Cost:Benefit Looking at Reloading

[leadcounsel]

I'm sorry LC but your thinking is bordering on ridicules now . Those types of calculations only come into play for a business when that business is looking to make a profit . Not one poster here has said they reload or intend on reloading in order to sell there reloaded ammo for profit

Factor in cost of exploding gun + injury when estimating cost of reloading... Such things cannot be said with a straight face, can they?

Again, what part of cost/benefit analysis are folks here missing?? Seems elementary. Reloaders loudly argue that it "saves money" which is effectively the same as "making money." A penny saved is a penny earned principle. Someone thinking of reloading for PURELY ECONOMIC reasons is, in a sense, doing it for business pursuits, not so much as a hobby.

Businesses always factor in the costs of loss, breakage, insurance and lawsuits, that sort of thing. And EVERY reloader always has the concern of a mistake or a kaboom, and nobody here can deny that. I've read stories of reloaders who pulled entire batches of bullets where a mistake was found. I've read countless stories of kabooms with reloads and I experienced one myself from someones' reloads. This is why I don't trust them.

How about this admittedly extreme example: Reloader burned down his house and suffered burn injuries due to freak accident while reloading. http://county10.com/2015/05/10/breaking-fire-ravaging-rural-riverton-home-one-injured/

Riverton Firefighters were called to a home on Country Acres Road west of North Eighth West after a flash fire and explosion destroyed the home Sunday afternoon. The home is that of Doc and Deanna Holloway.

According to Holloway’s across the pasture neighbor, Herman Blumenshine, who rushed to the scene, Holloday told him he was reloading ammunition in an upstairs room when he ejected a shell from a firearm he was holding. Apparently some gun powder on the work bench was ignited by a spark from that action and it flashed in Holloway’s face and chest. Blumenshine said Holloway kept saying that he was okay, but his neighbor said he had obvious burns on his face and upper torso and on one arm.

Kabooms are a very real and not uncommon event for reloaders. While an anomaly, burning your house down due to storing a pile of gunpowder, is indeed a very real thing to consider. Pages and pages online of examples of kabooms and accidents when reloading.

My idea of fun and safe it's making little finger-removing and eyesight ruining bombs in my kitchen... just takes one mistake...

http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/reloading/190364-reloading-accidents-close-calls.html
Thread referencing a reloader screwed up and it cost him his eyesight.
http://pistolsmith.com/reloading/17708-reloading-mishaps-accidents.html
http://6mmbr.websitetoolbox.com/post/safety-and-freak-accidents-while-reloading-1415898

Our very own RCModel:

I had a friend blow himself up with an 8 pound keg of Bullseye pistol powder stored with the lid off.
Well, blown-up is really too strong a word.
Burnt-up would be a more accurate description, although he did survive the fire, but was crispy-critter critical for months in a burn unit and lost most of his fingers, nose, and ears.

http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-378828.html
and

Years ago there was a guy that lived down the road from me, he was a big time reloader( rifle mostly).
Anyway he had a 25 lb. keg of 4831 in the metal container with the single pouring hole in the center of the can, the guess was he was trying to get the last lb. from the container by drilling a hole on the edge of the can, when it went off it blow him thru the first floor and he was in the basement, he lived about a day after it happened.
Floydster

And that's just the ones that post online, talk about it, and are alive and interested in visiting the forums to share their stories...

Obviously it's not uncommon to have accidents reloading what are effectively little bombs.

So, while some may go years without an accident, it takes one bad one to erase all of the "savings" of reloading.

Before I get flamed - yes I do lots of dangerous things. I've jumped out of planes, ridden in fast cars and on motorcycles, use power saws, blah blah blah... THAT'S NOT THE ANALYSIS FOR ECONOMICS OF RELOADING.

 

[overthere]

Methinks this thread has jumped a whole school of sharks.

Over and out!

