Cost of reloading.

Every so often we get a question on this board about the cost of reloading. I happen to be rworking up 500 .223 cartridges tonight, all with components purchased fairly recently. Here’s a current cost using up to date prices:

– Bullets (50 grain Hornady Z Max) – $73 in a box of 500 – $0.146 each.
– Powder (27 gr Varget) – $29.99 per pound. Yes, the days of $22/lb powder are officially dead and gone. – $0.12 per load
– Primers (Winchester 6.5 small rifle) – $33.50/1000 or $.0335 each.

So total it up and round up to include the tax on components and we get about $0.28 each or about $5.60 per box of 20 for a pretty preimum .223 varmint and target load.

Currently, my costs are probably even a little higher for powder. The massive component shortage has forced me to mail order powder, so there are shipping costs and hazmat fees that I’m not including. Normally, I would be buying locally, so this wouldn’t be a factor.

I actually buy my primers in lots of 10,000 so the cost above is a little high. I used the per 1000 price because I thought it would be more typical of how most reloaders would buy.

If you’d like to work out your own powder cost, there are 7000 grains (the weight measure) of powder in each pound.

I haven’t included the cost of the brass in the calculation above. I get between 5 and 6 loadings per case for the .223, so that adds about 2 cents per load if you have to buy it at a common price today. Personally, I’ve been lucky and had some higher volume varmint and 3 gun shooters who don’t reload give me buckets and buckets of brass for free. Bonus!

Back to the bench.

Grouse

Good info – In addition to the costs above, I figure about another $.04/round, regardless of caliber, to cover incidentals like primer pocket brush, nylon brushes, case lube, cleaning media and so on. These items go a long ways and its hard to calculate an exact cost / on them. For the guy that may only do 100 rounds per year, these costs may be a bit higher and obviously much lower for the guy that is doing 5,000 plus rounds a year

Center fire ammo is too expensive to shoot in volume if not reloading. At $25 per box of 50 for factory handgun ammo I would not shoot nearly as much. Casting my own projectiles has really lowered the cost for me. I am doing .45 ACP for under a dime a round. Of course once my current supplies run out my cost is certain to rise. For whatever reason shot shell reloading does not have the same savings. And where I and others enjoy our time at the bench others are too bored to continue.

Absolutely right, Randy. There’s the cost of equipment and consumables on top of the quoted price.

It’s difficult to account for these, what I’ve suggested in the past is that people looking at getting started in reloading look at the cost of equipment over a 10 year span. Then break it down as a cost per round for everything loaded over that span. That tends to give a very good indicator of the cost benefit (if there is one) for that shooter’s volume.

There are always hacks out there too, most of these depend on if you do the voume to justify the hassle. I have replaced $9.99 per small can spray on case lube (a marvelous invention, btw, compared to the sticky oil pad lube) with home-made lanolin-alcohol lube that costs about $5 per gallon.

Don Miller wrote:

Of course once my current supplies run out my cost is certain to rise.

Yes, that was my main motivator for doing a detailed cost breakdown: the rising cost of components.

I have 1 pound powder containers that wear price tags–that fact in itself an indicator of how old they are–that read $17.99 to $21.99. It hasn’t been that way for quite a while. I also have 100 count boxes of bullets that are priced at half or less of the going rate.

Grouse