Reloading Cost Breakdown

[billt]

For anyone who is intrested, this is a cost breakdown for the 2,350 rounds I finished loading the other day. A fellow on another forum had asked me. The brass was mixed headstamp. CCI, Remington, Winchester, Lake City, S&B, and a few others I'm forgetting. This brass was obtained from on line sources on the web. I processed it all the same. First I resized and deprimed all of it with a RCBS Small Base Sizing Die. Then I processed all of the primer pockets on my Dillon 600 Super Swage, because some of them were military with crimped primer pockets. I then trimmed all of them to uniform length on my Giraud Powered Case Trimmer. After that they went into the tumbler for several hours and received a polish with ground corn cob and Dillon Rapid Polish added to the media. The final step was to run it through my Dillon and crimp with a Lee Factory Crimp Die. They turned out very good. My total investment in this batch of .223 was:

Brass---------$20.00 total. (It was free, but I paid the shipping).

Powder-------$65.00 for 8 pounds of AA 2230C. (25.0 Gr. per load X 2,350 = 58,750 Gr. 58,750 divided by 7,000 Grains per pound = 8.39 pounds of powder total.)

Primers-------$59.38 for 2,350 primers @ $25.00 per thousand.

Bullets-------$172.21 (2,350 Winchester 55 Gr. FMJBT from Midway)

Boxes--------$52.00 for 100 boxes and trays from Midway. (Actually
$26.00 because I used only 47.)

Grand Total = $342.59




By comparison the 1,000 rounds of Remington UMC FMJ in .223 pictured above cost me $371.00 delivered from Natchez. Reloading can be extremely cost effective but you must find good scources, and buy in bulk. Here are 2 very good scources for brass, bullets, and powder.

Welcome to Bartlett Reloaders - Jeff Bartlett

www.patsreloading.com

[Sooner Shooter]

Shot a mini14 yesterday. A guy would just about have to reload if he shot that gun. I can see how it could get addictive! Thanks for all the information on reloading costs.

[mr mom]

man , thats a breakdown . but i think you payed way to much on shipping

hey bill .

mr mom

[roadie]

That's real good, around .12$ per round not including the boxes. Did you get your powder and primers locally to avoid haz mat shipping fee? I haven't seen any powder prices that good. What kind of powder was it?

[billt]

Originally Posted by roadie

I haven't seen any powder prices that good. What kind of powder was it?

The powder I loaded all 2,350 rounds with was Accurate AA 2230 C. I bought 16 pounds of it from Natchez, Natchez Shooters Supplies about 2 years ago. They had the stuff closeout priced at around $65.00 for an 8 pound jug. It's burn rate is just slightly slower than AA-2230. I wish I had bought 32 pounds as they no longer carry it. I've bought a lot of military surplus powder from Jeff over at Welcome to Bartlett Reloaders - Jeff Bartlett If you buy 6, 8 pound jugs from him, he pays the Haz-Mat fee. Pretty hard to beat. He almost always has good powder to load the .223 with. If not you can check here www.patsreloading.com also very good to deal with. They also have very good prices on once fired brass in .223, .308 and .30-06. Military powder is good stuff, and they always have cross referenced data to get you started loading it. The stuff flows through a measure like silk, without all that crunching and shearing that always happens with coarse grained stick powder. I forgot I alread had posted both of those links.

Originally Posted by mr mom

man , thats a breakdown . but i think you payed way to much on shipping. hey bill . mr mom

Hey Art, how have you been? You can see I've been busy at the bench! The stuff shoots great! Thanks again, Bill T.