 

[45_auto]

How much time did it take to originally research it, select it, order it, unbox it, set it up? Build or buy and assemble a workbench? Say 5 hours? 10 hours? All of that time is MINUS X hours before you even make a single round. So you're immediately in the "cost savings production hole" by X hours...

So let's add your numbers into the equation. We'll use a round number of 100 hours (2 1/2 weeks) for researching it, selecting it, ordering it, unboxing it, setting it up, and buying and assembling a workbench for it.

That means that instead of a Lever Time (LT) factor of .0025 hours per round, it's actually .0025 x (((318,000 / 400) + 10) / (318,000 / 400)) = .00253

That means that the break even cost is now $30.56 per hour instead of $30.90.

My original $1000 estimate was for a lower end, slower press. Most folks are going to want to use a fixed bench workspace. That's either a free one you find or have, or you buy or build one. I was also factoring in the costs of dies, bins, etc. which all add up quite quickly. I felt that $1000 was a fair rough average for a startup costs for the proper equipment. Can you do it for less, sure. But it probably ain't much less unless it's a stroke of luck, gift, garage sale find, etc.

And folks here have $3-5000 or more into their setups... so clearly it can get more expensive.

I used $2400. Do you want me to double it to $4800? That would mean that the equipment cost would now be $0.015 per round instead of $0.0075.

Your break even cost is now down to $27.78 per hour.

If you really wanted to be realistic, we should include the disposal cost of the equipment into the equation. Unfortunately for you, that would mean that the equipment cost would be MUCH lower. Using your example, I paid just under $400 for the Dillon equipment that you showed was $1128. I could put a buy it now on Ebay for twice what I paid for it and it would be gone in 30 seconds. But for your sake, we'll stay with amortizing the full purchase price without including the resale value.

And you're lecturing me... turn that finger around my friend.

Just returning the favor. Your life journey is almost an exact duplicate of mine so far except that my tours of duty were in Vietnam, not Iraq. I've traveled to a few more states and a few more countries than you, and earned a few more degrees than you that I paid for through my GI bill and working full time while going to college and raising three great kids. If you really think that where you came from is relevant, it would be interesting to see if the people who raised you were any worse off than the ones who raised me. Maybe compare their tax returns (taking inflation into account of course) if it's that important to you?

$30 an hour is a pretty fair estimate of income for the gun enthusiasts on this website, most of whom have professions, not "jobs."

Do you have any references for your latest unsupported claim above? Seems that you're getting pretty desperate and pulling numbers out of the air again.

So, factor in the loss of the gun, plus the cost of injury.

Sorry, I choose to trust ammo loaded by me personally more than any mass produced factory ammo.

At least with a factory round you're not the responsible party... ammo makers have deep pockets that may come in handy when you are missing a hand and an eye.

True statement there. The cost of that insurance is included in the 100% additional cost you're spending for factory ammo over reloaded ammo. You think they're giving it to you for free? If you feel that that is a significant feature, then factory ammo is your friend.

By comparison to reloading, I just ordered over 1600 rounds in under a minute and delivered at no effort to me.

I just ordered the components for over 1600 rounds in under a minute and delivered at no effort to me for less than half the price you paid.

If we want to say that we're not factoring in the cost of time, then that ammo was free.

Why would you say that? Did you read post #136 where I posted the economic cost of reloading? It's in bold print like this just over half way down:

((Number of rounds x .00267) x (wage per hour)) + (.5 x factory ammo cost) + (number of rounds x .0075)

Notice the second set of parentheses. WAGE PER HOUR is clearly factored into the equation.

You can really pretty easily simplify it if you'd like.

Your 1600 rounds cost you whatever your hourly wage is times the amount of hours you had to labor. For example, if you paid $210 for your 1600 rounds, it took you 7 hours at $30/hour to pay for them.

My 1600 rounds cost about half as much as yours for components. We'll say $120 just to make things easy. Therefore it'll take $120/$30 = 4 hours of labor to pay for them. Then it'll take about 3 hours to load them.

So we both have 7 hours into the ammo.

