The myth on not saving when hand loading 9mm ammo.

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Show Me said:
it takes me 30 minutes just to get going
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Don't start counting dow the minutes it takes. That was probably a slight exaggeration, of the total time, but not the actual effort required to bust out 75 or 100 rounds.

My loading bench is a refuge where I can go, shift my brain into a different gear, and relax. I don't need to be paid to do that
 
Double Naught Spy said:
It is easy to claim savings when a critical component (labor) is assigned no $ value or costs.
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GeoDudeFlorida said:
The cost of labor? Seriously.
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I envy you people who have endless time to handload. There are those of us who don't.

Everyone values their time differently. Further, besides running my own business... which is already a time-sucker... I have other interests besides shooting and handloading, I am not a one-trick pony. There are some weeks I'm lucky if I can get up to the reloading room for 30 minutes, let alone enough time to crank out 500 or 1000 rounds of 9mm. Carrying that idea along... the cost-savings avenue... I would rather spend that time loading stuff I can't afford to buy, let alone find, on the store shelves... in my case, that would be .41MAG, .348WCF, Trapdoor-level .45-70, cast rifle cartridges, some of which require a lot more time than 9mm.
 
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With caliber 9mm luger.......I'm way in the hole..... I didn't start loading it until primers went from that awesome 2 cents to 4 cents each in a pretty short time. Always gravitated toward buying xtreme plated projectiles for cleanliness. Those are quite expensive, call em 10 cents each average. Ill also admit that I've bought brass for around .02 each, cleaned. Probably not a great financial decision, but I'm not a huge fan of cleaning brass in huge quantity. I also leave 9mm lay most of the time.

I've made huge savings on .38 and 357 over the years, 44 as well. 10mm for sure, 45ACP, absolutely. .223.....sure.

9mm (with the exception of a few short periods) has been relatively cheap to buy.

I carry factory ammo for SD. I have stuff that I've trusted for decades, I'll just stick with it. Plus why keep begging the question about whether to carry handloads for SD?? I'd rather not worry about it.
 
wombat13 said:
The reasoning is any time you spend not working is time that you could have worked and earned that much.
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Not me. I am retired with plenty of spare time and even while working I was salaried and did not have the option of going in and picking up some overtime ad lib.

When I started reloading it was partly to save money, partly to produce loads either expensive or not offered commercially at all, but also because if you were a regular shooter, reloading was the Thing To Do.
Still is. I could buy ammo but I am settled in that part of the Gun Culture that takes reloading as part of the process, it is just what we DO.
 
I don't factor in a value of my time reloading but reloading is rather time intensive unless you have spent a decent amount of money on a good setup. You'd be better off getting a job at a local fast food joint and using the money to buy 9mm ammo versus loading it on a single stage press.

Most gun owners don't really shoot much at all. For someone who shoots a few boxes of ammo per year it doesn't make sense to devote 10+ hours of time to learn the ins and outs of reloading.

There is no definitive value that can be assigned to any random persons time but to act like reloading does take significant amounts of time is disingenuous.
 
JerkyFreak said:
Calculating your labour rate into the cost of your reloading only makes sense if you actually take time off your paying job to reload. I suspect most reload during their off time; when they want to get away from the wife and kids or when they would not be doing anything productive anyway.

As for shooting more for the same cost, doesn't always work like that either. When I go to the range with my pistol, I take two packs of ammo. Taking two packs of my reloads gives me roughly a 20% saving over buying 2 packs at the gunshop.

So, reloading my ammunition does save me money and gives my hands something productive to do in the evenings instead of wasting my time watching TV.
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Oh come on man. Reload to shoot, shoot to reload. Then I just shoot more. Good thing neighbors are a 1/4 away. Don't start till10
 
Tangential story on the whole time value thing. In grad school I spend two days setting up and then another day machining a specialized gripper to a robot I was working on. Sent the parts out for hard anodizing and some lacky on third shift reversed the polarity on the anodizing tank and my parts dissolved, gone. I was livid, the place agreed to do the replacements for free buy I wanted compensated for my time. My advisor said, you're a grad student your time is free, get back to work... So I remade the parts.

The moral, like a grad student, your a reloader, your time is free, get back to work if you want ammo.
 
Show Me said:
Oh come on man. Reload to shoot, shoot to reload. Then I just shoot more. Good thing neighbors are a 1/4 away. Don't start till10
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That describes me accurately except proximity to neighbors. I really enjoy all aspects of reloading. I didn’t start till after I retired so haven’t had to budget my time much.

And, can’t legally discharge firearms outdoors here and the number of indoor ranges is down to two. When NRA moves to Texas it’ll be one. Hate to think I’ll be reloading without much shooting.
 
CQB45ACP said:
All of the five “inventory” items must be replaced eventually including time. For sure.

The original discussion was the proposition that reloading saved money compared to buying ammo.

That’s an objective exercise—add up the costs and compare. Want a more accurate answer? Be more precise about the actual costs.

Time is money as the saying goes. Law firms, consultants, and labor unions among many others live and die based on determining the cost of their time.

But the original question wasn’t a purely subjective “is reloading worth it?” For me the answer is “of course, but don’t ask me to quantify it”:)
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One fly in the ointment: I will gladly pay for the entertainment value and intellectual exercise of handloading something as devilishly simple yet complex as the 9mm.
It beats spending money on video games or PPV sports on the boob toob.
I guess I could spend my time annoying my neighbors with loud music or driving through HOA’s looking for grass that’s 10 thousandths too tall. But those activities have costs too.
 
I think it would be generally true to say it’s a myth that reloading ANY cartridge saves money.

Many folks point to the fact that we don’t assign a value to our time. Fair enough, but for 99% of us this is a hobby. No one pursues hobby that they believe wastes their time. That means that if you’re reloading you’ve already calculated that the time spent doing it is worth it, therefore, the value of your time spent doing it has been accounted for.

Another area where folks often don’t assign enough value is in the capitalized cost of reloading. We invest a good bit of money into the equipment, tools, ancillaries, supplies, etc. Nobody is looking at the cost of money (what would it have made if invested in an earning asset). How does the capitalized expense of the investment in equipment get assigned to the individual rounds of ammo produced to calculate the true cost?

Lastly, our inventory of reloading components (bullets, powder, primers). How much cash flow do we have tied up in years worth of inventory? You could be paying down debt if you had that cash available.
 
I see reloading as freedom. No matter what happens, I'll be able to produce thousands upon thousands of rounds for my firearms, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. I don't require a store to be open, or have a particular caliber/type in stock. The government can't pull another Plandemic. At the present time, a person can stash away enough supplies to last their, and even their children's lifetime needs.

It's nice to be able to go downstairs in the evening and pump out a couple hundred rounds for a range day.

This being said, I've been shooting .22lr more than anything lately. Sometimes you choose to push the easy button and shoot something quiet and easy. :cool:
 
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