloading.
A bit hard to explain what he did with his free time to people, though, or why.

14

You can reload shotgun shells. I don’t, but you can.

You know Hinkley used explosive ammo when he shot President Reagan? Didn’t go off, thankfully.

15

Well, I haven’t reached the “cast my own bullets” stage yet, so I wouldn’t be able to cast you some Silver Bullets, why not try throwing cans of Coors Light at the errant Lycanthropes, after all, it’s the only thing it’s good for anyway

however, this does bring up some questions, RE; monsters and firearms…

Would Anti-Werecreature ammo work better with some Wolfsbane added to the silver?
Would Anti-Vampire (REAL vamps, not sparklepires) ammunition work better if it was a Garlic oil impregnated wooden bullet, perhaps with a silver tip, core, or even sealed hollow silver resivoir containing a small amount of Holy Water?
Zombies are easy to put down, a simple headshot to destroy the brain, but other monsters, those are more difficult, how would you stop a Wight, a Chupacabra, and don’t even bring up Ghosts, we just don’t have viable Proton Pack technology yet…

16

I am informed silver bullets tend to tumble. Wooden bullets would have a horrible ballistic rating as well. I’m not sure they’d even work on vampires, as you traditionally have to transfix the heart, not penetrate it. After all, when you take the stake out, they come back…
I’d just use blessed lead from the roof of a church.

17

Well, I just got back from the range after testing my first 5 .30-06 reloads…

They performed flawlessly :smiley: I’m using 58.4 grains of Reloder19 under a Hornady 165Gr JSP, OAL set to 3.202

I’ll definitely need to re-sight-in my scope, as it had been sighted in for Federal Fusion 170Gr commercial loads at 50 yards, the only open bench was the 100 yard bench, so I adjusted my POA, and pulled the trigger

every time the gun went BANG, the recoil had gotten softer, and had changed from an quick, sharp jab to the shoulder to a hard shove, it felt closer to the recoil impulse of my .45ACP pistol, a far more pleasant recoil

there were no signs of over or underpressure on the brass or fired primers, this seems to be a safe reload recipie, plus, the reloads shot absolutely clean, the barrel was nice and shiny, no unburned powder remnants, no copper fouling

the case length of a once-fired brass (not reloaded yet) measures 2.486, one of my fired reloads (a total of two firings on it) measures 2.488

These reloads definitely make shooting the '06 far more pleasant :slight_smile:

I was talking with some of the guys at the range, there were at least two reloaders there, one who reloads for his .280 NEF single-shot (damn accurate gun, that), we got to talking about reloading and in particular, compressed charges, I remarked how I think compressed charges are dangerous (from the novice reloader view) but he remarked that they are actually a tad safer, mainly due to the lack of air space or room for powder to shift around, the example he used was going hunting, and you see a deer at the bottom of a hill, with a standard charge, when you tilt the gun down to sight in the deer, the powder has room to move towards the bullet, away from the primer, making ignition a tad more difficult, he also remarked how powder is supposed to burn from the primer forwards, like a “fuse”, if you have air space in a rifle cartridge, the powder can theoretically burn from the top down, causing a “flashover” inside the cartridge

this seems to make sense, having as little air space in the cartridge as possible should insure a consistent, reliable burn

Time to load up some more rounds, take a trip back to the range tomorrow, and sight in the rifle with my handloads

Dear Og I love reloading! :smiley:

18

I know that one of the things that really appealed to me as a machinist was seeing something being refurbished … going from corroded, crudded up and scungy to clean, repaired and ready to be sued again … very creative rather than destructive =)

19

Silver also seems to be unduly hard on rifling (it’s harder than lead or copper), so I think the best Anti-Lycanthrope rounds would either be a silver-core round with a thin lead jacket (to engage the rifling) or a pure silver bullet in a plastic sabot (similar to the Remington X-Elerator cartridges that have a saboted .223/5.56 projectile in a .30-06 cartridge

good point about having to stake a vampire, most likely a rifle projectile would pass clean through the vampire, and allow them to heal, once again I could see a custom-made bullet as the solution here, a lead core (for decent ballistic performance surrounded by a frangible (perhaps even blessed, or at least soaked in Holy Water) wood jacket designed to splinter, tumble, and fragment on impact, bullet enters vampire, wood jacket splits and breaks up, each sliver of wood taking a random path through the vampire’s body, each piece of wood shrapnel creating it’s own wound track, aim for center-mass and some fragments should transfix the heart

Here are some ballistics gel bullet tests (BG simulates soft tissue only, FBI standards require at least 12" of penetration to be considered “effective” at stopping threats

.223; Bullet perforated entire 15.3" of gelatin and ~ 0.25" into loosely packed sandbag. .223/5.56 is the round used in the U.S. M-16 series rifles

7.62x39; Penetrated 16.3" of ballistic gelatin and ~ 5" of polyester fiber. Jacket was shed at 7.3" penetration. 7.62x39 is used in the Soviet AK-47 series rifles

.308 Winchester; The bullet penetrated the entire block and established a temporary cavity of 5.0 ± 0.031" at its maximum diameter. The shot flipped the gelatin block ~ 180 degrees and 1 foot laterally off of the test stand. the .308 is used in current U.S. military sniper rifles, and is basically a slightly shortened .30-06 with a tad less velocity

of the three above cartridges, the .223 would be best for close-in suppression of Sanguinophagic lifeforms, due to it’s light recoil, 7.62x39 would be better at medium ranges, or for exceptionally solidly built vamps, but due to the harder recoil, would not be as easy to keep on target, especially close in, and the .308 would best be used for distance sniping of vamps, as it has a stout recoil and loud muzzleblast, follow up shot delay is the longest of the three

however, due to it’s massive energy dump, the .308 would not likely need that follow-up shot, the best compromise round of the three would be the 7.62x39, it fires a .30 caliber bullet, not a stretched .22 like the M-16, and it has less recoil than the .308, the .223’s main advantages are it’s accuracy and lack of recoil, the .223 is outclassed in kinetic energy dump though