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Reloading is NOT hard to do. You must however follow all the basic rules and steps since you are dealing with potentially dangerous materials.
A reloading handbook is your bible. It gives you the information on bullet weights, powder charges, primer choices and cartridge dimensions.
A reloading kit: press, scale, powder thrower, dies and a few other things most essential for basic reloading can run anywhere from $125 up to A LOT. A setup to clean dirty brass can cost from 50 to a few hundred depending on size and volume you need.
Once you have the reloading equipment, the handbook, the brass, the bullets, the primers and the powder you are set to reload. A set of decent calipers (accurate to .001 inches is something I think you MUST have).
1. Clean the brass (if using fired brass)
2. Deprime (remove the old primer) with most die sets this step also resizes the brass to unfired dimensions.
3. Reprime with a new primer
4. Open up the case mouth (bell it) to just enough to accept a new bullet
5. Charge the primed and belled case with powder
6. Seat a new bullet in the case and crimp the case to hold the new bullet.
If you have the brass that costs 0 (zero)
Primers (if you can find them) are about $30.00 a thousand
Decent quality JHP bullets are about $125.00 a thousand
Powder is about $25-$30 a pound (enough to make at least 1000 pistol rounds)
So for under $200 you can make 1000 rounds of quality JHP ammo.
All lead bullets are cheaper and can reduce the cost greatly, as can buying in bulk.
8 pounds of powder for about $100
Then there is the time it takes to reload.
Progressive reloading setups produce a round with each press of the handle. Single stage setups require setting up and performing each of the above steps one at a time.
While the wife is watching a soap I can knock out a hundred rounds, provided I start with cleaned brass, and have all my dies preset and locked at the correct settings. I use a single stage press. If you had a progressive, you could produce several times that many rounds in the same period of time.
I produce rounds that have the same feel to them as factory SD rounds and have the same bullet dimensions. These reloads may not expand the same or give the exact terminal performance but they allow me to practice shooting with rounds that feel and shoot just like the rounds I carry for SD.
bosco
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