Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas15
If you like to shoot your firearms then handload.
If you are so broke that purchasing $50.00 worth of ammo 3 or 4 times a year is a financial hardship, handloading is not for you. I don't mean to be a jerk, but as a few other posters have stated, just asking the question "if handloading would sense" means to me that it doesn't.
As far as getting pleasure out of the activity, handloading is not for everyone and there is nothing romantic about it. The common "wisdom" among shooters that reloading ammo saves a ton of money is simply not true. But if you want to enjoy handloading as a hobby the best way to ensure that you do is to gather good tools right from the start. As with everything, you get what you pay for.
I have said it many times, some will argue that I'm wrong, but to get started in this endeavor you will need at a minimum an investment of $500.00 however $1,000.00 is not out of the question.
Someone will respond to this with a detailed post giving prices at the $250.00 level or proclaim buy used but when you add up all of the things needed to put together a reloading bench even $500.00 is really not enough. It is of course true that you can buy such and such *ee kit for $150.00 but that is not everything you need, probably most of what is in the kit is not what you want and 2 months into the hobby you will have spent more money on common hardware (nuts and bolts and lighting and storage) for your bench than the cost of that kit.
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For .38 special alone: $130 for 1000 rounds vs $400 factory. $270 saved for every thousand. So 4000 rounds later at $1000 spent (and I surely didn’t spend that much) and you’re even.
If you shoot 1000 rounds a year (light shooter) for 4 years you’re even. And every year after that you’re way ahead.
For 9MM: $130 per thousand of your reloads vs $190 for factory. That’s now. Today. After Newtown, 9MM practice ammo nearly doubled. I remember $18 a box of 50 at Walmart. So $360 factory vs $130 for reloads. And waiting in line hoping they even had it. Then losing it because the guy in front of you had his 5 family member with him and they bought all 15.
Reloading does save you. No law saying you HAVE to shoot more. Some do. I shoot more. But not twice the amount more.
Buy 8 pounds of your powder and you can load 16,000 .38 special. Pick up a brick of primers here and there and bullets too. You’re immune from whatever comes next. And that’s the biggest reason to reload.