As I mentioned previously, I have returned to my shooting hobby. Part of the fun is reloading the cartridges. Ammunition is expensive these days. So are all the components you need for reloading. I bought a pound of 2400 powder for $29. The partial can on the shelf had a sticker on it for $7.97. That was 35 years ago. The same is true for bullets and primers. The center fire round that I use the most is a 148 grain wadcutter with 2.8 grains of Bullseye in a .38 cartridge. This is a low power accuracy round that is widely used for target shooting and certain competitions. One thing that is nice about it is that it cuts a clean circle in the target (hence the name wadcutter, I guess.) I can go through three hundred of these in a shooting session. Of course, the .22 rimfire is the epitome of cheap thrills.

So what does it take time and money wise to reload ammunition? There are five main steps in the process. Three of the steps require a die and a trip through the loading press. First step is decapping and resizing. This removes the old primer and squeezes the case down to its original size. The second step in neck expansion which enlarges the end slightly so it will accept a new bullet. These two steps require the press and a die. Step three is replacing the primer. I use a Lee Autoprime which is a handheld device with a lever that presses a new primer in place. Step four is charging with powder. You place a bunch of brass in a tray and charge each one with a powder measure that drops a preset load of powder each time the handle is cycled. The final step is seating a new bullet in the cartridge. I timed how long each step took and determined that it is about 50 minutes to run 100 cartridges through the process. There is additional set up time to load the powder measure and the primers. So, about an hour in total. The cost for this 148 wad cutter load is about 12 cents. Cheap thrills. Of course if you go to heavier loads and jacketed bullets, the component costs go up quite a bit, about 30 cents for a good high power load.

Today's photo is of my loading bench during the bullet seating phase. I am loading 158 grain jacketed hollow points. You can see the tray with charged cartridges, the press with a completed bullet, a box of bullets and a container for finished cartridges. This is fun.