Anyone have a side business to help with reloading cost?

I've never heard of the BATFE caring about brass sellers but you never know... I've heard projectile manufacturing can get scrutinized.

I imagine selling de-milled brass would be a fairly easy business to get into. I'm not sure you'd be able to write off general reloading equipment but anything related to the de-milling process should qualify along with shop space directly related to the work. Of course talking to an accountant familiar with small businesses would be the prudent thing to do.
 
For years I reffed Youth Hockey. Pay was $12 to $20 a game depending on level. We got paid once at the end of the year and I always used the check for something shooting related. Sometimes a new gun, sometimes reloading supplies. Since I generally do most of my reloading in the winter months, getting a nice check in the spring to help replenish the stockpile came in handy.

Nowadays, the same goes for side carpentry jobs and working weekend events for comp time at work. Both of these are paid to me separately from my regular full time job and thus are generally delegated to "fun" things since my regular income pays the bills. Many times these "fun" things are also gun/reloading items. Working one weekend event buys me a 8# jug of powder or 1000 bullets. Bough 250 pieces of Starline .460 brass($188) with the money from the last exterior door replacement job I did. Wife doesn't scream quite so loud when UPS backs up with stuff bough with extra-curricular money.......
 
Never worried about it. Reloading has saved me so much over almost 35 years that ALL the money I have spent has been recovered!
 
I wore my cap guns every day when I was 5.
When I grew up I had a 22 rifle, a 12 ga shotgun, and a 30-06... just like my father.

But then I turned 40. Other guys at 40 turned to drinking or philandering or buying a sports car or all three. But I started hitting the pawn shops and buying guns on lunch breaks. In 1998 someone said to me that if I am a full time gun nut, I need to reload.

Now at 65 I have 303 individual dies I have characterized in a spreadsheet.

This reminds me of a joke. Guy goes to the doctor for stress. The doctor tells him, "If you don't play golf, you might take it up. If you already play golf, you might quit.'
 
Just finished a .458 Socom brass production run, punching out new brass is more intensive than I thought it would be, so profits weren't what I hoped.
WAY too many QC issues getting the lubrication right so the dies spit out high quality.
I didn't make any more money than I would have on any other brass widget.

Looks like there might be more money in just de-mil & resize.
Don't care if it's a ton of money, I'm realistic, and if it covers costs & makes a reasonable profit for my time, that's good enough.

Saw the accountant today, got the DBA set up to separate the brass business from the machine shop, looks like I'm going to try about a million (+/-) to start with.
If it fails, I'll have 5.56 X 45 and 7.62 X 51 brass for life,
and enough 9mm for three lifetimes...
I don't know what I was thinking buying two tons of handgun brass, I don't even like handguns...
 
Saw the accountant today, got the DBA set up to separate the brass business from the machine shop, looks like I'm going to try about a million (+/-) to start with.
If it fails, I'll have 5.56 X 45 and 7.62 X 51 brass for life,
and enough 9mm for three lifetimes...
I don't know what I was thinking buying two tons of handgun brass, I don't even like handguns...
Click to expand...

Don't even give a thought to failure. You are committed and it will do just fine. What is it they say? Failure is not an option.

Ron
 
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