Ikea Ammo

Since we are getting tied into all of the holy grails of Internet gun arguments this month, I thought to myself, “Why not complete the circle and get people riled up about another one?”

Yep, reloading. I periodically hear from people who proclaim that reloading is the answer to whatever ammo discussion we are having, and I have even thought about doing it myself, but I just don’t see a reason to do it. I have blogged about reloading at least 4 or 5 times, but it’s been awhile, so let’s rehash it

There are a number of reasons given for getting into reloading ammo.

Cost Savings

I examined that back in 2020. To begin reloading, I would need to get the equipment, so right there you are looking at $400 for a progressive press set, and another $300 or so for tools and accoutrements. Then there is the ongoing cost of supplies:

Item	Average Cost, $
Small Primers	70/1000
Large Primers	140/1000
Gunpowder	50/lb
Brass	60/1000
9mm Bullets	200/1000
.45 Bullets	400/1000

• all supplies sourced from Midway Shooters’ Supply
• Brass sourced from US reloading supply
• Also note that 10mm & 308 brass are out of stock

9mm were the cheapest bullets I looked at, .45 were the most expensive (even more than rifle), so I used those two calibers to give us a good range of costs. So even assuming that we can get the supplies, it costs an average of $620 for 1000 rounds of ammo to be reloaded, plus the cost of the press and equipment, which would be amortized across the ammo you reload with it. It also takes about 2 hours to load 1000 rounds of pistol ammo. More for rifle.

Buying quality stuff, I can buy ammo right now for:

Caliber	cost $/1000 rounds
62gr, .223 Green Tip	570
150gr, .308	880
9mm FMJ	200
9mm JHP	330
.45ACP	320
10mm	1250

Except for 10mm and .308, it costs more to reload the calibers I have than it does to simply buy it, and that doesn’t even include what my time is worth.

Shortages of Supplies

Yeah, I get that you can load ammo when it is unavailable commercially, but it’s also true that there can be shortages of primers, bullets, and other reloading supplies. I think this is a wash.

Risk

Reloading carries a risk. A person loading in their garage is more likely to make an error than commercial reloading. While it is a small risk, it can’t be ignored. If you are running a 4 Sigma reloading operation, then there is a .006% chance that a round will be improperly loaded. That seems pretty good until you realize that one round in every 17,000 will cause a problem. This doesn’t happen in commercially loaded ammunition because they use lasers and precision scales to make sure that defects are rejected before they are sent out.

Conclusion

That leads us to the end. The first thing we see from this post is that there are not many things that we haven’t already looked at in the nearly 7,000 posts and 18 years that this blog has been around.

With that being said, reloading remains a poor choice, at least for me. You may feel differently with regards to your own situation. If you like to sit at the reloading bench, then this may be a good way to spend a Saturday. Some people like to tie flies, some like to load ammo. To each their own.