Ammo and ammo component prices have been climbing for some time now. We had a gun show here last weekend, and I almost fainted at some of the prices for ammo there! And I'm wondering if it is going to get any better.
Bob, I doubt it seriously. I've got the better part of 1,000 Speer 200 grain Gold Dot .45 bullets and enough cases, powder, and primers to load them at a cost of about 23¢ each. They work flawlessly in my full-size Kimber, but not in the CDP. I've got 1,000 285 grain Keith-style bullets and about 500 empty pieces of .45LC brass. I've got pretty close to 1200 75 grain Hornady HPBT Match .223 bullets and 1,000 primed empty cases, with enough powder to load all those.
I am NOT looking forward to restocking when I run through all that.
Kevin, if your willing to shoot lead they are a bit cheaper then the jacketed bullets. In my Kimber Ultra Carry II, I shoot 230 gr lead round nose hard cast bullets with 4 gr Bullseye. They feed just like the hardball and don't lead the barrel. I was buying the bullets because it was cheaper than casting my own but even those have gone up and so I am back to melting down wheel weights. I mix in some monotype to get them harder.
Blazer Brass, reloadable brass casing 230 grain FMJ was 12.97 at the local Walmart last Friday. 25 cents a shot ain't much cheaper, but it's something.
I've been loading .45 on a single stage for a year now. I save a lot of money because I can't load 'em very fast :p
On a serious note, they still work out cheaper than the store bought stuff. I can load plain old FMJ for less than I can buy commercial stuff, or I can load Golden Sabers for a little less than commercial FMJ. So it all works out.
The absolute cheapest good .45 (or .40 for that matter is here at the outdoor marksman. They are Miwall Reloads. When I got my first pistol a few years ago, I bought 1000 rounds of these reloads in .40sw for $114, and they worked out great.
At 500 rounds for $105 for .45acp, that's not too bad, nowadays.
Codrea said reloading components would be good too. I'll be going to my local shop that day and picking up some plated 10mm flatnose bullets, and large pistol primers too.
I'm having serious doubts about shooting reloads in .40s&w. Got curious about the Kabooms! in Glock .40's. Did some testing using my G27, looking at a large batch of commercial reloads I bought a while back, and several factory loads.
What I was finding was bullet setback during the chambering process. The reloads were scary, even factory ammo shows setback, particularly if you load and unload the gun as a daily routine, or other schedule.
Now, I have not looked at other size Glocks, or other makes and models. They may be more gentle then the G27 is when loading the chamber.
My preliminary conclusion is to never chamber a round more than ONCE, and to qualify any reloads used by measuring setback on a random sampling of each lot.
The 40s&w is a very hot loading, and any setback will raise pressures, perhaps to catastrophic levels. I had one reloaded round move near 0.070"!
One thing I noticed was that it moved easier each time a round was recycled.
(Setback on a .45acp would be a lot less worrying.)
One more thing, setback would explain the complaints about the .40s&w's accuracy, as varying pressures would throw rounds out of groups.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2007/08/holy-sh7.html (7 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Ammo and ammo component prices have been climbing for some time now. We had a gun show here last weekend, and I almost fainted at some of the prices for ammo there! And I'm wondering if it is going to get any better.
Bob, I doubt it seriously. I've got the better part of 1,000 Speer 200 grain Gold Dot .45 bullets and enough cases, powder, and primers to load them at a cost of about 23¢ each. They work flawlessly in my full-size Kimber, but not in the CDP. I've got 1,000 285 grain Keith-style bullets and about 500 empty pieces of .45LC brass. I've got pretty close to 1200 75 grain Hornady HPBT Match .223 bullets and 1,000 primed empty cases, with enough powder to load all those.
I am NOT looking forward to restocking when I run through all that.
Kevin, if your willing to shoot lead they are a bit cheaper then the jacketed bullets. In my Kimber Ultra Carry II, I shoot 230 gr lead round nose hard cast bullets with 4 gr Bullseye. They feed just like the hardball and don't lead the barrel. I was buying the bullets because it was cheaper than casting my own but even those have gone up and so I am back to melting down wheel weights. I mix in some monotype to get them harder.
Matt
Blazer Brass, reloadable brass casing 230 grain FMJ was 12.97 at the local Walmart last Friday. 25 cents a shot ain't much cheaper, but it's something.
I've been loading .45 on a single stage for a year now. I save a lot of money because I can't load 'em very fast :p
On a serious note, they still work out cheaper than the store bought stuff. I can load plain old FMJ for less than I can buy commercial stuff, or I can load Golden Sabers for a little less than commercial FMJ. So it all works out.
The absolute cheapest good .45 (or .40 for that matter is here at the outdoor marksman. They are Miwall Reloads. When I got my first pistol a few years ago, I bought 1000 rounds of these reloads in .40sw for $114, and they worked out great.
At 500 rounds for $105 for .45acp, that's not too bad, nowadays.
Codrea said reloading components would be good too. I'll be going to my local shop that day and picking up some plated 10mm flatnose bullets, and large pistol primers too.
I'm having serious doubts about shooting reloads in .40s&w. Got curious about the Kabooms! in Glock .40's. Did some testing using my G27, looking at a large batch of commercial reloads I bought a while back, and several factory loads.
What I was finding was bullet setback during the chambering process. The reloads were scary, even factory ammo shows setback, particularly if you load and unload the gun as a daily routine, or other schedule.
Now, I have not looked at other size Glocks, or other makes and models. They may be more gentle then the G27 is when loading the chamber.
My preliminary conclusion is to never chamber a round more than ONCE, and to qualify any reloads used by measuring setback on a random sampling of each lot.
The 40s&w is a very hot loading, and any setback will raise pressures, perhaps to catastrophic levels. I had one reloaded round move near 0.070"!
One thing I noticed was that it moved easier each time a round was recycled.
(Setback on a .45acp would be a lot less worrying.)
One more thing, setback would explain the complaints about the .40s&w's accuracy, as varying pressures would throw rounds out of groups.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>