.303 cost - I thought reloading was CHEAPER!!

[Tower75]

Hi guys and girls. Question for you.

Where I am I can buy 100 .303 factory rounds for £60.00 - fairly steap I thought as it used to be about £45.00/100

Anyway, this got me thinking about the cost of reloading and I thought to myself:

... hang on a minute. I've been doing some maths, I know - not a good idea. However, stick with me.

Right, so I've worked out the stuff I need to reload, the prices are the last time I checked.

I AM HAPPY FOR YOU TO TELL ME MY MATHS IS KACK AND WRONG

100 .303 FMJ heads - £28.00
1lb of H414 powder - £34.00
1000 primers - £35.00

Discounting cases, as I have hundreds of them.

Each head is 28p
Each grain of powder is £0.0049p
Each primer is £0.035

So, If I load 100 .303 with 43.5 grains of H414, simply because that's what I was taught on, thats;

£28.00 for the .303 heads
£21.31 for the powder
£3.50 for the primers
Total £52.81

Not much of a saving - and if we take that 50 Remington cases is £35.00, and for arguments sake, lets say they last 5 loadings, £35.00/5 = £7.00

I'd be knocking £7.00 of their value every shot, so for 100 .303 the total would be £59.81 - I've saved 19p. Surely something is wrong there!

If I can buy 100 factory loaded .303 for £60.00 - is saving 19p worth the hassel?

[Watcher]

I did a similar calculation and the 'profitability' rests in the longevity of the cases.

Its also probably not a good idea to factor in the costs of the hardware and your hourly capitation!! Then again its all for fun....

[ovenpaa]

The mistake you made was doing the Math. I can still remember creating a spreadsheet for my original .308 loads. HAH! right well that didn't really take into account the numerous different dies, scales and presses I have since purchased, all the little must have tools, the two lathes, extension to my workshop. Yada yada yada....

Now we could argue the investment is in accuracy here and not in the reloading as such, great but we are talking about .303 here so it is never going to be significantly accurate round anyway. As an example I shoot 155Lap through my AI, and on occasion 170LB's, yes they are accurate but then again I get just sub 1MOA at 650 yards with 7,62x51 Danish machine gun ammunition and is about as cheap as it gets, I even picked up some freebies of the stuff last time I was over as nobody can shoot in 'normal' rifles.

My view is if you can find a factory round for your .303 that shoots then buy it and save a bucket load of time and money. I for the most put S&B factory through my 4(T) and only shoot hand loaded 174SMK's on occasion.

[rox]

Each head is 28p
Each grain of powder is £0.0049p
Each primer is £0.035

So, If I load 100 .303 with 43.5 grains of H414, simply because that's what I was taught on, thats;

£28.00 for the .303 heads
£21.31 for the powder
£3.50 for the primers
Total £52.81

I've worked my component cost down by shopping around, hoarding, bartering, and bulk buying.

My current .308 build cost is as follows:

£ 0.032 Primers (at £ 32.00 per 1000)
£ 0.20 Bullets (at £ 100.00 per 500)
£ 0.142 Powder (45.5 gr at £963.52 per 20Kg = £ 48.176 per Kg)

Total excluding brass:

37.4 pence.

..

[Doz]

Funnily enough, .303 is the round I save most on by reloading. It may well be possible to improve accuracy somewhat by using more expensive components, but what with my 50-year-old eyes and a 70-year-old rifle I'd rather go for economy! I worked it out at:

£0.13 - Powder (Vectan TU3000)
£0.15 - Bullet (Prvi)
£0.03 - Primer (Prvi)

Total 31p per round (excluding brass and reloading gear of course!)

[Watcher]

Of course there is another element when you are dealing with 'antiques' as it were and that is loading with a view to barrel life etc. Its one of the reasons I've been thinking about reloading for my .303 is that rebarrelling is getting less of an option.

[Steve]

I can reload 303 a lot cheaper than factory.

Ignoring cases which i have a lot of and my time:

100x Privi bullets=£17
100x Winchester primers=£4.50
1lb Alliant powder=£34

I use 'Alliant reloader 10' and 34.5gns is an accurate load at 300mtrs which means i can get 200x reloads out of a tub so when you divide the powder cost in half for 100x rounds the whole lot adds upto £38.50 less my 10% discount.

So 100x rounds cost me £34.65

[Dougan]

The type of bullet used makes the biggest difference in cost - I've been using the cheap Privi bullets too (17p each when you buy 500), as I had trouble getting SMKs; and I'm actually quite happy with them.

Buying the components in bulk helps, and if you take out the cost of cases, time and all the bits and bobs (like Ovenpaa said), then my rounds are about 35p each.

More importantly though (for me) they are a vast improvement on the factory I was using. I've also managed to 'convert' a few club members - we were talking about loading in the butts, and I was explaining some of the lengths F Class shooters go to (made me laugh when someone said "thats just anal" :lol: ) - some had tried loading before, but full length sizing and not much attention to detail, with mixed results - I explained about the benefits of neck sizing, good case prep, consistant seating and accurate powder measuring....anyway a few guys said they'd try it.

So last weekend they turned up with their first batch (was perfect testing conditions) - after only 10 shots one guy said that the only reason he would ever shoot factory again, would be to create more cases...

[Tower75]

If you guys are loading rounds for 30-odd pence, then I'm doing something wrong, .

Although, I found a local store that is selling bags of 50 .303 FMJ heads for £2.75!!!!

I think that he purhaps might not know the game...

So last weekend they turned up with their first batch (was perfect testing conditions) - after only 10 shots one guy said that the only reason he would ever shoot factory again, would be to create more cases...

That was sort of how I started. I've only been shooting for 8-odd years. In all that time I shot NOTHING BUT .303 surplus from 1920-1950 and from all over the world. When I started reloading I was like, "I can actually hit things" Turns out I'm a good shot

[ovenpaa]

Last I got other than 174SMK's were some 180 Spitzers at GBP10/100 and they shot OK plus the neighbour passed some bullets he had acquired and given up on, they looked fairly ropey but again they shot OK.