Yeah, i’m figuring the going rate for factory ammo is $0.45 a bullet and I calculated reloading at $0.15 a bullet with out buying brass. If I can reload for 15-20 cents a bullet i’ll be happy.
New ammo can be found for closer to $.35 per round if you look hard.
But even if you factor in $0.10 per round for your own labor (gathering, prepping, and loading the free brass) and other misc. costs, you’re still in good shape over the long haul.
And you can always deduct the $0.10 per piece of brass you get when calculating the price to buy a few hundred New rounds of Priv or something. In other words, by reloading, you are effectively reducing the cost of new ammo you buy do to the value of the brass you keep from new ammo.
It’s just that lovely.
Hello all, the Gentleman was right by not removing the case lube the cases when fired will scorch the chamber. You cant see it with a few hundred rounds fired. But if you were to magnifi the chamber at 10x you would see where it starts to erode the chamber diameter and changing the head spacing. Also many tight chambers will experience extraction problems, etc…
What book have you been reading?!!! I have the Lyman 11th edition circa1972. along with about ten other reloading books and on page 7 it tells about powers and property’s. 1 lb. of modern ballistic power not black power has 7000 gr.s per pound. That being ball, flake or extruded. Also I hope that you are loading in grains not grams.Please don’t take this as a smartass answer.So by my math figures you should get about 280 rounds per. pound. Thats at 25 gr.s a round.
I do not have a loader yet and was just doing some research. The problem was i didn’t know exactly what the acronym gr really was. I was thinking it was grams. So I started doing some calculations and trying to make sure I really want to reload. A week prior I didn’t hardly know anything about reloading and wouldn’t care because .40 s&w and 9mm are pretty cheap. But now with the .233 rem prices, It makes it more attractive.
Wes,I have reloaded my own bullets for all that i shoot for over 35 years now.I have a lot of tips and reloading experience on proven loads with many powders that nobody uses anymore. like getting 500 rds. from a single pound of powder for 5.56mm. leave me your e mail address and I will be glad to pass along the info and what it takes to build a better bullet than you can buy at half the cost. patriot.
That’s 14 grains per round. Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical. 
I know some people load for subsonic silencer fire, but I’ve never warmed up to low volume rifle loads due to the warnings posted on silencertalk.
Yes, I thought the same thing too. An old wildcatter told me about this years ago, although this load was for a bolt gun. I experimented w/ it in my old XM177E2 its worn out, so I wouldn’t try this in a new gun mainly because of the tightness. In other words needs to be loose it to cycle. Here we go,as I said I played with it until I got it to cycle by starting out cutting the buffer spring down 13 coils.( removed that is ) Seven to start with then one at a time, test firing it each coil removed until the rifle cycled with no problems. This rifle has seen about 5,000 rounds of this load and no malfunction, this is a auto carrier with a std. buffer and std. spring although now this is the third spring due to ware and compression. I know what your thinking B/S right, the recoil is about 1/3 of factory ammo.NOW the moment you’ve all been waiting for. HERCULES /ALLI ANT, 2400… 13.4 gr. starting and 14.0 gr.max… using small rifle primers and 55 gr. bullets W/ Can.or non cannalure. From a16 in. bbl. I get about 2600 fps. . Good enough for 1.5 in. groups of three at 100 yds. with irons. patriot 
O yea, if you try this be sure you put the std. buffer spring back in to shoot factory loads. :eek:
Interesting. You sure save a lot of powder.
But I kinda have a thing about my loads being at least standard .223 velocity. Not that anyone else has to do things my way. But I like to have my ammo worthy of use for defensive purposes in a pinch. Not that I don’t have separate defensive ammo, but if for some wild reason I had to use my practice ammo… I could.
The small group of Sunday shooters I run with use to pick a couple of us to drive up to Tennessee a couple of times a year, well before the cost of reloading components jumped 48% in price, anyway we would buy 4 /8 lb. kegs ea. of mixed powers, at a real good price. Because of the volume that we bought. Once we bought 30 /8 lb. kegs. Which filled the back of a full size ford van. Boy the ICC and the BAFT would have had a field day 
The down loaded ammo is strictly for p liking. I have give or take a few hundred about 10,000 mixed M193, M855, some SS-109 for “Home Defense”. So what I reload is just for fun. By the way what else has an old retired Lifer got to do with his time. Shoot, fish and fly.
Hey thanks, for the interest in what CRAP an old man has piled up in his head that might be of some use to you young people. Patriot.
I bet the brass lasts a lot longer too.
I’d love to see that pickup full of powder. I could use it to show my wife how much restraint I have by buying only 2 8-lbs powder kegs.
Can you elaborate a bit about these warnings? I don’t know anything about it other than subsonic rounds are quieter without the crack.
Low volume ratio loads can detonate… kaboom.
I can’t say I fully understand why… I think it has to do with the primer not immediatly igniting the powder charge. There’s a slight delay in ignition and then a pipe b0mb effect.
At the top of the hand loading forum on silencertalk they warn about it specifically, and advise to load at your own risk.
So kind of like a full liquid fuel tank won’t explode, but a nearly empty one will?
Not really. Gas fumes can ignite in that scenario. I think it screws up the pressure curve or something. I’m just guessing at this point. 
NP I was just trying to visualize.
That particular time I think we were buying for 10 people, I ah told my buddy to make sure he didn’t forget and fire up one of those nasty cigarettes.:eek: And it was an FORD ECONELINE F-350 van. I checked my records and found the receipt for that load ( it’s a bad habit of mine ) I don’t through any receipts away. And we paid $46.71 per keg. But now that was march 23, 1981. I was stationed at FT. BRAGG, NC. The Provost Marchall was a good friend of mine and he said ( I DID NOT SEE A THING! ). When we told him where we were going and what for, base housing you know . They made us lock up our personal weapons at the armory.
but we could have and load ammo on post. NO, I didn’t ask why,ether.
At 14gr. in a5.56 mm case its about 60% full. Hercules 2400 is a shot shell and pistol powder. And it has a fair amount of volume, if I’m wording it right.:o
Another good point. Powder volumes are unique to powders.
When I switch from one powder to another on my 550, the same volume is a different weight.
Secondary Explosion Effect, or SEE.
Powder doesn’t ignite fully at primer detonation time. Bullet releases but pressure curve doesn’t build correctly, and bullet actually slows down when it hits the leade. At this same time the fire fully lights and pressure builds rapidly.
In a normal load the pressure builds evenly and the bullet accelerates as it goes down the bore. With SEE you have the bullet slowing while the fire re-ignites and the burn outpaces the bullet’s movement. Bad juju.