Over 20 years ago I got into handloading for the specific reason of custom tailoring rifle ammunition for my varmint and big game rifles. Plus the fact that I could justify maybe some money savings over the long haul with the benefit of top preforming ammunition. The last 10 years or so I have been putting more time towards the pistol sports than hunting, so there again I know I was saving money and custom tailoring the ammunition to meet the power factor of the games.
My daughter and her boyfriend have started to show more and more interest in shooting, she has S&W .38 special and him a Ruger .357, plus whatever else they pull out of my gun safe. So today they come over to use my range, shoot some paper, steel and dance a bowling pin around some. During lunch they ask if I would help them get started and teach them how to handload their own ammunition. The boyfriend has never done any handloading and my daughter has actually loaded 20 rounds of 300 Win mag for me about 10-12 years ago for an Elk hunting trip I was going on to Idaho, so she has minimal experience. So we sat down with a reloading catalog to figure the cost per 100 rounds of .38 Special ammunition for them to load on my equipment. Like I said I haven't tracked it for years, I just buy the component's, load and shoot. They just paid $14.00 for 50 rounds of cheap factory .38 Special ammo and depending on the brand of component's used, they can load 100 rounds for as little as $7.00 per hundred. What a savings, instead of $14.00 per 50 rounds, they can handload for about $3.50 per 50 rounds. Now they have shot a few boxes of factory, so they have a small stash of once fired .38 Special brass, plus a few hundred cases of nickel that I donated (I hate nickel brass), so that is not figured into the above costs.
What a system they can work. My daughter and boyfriend come out, wash her laundry while they de-prime and prime the cases and do the actual loading of the ammo during the drying cycle of her cloths.
We walk the 150 feet to my range to shoot while Mom folds her cloths and fixes lunch, the kids eat lunch and leave, leaving me with their brass to throw in the tumbler to clean for the next cycle.
Where have I gone wrong here?
