There’s not a lot of things I consider myself an expert on. But, one thing I genuinely do think of myself as an expert on is reloading ammunition. I’ve done it all from .22 Hornet to .50-140, using every brand of press, jacketed and lead bullets, cast my own bullets, reformed my own brass, etc, etc.

I am also a tightwad with a streak of money nerd. Is reloading cost effective? Well, when you reload the cost of your ammo goes down so you wind up shooting more…so, in that regard it’s mostly a wash. But, on terms of shooting the same amount of ammo, it’s a different story. What I mean is, if you buy a box of .300 Win. Mag and then you reload that box of .300 Win. Mag. one is going to be a buttload cheaper than the other. Cheap enough to make it worth it? Let’s find out.

Let’s go with one of the belted mags……300 Win, 7mm Rem, .338 Win, .257 Weatherby….whatever. They all track around $2-$4 a round. Let’s buy 20 pieces of new brass, 100 premium bullets, a brick of primers, and a pound of powder.

I’m just gonna run over to GunBroker and get some prices….

• Federal .300 Win Mag 165 gr. Nosler Partition, 20 rounds for about $40
• Nosler Partitions, .30 165 gr, 100 bullets is about $45
• New brass from Winchester is about $30/50
• And we’ll use a load of 70 grains of IMR 4350 (There are 7000 grains of powder per pound, so under “Qty” one pound would be ‘7000’)

Factory ammo is $2. We can reload it for $1.39. But, once we fire it off and re-use the brass our cost per round drops to $0.79.

What if you reload something really spendy like .338 Lapua.

• Federal Premium 250 gr. Sierra MK 20 rounds for about $90
• Hornady brass at $3 each
• Sierra 250 MK at $40/50
• 76 grains of powder

Factory ammo is $4.50. We can reload it for $4.16. But, once we fire it off and re-use the brass our cost per round drops to $1.16.

If you buy a good reloading kit, like RCBS RockChucker kit, thats about $400. You would have to reload 120 rounds of .338 Lapua for it to pay for itself. Or reload 329~ rounds of .300 Win Mag.

Seems like a good deal, right? It is…until you get into economies of scale. Federal cranks out a bazillion rounds of 5.56 every year for the military. As a result, they’ve got the whole thing dialed in…they’ve got their costs down, their equipment amortized, production streamlined…as a result they can make 5.56 so cheap that you almost don’t want to waste your time reloading. Let’s check out some 55 gr. FMJ Federal ammo:

• Federal 820 rounds for about $350 (From Midway)
• Hornady brass at $0.29 each
• 55 gr. FMJ at $.0.13
• 25 grains of powder

Admittedly, almost no one uses new commercial brass to load .223 since fired brass is available at virtually no cost. But, for consistency….

You’re at $0.56 per round for your first loading…thats actually more than what factory ammo costs. However, once you fire that off and reload it, you drop down by sixteen cents per round. Put another way, you paid Midway $350 but once you fire it off that ammo can be reloaded at around $227.

When you get into stuff like 9mm and .223 the savings really become negligible when you factor in your time and whatnot. However, when ammo isn’t available at any price, then the advantages become readily apparent.

If you want to play “what if”, I’ll give you a copy of the spreadsheet. Anything in green is a variable that you can tinker with. Crunch some numbers. You’ll see that if you’re a guy who shoots oddball calibers (Weatherby, Ultramag, Lapua, etc.) you can save some serious coin. Explore your options – what if you get a really good deal on powder? What if you use inexpensive cast bullets? What if you use cheap once-fired brass?

If you find this info useful….