After many tens of thousands of .38spl and ..45acp/.45AR starting in 1968 on a few Star Machines plus a small amount of .45 Colt I've just loaded my 1st box of 50 .44spl

My machine now is a Lee Classic 4 hole Turret Press fitted with a Lee 44 cal 4 die set,Lee Pro Auto Disk Powder Measure with Riser and a Lee Safety Prime.

With this setup I can view the primer correctly positioned plus I can see inside the cases after each powder drop.

The loaded 50 rounds are made half with the 4.0gr starting load of Trail Boss powder and the other half(25) made with 4.4gr of Trail Boss.The OAL is 1.455 with heavy crimp in bullet crimp groove.

The primers are S&B LP and the bullets are 240gr LSWC from Xtreme Bullets.... with estimated cost for the box of 50 at $7.12

Do you make your 44 Special reloads cheaper than this?

Trail Boss = $110/5lb
Bullets = $54/500
Primers = $23/1000

EDIT:these loads will be fired from a 4" Model 21-4

Attached Images

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NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUN

Summers Enterprises bullets are only $35/500. Good quality too.

That's a very good price especially if you buy 4 boxes where the shipping is the flat rate of $14 which would make each box of 500 $38.50

That's $0.077 each bullet

Thanks for the info.

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NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUN

With taxes, my Unique comes out to around the same cost per pound, you've gotten me beaten on primers hands down, but after harvesting my rubber mulch "ore" out of my shooting barrel and casting 80 pounds of clean ingots yesterday, my bullets only cost me a tiny bit in home made lube, a little bit of propane, and a lot of time. You've got a good price and a good setup, but I think some of us can come in with a finished round at the same price for your bullet alone.

Interesting post, good to see high quality cast bullets coming down in price, if I end up busy and making money it might be worth it to buy more bullets than cast with the way the market is going.

I make .44 Magnum with a little over 11 grains of Unique and locally-bought (read: over $30 a brick) primers for $7.75/box. I use Missouri Bullets' lead 240-gr SWCs. If I used your primer price, they'd come out exactly the same.

You'd knock off ~20 cents a box just switching to a less-expensive powder.

Honestly, though, unless you bought stupidly expensive components (big-name bullets), there's not a lot of price variation. Even spending another $10/500 for really good bullets only drives up the price 2 cents a box.

I just looked at casting my own sinkers for bass fishing. I do a ton of drop-shotting, almost always with the same weight. With a drop-shot rig, if you snag and have to break it off, you almost always lose just the sinker, or the sinker and all the line below the hook.

Turns out that it would take between 145 and 256 sinkers before I broke even. Or 4-8 years. And forget it, I can't even buy lead as cheap as I can buy sinkers. As an absurd example, it's cheaper to purchase cast bullets and melt them down, than buying lead from Midway!

Yes, actually by quite a bit. You may call it unfair, but I still have thousands of primers I paid $75.00/Sleeve for and thousands of Lead Bullets I paid $15/500 for. It makes for some economical loads.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with what you're doing, just a sign of the times. Prices have gone up since I laid in supplies in large quantities in the 80's and 90's.

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Dave Brown
SWCA #3279

I mold my own 44 LWC,have several hundred LB of # II alloy, so that cost is low and 5 gr of Unique with primers I have had laying around comes out to about $0.28 a round....
My time is nothing as I am retired and need to keep busy or become a couch potato....

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Only difference Fool/Mule-ears

Bought components only please>bullets,powder and primers that can be purchased again.

I did not use the 1200 primers I bought at a show for $1.00/100 or the powder a friend gave me when he stopped reloading.

Titegroup is the cheapest powder I can buy locally with no hazmat.

My next order for bullets will be from summersenterprisesllc that should bring my per 50 price lower.

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NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUN

I cast also so it would be hard for me to put a price on bullets. The last primers I bought were $30/1000 so you beat me there. I just bought 8 pounds of Unique at about $22/lb. My brass was a mix of what I already had, and some that I bought but it was not that bad. Maybe $15/100? or so but when you add that in to what I already had it dilutes the price.

Even though I cast and I enjoy it, I don't mind buying bullets when they are cheap enough so I am going to check out your source.

I will say also that it's not just the dollar aspect that I look at, I reload so I can stick with the load I like. That's worth it to me, not having to deal with factory ammo. It's still cheaper though, by a good bit.

I don't call that unfair, I call it luckier than me

Well even figuring lead replacement costs @ $1 lb, Red Dot @ $145 8 lbs and primers @ $128 per 5,000. that is $0.12 per round rounding up or $6 per 50. My actuals for existing lead @ $.25 lb bring it down but tooling raises it.

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Front sight and squeeze

Is this some kind of competition? What's the prize? Why not ask, "What's the cheapest bullet I can buy?". Powder is a penny a round, primer is two cents.

In either case, if you want to shoot cheap, keep loading the .38 Spl.

I load for accuracy and consistency.
Never thought about going as cheap as possible.
But then again, I don't care to lose matches either.
To each their own.

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-jwk-
US Army '72-'95

Relax, everything is a trade off.

Look at it this way the op saved 1/10 cent a round on that light powder charges.

But had to spend $400 for the tripod and another $35 for the surplus manual on how to shoot mortors to be able to try to hit what he's aiming at. When he switches from 50ft to 50yds with them 500fps 240gr projectiles it'll take everything that solar powered calculator can come up with and a call to NASA to get on target.

I do a little better than $7.12 a box
2.2 cents for a LP primer ($22 per 1000)
1 cent for 4.2gr AA#2 ($16 per pound in 5 pound jug)
7.7 cents for a Summers Enterprises 240gr LSWC
10.9 cents per round or $5.45 a box of 50
All supplies bought in the last 12 months

That's an excellent AA#2 powder price that my supplier can't match.The best powder price I can get is Titegroup for $14/lb OTD in a group buy..

'Yesterday I shot the 50 I loaded with the Trail Boss and the 25 loaded with 4.4gr had slightly better 50' indoor range groups than the 25 loaded with 4.0gr.'

A few reloaders in my club use Titegroup for everything they load and asked if I want in on their next bulk buy.

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NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUN

I think it is more of a "here's what I'm paying for components - doe anyone know where I can get a better deal?" kind of a post.

And I DO load the 38 special - but I load the 44 special too.

The purpose of the post was to share 44spl loading info and the sourcing the components.

I learned about summersenterprises for the bullets so I'm a winner.

Reloading to me is about the fun doing it,the cost on ammo savings,retirement time usage and the joy of seeing what my reloads will do.Oh,the exercise is good for my 74 year old body that's still in fairly good shape.

Casting bullets without a free source of lead,no thanks.

I did it years ago for most of my 45s using free lead but still bought my 38s

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NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUN