JeepHammer
Moderator
I need a bigger mixer!
My back hurts!
- Thread starter JeepHammer
- Start date
JoeSixpack
New member
damn!
That looks like a massive under taking without mostly automated line doing the work.
I'd probably sort the rocks and sell it dirty and take a smaller middle man profit.. or maybe you're reloading it?
That looks like a massive under taking without mostly automated line doing the work.
I'd probably sort the rocks and sell it dirty and take a smaller middle man profit.. or maybe you're reloading it?
JeepHammer
Moderator
Joe, reloading that much ammo requires state & federal licencing, HUGE insurance, etc.
I process brass, several stages, for mostly private sales.
No liabilities in brass since as soon as someone installs a primer, powder, bullet, it's their responsibility.
Besides, there is so little profit margin in loaded 'white box' ammo it's not funny, some of the manufacturers are only making 2 cents a round.
2 cents each when you can make a million a day is one thing, when you load a few thousand a day there isn't a living or enough to even keep up with equipment costs.
Here is a tip,
If you want 'Once Fired' milbrass, order it with the primer still installed.
Primer & crimp in place means no one fiddled with it.
Cleaned & annealed is ' Optimum' for a guy that can remove primer crimps.
Annealed means the hard case necks milbrass often has is corrected.
If you order polished, the annealing might get polished off, and you won't know for sure it was annealed or not, some people will cheat anyway they can.
I sell in about five stages,
Simply cleaned & separated, no mangled brass, no blanks, no 7.62, no paint ball cases, no machine gun links, no rocks, no cases full of dirt, etc.
Case necks qualified.
Minor case dents come with milbrass, it's just the order of the universe.
Pits, minor scratches, dented case mouths from semi auto or full auto firearms,
Neck qualification to 95% open ensures a case that doesn't have a sharp bend that will cause the neck to crack no matter what you do.
You can't kink the brass with under 10% occlusion (mouth ejection bend), I use a machine that checks 100% of the brass with 100% accuracy,
And I go the extra step, I qualify to 95% instead of 75% or 80% like most places do.
You CAN bend a case mouth back out that has seen 20-25% occlusion, but mine become .300 BO, bend gone, problem solved, my customers get what they paid for in the first place...
While milbrass is pretty well annealed, the HARD crimp screws that up.
Annealing ensures that mouth is going to stay where you put it.
Softer mouths take a SHARP trimmer, so if you do milbrass, buy carbide!
For speed gun & tight chamber guys I do lower case rolling, gets the unsupported machine gun chamber bloat out of the case.
Hard die rolling returns the LOWER case, and extraction groove, back to specification.
Machine guns can be REALLY hard on extraction rims.
If it's a guy that likes brass ready to load, I can do the works,
Primer knocked out, primer crimp CORRECTLY removed, case rolled, annealed, high polish, ect.
Just size for YOUR chamber, trim to YOUR length, and load.
Price depends on work, like anything else, but I'm geared towards match quality brass.
If they want it pulled out of the process early, I don't have to invest the time/labor/wear on machines so the price goes down accordingly...
I actually make a bigger profit margin on 300 BO than I do 5.56, so it's not a big hit in the wallet to disqualify upper case problems with 5.56
Annealed, formed & sized properly the cut 5.56 brass does as good or better than 'Import' new brass in 300 BO.
It's the case wall thickness the milbrass uses, import brass is too thick and doesn't fit the chamber correctly.
I process brass, several stages, for mostly private sales.
No liabilities in brass since as soon as someone installs a primer, powder, bullet, it's their responsibility.
Besides, there is so little profit margin in loaded 'white box' ammo it's not funny, some of the manufacturers are only making 2 cents a round.
2 cents each when you can make a million a day is one thing, when you load a few thousand a day there isn't a living or enough to even keep up with equipment costs.
Here is a tip,
If you want 'Once Fired' milbrass, order it with the primer still installed.
Primer & crimp in place means no one fiddled with it.
Cleaned & annealed is ' Optimum' for a guy that can remove primer crimps.
Annealed means the hard case necks milbrass often has is corrected.
If you order polished, the annealing might get polished off, and you won't know for sure it was annealed or not, some people will cheat anyway they can.
I sell in about five stages,
Simply cleaned & separated, no mangled brass, no blanks, no 7.62, no paint ball cases, no machine gun links, no rocks, no cases full of dirt, etc.
Case necks qualified.
Minor case dents come with milbrass, it's just the order of the universe.
Pits, minor scratches, dented case mouths from semi auto or full auto firearms,
Neck qualification to 95% open ensures a case that doesn't have a sharp bend that will cause the neck to crack no matter what you do.
You can't kink the brass with under 10% occlusion (mouth ejection bend), I use a machine that checks 100% of the brass with 100% accuracy,
And I go the extra step, I qualify to 95% instead of 75% or 80% like most places do.
You CAN bend a case mouth back out that has seen 20-25% occlusion, but mine become .300 BO, bend gone, problem solved, my customers get what they paid for in the first place...
While milbrass is pretty well annealed, the HARD crimp screws that up.
Annealing ensures that mouth is going to stay where you put it.
Softer mouths take a SHARP trimmer, so if you do milbrass, buy carbide!
For speed gun & tight chamber guys I do lower case rolling, gets the unsupported machine gun chamber bloat out of the case.
Hard die rolling returns the LOWER case, and extraction groove, back to specification.
Machine guns can be REALLY hard on extraction rims.
If it's a guy that likes brass ready to load, I can do the works,
Primer knocked out, primer crimp CORRECTLY removed, case rolled, annealed, high polish, ect.
Just size for YOUR chamber, trim to YOUR length, and load.
Price depends on work, like anything else, but I'm geared towards match quality brass.
If they want it pulled out of the process early, I don't have to invest the time/labor/wear on machines so the price goes down accordingly...
I actually make a bigger profit margin on 300 BO than I do 5.56, so it's not a big hit in the wallet to disqualify upper case problems with 5.56
Annealed, formed & sized properly the cut 5.56 brass does as good or better than 'Import' new brass in 300 BO.
It's the case wall thickness the milbrass uses, import brass is too thick and doesn't fit the chamber correctly.
I find this fascinating.
I am a very low volume reloader. But because I plan to retire next year and when I do my gross income will drop significantly, I wanted to go ahead and spend the money laying in the reloading supplies I anticipate needing for the rest of my life so that I won't have to deal with that expense.
After adding up my expected use, I came up needing components for about 15,000 rounds. So, when I see brass in boxes weighing more than a ton, it fascinates me.
I am a very low volume reloader. But because I plan to retire next year and when I do my gross income will drop significantly, I wanted to go ahead and spend the money laying in the reloading supplies I anticipate needing for the rest of my life so that I won't have to deal with that expense.
After adding up my expected use, I came up needing components for about 15,000 rounds. So, when I see brass in boxes weighing more than a ton, it fascinates me.
JeepHammer
Moderator
Brass at this volume is 'Cool', right up until the time you have to process it.
Reminds me of a tag line here, "Machine guns are cool, until you have to carry one".
15k shouldn't be too expensive if you do the prep work yourself, some guys are selling bulk range pickup for as little as $40/1,000.
Don't expect anything to be done to it other than some tumbling, it won't be sorted, properly cleaned, ect so you start from scratch and expect dents & some bad necks.
I won't sell a bad neck since I make more on them by cutting and sizing for 300 BO.
It also keeps my customers happy, happy customers come back!
I sell by pound, the weight breaks are completely dependent on what you can stuff into a flat rate box!
With weight, piece counts are approximate, you get more brass if the primers are knocked out, might only be a few, but brass is brass...
No sense in leaving weight out of a flat rate box! Get your money's worth out of the shipping.
Don't really charge extra for removing primer crimps since kicking primers runs them through the same machine as the crimp remover, all one process, so why charge extra...
Reminds me of a tag line here, "Machine guns are cool, until you have to carry one".
15k shouldn't be too expensive if you do the prep work yourself, some guys are selling bulk range pickup for as little as $40/1,000.
Don't expect anything to be done to it other than some tumbling, it won't be sorted, properly cleaned, ect so you start from scratch and expect dents & some bad necks.
I won't sell a bad neck since I make more on them by cutting and sizing for 300 BO.
It also keeps my customers happy, happy customers come back!
I sell by pound, the weight breaks are completely dependent on what you can stuff into a flat rate box!
With weight, piece counts are approximate, you get more brass if the primers are knocked out, might only be a few, but brass is brass...
No sense in leaving weight out of a flat rate box! Get your money's worth out of the shipping.
Don't really charge extra for removing primer crimps since kicking primers runs them through the same machine as the crimp remover, all one process, so why charge extra...