Federal Custom Hand Loads?

I might pay $5 a pop for major serious bigbore megafauna ammo (And it is probably more than that), but not for bog standard hunting stuff.
 
This service appears to be for non-handloaders whose guns don't like any of Federal's standard production ammo bullet selections. For example, in 243 Win you can get Federal Premium production ammo only with the 85-grain Barnes TSX bullets, but their custom shop offers the 80-grain TSX. They have only three bullets in the custom loads for 308 Win, and again they are not bullets available in the Federal Premium ammunition line.

How a person might discover one of the other bullets are what his gun likes better without buying a sample of all the custom offerings, I don't know. If you discover the answer by handloading, then you don't need their service.
 
The puzzle in this thread is: how does one know the custom ammo is what one needs if one doesn't handload, other than shelling out a lot of money to try it, and why would you spend that much for ammo if you do handload?
Click to expand...

Bingo! Was wondering what commercial ammo has to do with handloading.
 
Federal Custom Shop at $100 per 20 and two weeks to build. OUCH!
Especially when Federal brass is known to be softer than other brands. And you'd still have to try a box to see if your rifle will shoot it well.
 
That's the issue, alright. If you are buying it, you aren't a handloader and probably don't care if the brass is not reusable. But the cost of trying it is sure discouraging to we who handload.

I recall a few years back reading about a well-heeled category of match and varmint shooters who could afford not to reload. They'd buy a rifle from a builder and let him work up the accuracy load recipe for them. They, in turn, would send brass and that recipe to custom loading house to duplicate the load. I have no idea how many shooters fall into that category, but apparently it is enough that some groups of doctors were eyeing the custom reloading businesses as investiment targets.
 
Obviously not aimed at the hand loading types. As UncleNick mentions they only offer three bullets in a 308 Winchester loading and none of which is the 168 grain Sierra Match King they load in their 308 Winchester Gold Medal ammunition which at about $35 a box is a heck of a lot less costly. Personally I can't see buying 308 Winchester at $100 a box but apparently someone can. I'll just continue to roll my own.

Ron
 
Yes. As I said, none of the custom bullets duplicate those used in their mass-manufactured lines of ammo, like the GM308M. I think the underlying message is that these loads are not better than their large scale production, which is already pretty good, but rather the service is just for bullets they like but haven't found have a large enough market to justify including in one of their mass-manufactured lines.
 
Could be a social thing...

I never thought I would see people paying the price they do for:

coffee
pro sporting events tickets
concerts
plays
snacks at a movie

now...designer ammunition.

And do you know what? It's their money and if they want to spend it on that stuff I guess I'll just think their priorities are different than mine.
 
DaleA,

You left out the cost of cable TV. I remember when it was new and about $5/month as a kind of substitute antenna service. At our house, we finally just cut the cable when they started asking over $150 a month for cable, phone, and Internet. We still have Internet service through the same provider, but we switched to a less expensive VOIP phone provider and put up a TV antenna and use Hulu and Amazon Prime for streaming. Saving about $1000/yr. Every year that I buy a new gun or go to the NRA annual meeting, I look at it as a freebee now.

I agree with Old Roper that more choice is good. It's an indication of health in the industry. But I'll keep rolling my own.
 
Some people know that the first thing to verify before getting bullets for best accuracy is the barrel's groove diameter should be at least a few ten-thousandths inch smaller than bullet diameter.

Good commercial 30 caliber match barrels often have .3075" groove to shoot Sierra or Berger .308X diameter bullets. As small as .3065" if arsenal 7.62 M80 ball ammo is required by the fullbore rules with .3070" diameter bullets; Kreiger makes them.
 
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