You're free to disagree with my analysis about reloading as cost effective. For me, and I'd argue for many, it's simply not.

I still haven't seen an analysis from you. I've seen a bunch of wild unsupported claims. I provided you with a fill in the blank analysis in post #136, but either you don't understand it or you don't want to provide your numbers.

 

[MislMan]

Well, I have to budget my income and I'm not looking for a second job (or actually any job - I'm retired). My wife and I shoot every weekend and use 200 rounds of 9mm each per weekend. Started reloading about 1 1/2 years ago. Bought Lee progressive press and dies. After about 4500 rounds I had paid the cost of equipment. Now the lower cost of reloading means we don't have to budget as much money per month for our shooting. Shooting or "matches" against each other for score, 200 rounds is plenty of shooting every Saturday. Since I wouldn't be spending time doing other things (not in the budget) the lower shooting budget does save us money. YMMV

... Larry S.

 

[45_auto]

And EVERY reloader always has the concern of a mistake or a kaboom, and nobody here can deny that.

Any one who shoots factory ammo should also have that concern. Else why would you say:

At least with a factory round you're not the responsible party... ammo makers have deep pockets that may come in handy when you are missing a hand and an eye.

All you need to do is quantify the delta between worry over the factory round and worry over the reloaded round. The delta is zero in my case. I don't know how to quantify yours, that's why I keep asking for your inputs.

It appears that since you can't make your numbers work out any other way, you have arbitrarily decided that the delta is significant without being able to assign a value.

 

[45_auto]

Someone thinking of reloading for PURELY ECONOMIC reasons is, in a sense, doing it for business pursuits, not so much as a hobby.

Businesses always factor in the costs of loss, breakage, insurance and lawsuits, that sort of thing.

Okay, let's put that into the equation. As you say, it can be factored in. it's easy enough to do.

My $2,000,000 umbrella policy cost me just under $300 per year.

It covers injuries and judgements attributed to my boats, plane, cars, motorcycles and houses as well as personal negligence (guns - reloads).

What percentage of the $300 do you think we should assign to the reloading?

(Note that historically, the vehicles are at a MUCH higher risk of causing injury.)

My personal thoughts (admittedly with no research) would be 40% cars, 20% plane, 20% boats, 10% motorcycle, and 10% house (primarily because of pool). Since that's 100%, we could make it 38% cars and 2% reloading. In other words, I'm 19 times as likely to need the insurance due to a car accident than a reloading accident. Sounds about right to me, if you have some real data let me know.

I'll add it in tomorrow if I get a chance, but it's not going to make much difference.

We should also assign a percentage of my health insurance payments (injury, loss of limb, loss of eyesight, etc) to the reloads in case I need to use them, but it's paid by my employer. You'll have to put a value on that, it's 0 to me.

We'd need your cost of health insurance, as well as what you believe that the chances would be of you being harmed by a reload if you reloaded. 1 in a 100? 1 in 1,000? 1 in 1,000,000?

 

[Metal god]

LC : Reloading as a hobby is not like owning a business . How many businesses do you know of that sell none of the products they make and in fact consume 100% of that product . You can't use a business model to calculate a personal , on your own time activity . It simply goes back to what I do on my FREE time . You must start with the fact the shooter will be spending money on shooting no matter what . I said this befoe , my guns are going to go bang if I reload or not . That fact the money is going to be spent regardless means you then can try to calculate a way to save and or recoup some of that money .

 

[44 AMP]

It was fun for a while, but I'm putting and end to this one. Not only are we not going anywhere productive, its become an ...ego... measuring contest, so we're done here, before it gets any worse.

Also, just FYI, listing dozens of jobs in several different fields might impress some with your experience, but what others may take from that is you seem incapable of holding a steady job.

Relevant experience is good. More than that quickly reaches into the "smug" category, and can go all the way to condescending. If you've got issues, take it to PM, or take it to a Moderator, and keep it out of the open forums, please.

Closed.