Bucket o' Brass
So we are about 45 days back from New Mexico and our annual prairie dog hunt. I have cleaned our guns and they are put away. I just finished cleaning all the brass - and it looks like this:
You are viewing about 5,000 rounds of .223 brass. Why the bags? Well, in the close bag are 500 rounds of Federal Gold Match cases. They need to have the primer pockets swaged because the primers were glued in. The back bag is brass that we have annealed.
Annealing extends the life of the case. Our hypothesis is that we will not be able to tell the difference, and thus, it is not worth our time to anneal all this brass. But in order to test that hypothesis, we need to have some data. And that is the reason those rounds are kept separate.
The rest of the brass in the SIX-gallon bucket are ready to be resized and reloaded. We have long lost count of how many times these cases have been reloaded. Some only once, some close to ten times already. Not that the number matters. We inspect each case several times in the process of reloading. Each case is checked when resized, when cut to length, when getting reloaded, and then finally when packed in the ammo boxes. If any are found to be cracked or worn too much, we recycle them instead of reloading them. Eventually, they all wear out and we must replace them. That's why we have that bag of once-fired Federal Gold Match brass we are adding to the mix.
I have already calculated that it will take somewhere in the range of $2,000 to reload all of this brass. We have to buy powder, primers, bullets and more ammo boxes. But, if you bought all of this ammo loaded to our specs, it would cost you an additional $1,200, if you could find it, and if it was on sale. We figure, then, that our labor is saving at least that $1,200, and probably more. What I do not know is what that calculates in dollars per hour. Right. What is our hourly rate? I'm not sure I want to calculate that! But hey, our time is free. We'd probably be watching TV or something stupid with our time anyways.
Cleaning the brass takes no time at all. I throw in 800 rounds at a time and walk away. I come back 1.5 hours later and the brass is all shiny - and then I throw in another batch. Resizing is our most time-consuming effort. Each piece, one at a time, wax, resize, repeat. Cutting, chamfering, and deburring are simple now that I bought the Giraud Power Case Trimmer (see April 2017 post). That job has been cut by about 40X. Significant time savings there.
I'm fixin' to get an auto-loader for the cases to put on my press. Right now I can cycle 300 rounds in 20 mins with everything set-up and ready. That gives me 900 rounds per hour. So I am looking at over 5 hours of just reloading here. The two most time critical components of reloading for me right now are setting the case and dropping the bullet. If I cut out the case, I think I could increase my output by close to double - or in essence, cut my reloading time in half!
None of this is "free" right? I had to invest in the tools to allow me to save all this money. Ten years ago, when we first got started into reloading .223 ammo, I ran the figures. We had to reload about 1,000 rounds per year for 4 years to pay off the investment. Everything after that was saving money. We are at year ten, and my investment has grown by more than double. But, we are shooting over 2,000 rounds per year now. So I think we are still at least breaking even. Don't you dare ask my wife though. All she sees is cash flowing out. What she fails to see is that it would be even MORE cash flowing out if we hadn't made the investment. Not an argument I can win folks, so I choose to ignore it.
Then again, it's all not about saving money. It's about the experience, the knowledge, the time spent with friends, and the satisfaction that comes from hitting targets with ammo that you assembled yourself. Who knows, this might be some very important information to know one day...
You are viewing about 5,000 rounds of .223 brass. Why the bags? Well, in the close bag are 500 rounds of Federal Gold Match cases. They need to have the primer pockets swaged because the primers were glued in. The back bag is brass that we have annealed.
Annealing extends the life of the case. Our hypothesis is that we will not be able to tell the difference, and thus, it is not worth our time to anneal all this brass. But in order to test that hypothesis, we need to have some data. And that is the reason those rounds are kept separate.
The rest of the brass in the SIX-gallon bucket are ready to be resized and reloaded. We have long lost count of how many times these cases have been reloaded. Some only once, some close to ten times already. Not that the number matters. We inspect each case several times in the process of reloading. Each case is checked when resized, when cut to length, when getting reloaded, and then finally when packed in the ammo boxes. If any are found to be cracked or worn too much, we recycle them instead of reloading them. Eventually, they all wear out and we must replace them. That's why we have that bag of once-fired Federal Gold Match brass we are adding to the mix.
I have already calculated that it will take somewhere in the range of $2,000 to reload all of this brass. We have to buy powder, primers, bullets and more ammo boxes. But, if you bought all of this ammo loaded to our specs, it would cost you an additional $1,200, if you could find it, and if it was on sale. We figure, then, that our labor is saving at least that $1,200, and probably more. What I do not know is what that calculates in dollars per hour. Right. What is our hourly rate? I'm not sure I want to calculate that! But hey, our time is free. We'd probably be watching TV or something stupid with our time anyways.
Cleaning the brass takes no time at all. I throw in 800 rounds at a time and walk away. I come back 1.5 hours later and the brass is all shiny - and then I throw in another batch. Resizing is our most time-consuming effort. Each piece, one at a time, wax, resize, repeat. Cutting, chamfering, and deburring are simple now that I bought the Giraud Power Case Trimmer (see April 2017 post). That job has been cut by about 40X. Significant time savings there.
I'm fixin' to get an auto-loader for the cases to put on my press. Right now I can cycle 300 rounds in 20 mins with everything set-up and ready. That gives me 900 rounds per hour. So I am looking at over 5 hours of just reloading here. The two most time critical components of reloading for me right now are setting the case and dropping the bullet. If I cut out the case, I think I could increase my output by close to double - or in essence, cut my reloading time in half!
None of this is "free" right? I had to invest in the tools to allow me to save all this money. Ten years ago, when we first got started into reloading .223 ammo, I ran the figures. We had to reload about 1,000 rounds per year for 4 years to pay off the investment. Everything after that was saving money. We are at year ten, and my investment has grown by more than double. But, we are shooting over 2,000 rounds per year now. So I think we are still at least breaking even. Don't you dare ask my wife though. All she sees is cash flowing out. What she fails to see is that it would be even MORE cash flowing out if we hadn't made the investment. Not an argument I can win folks, so I choose to ignore it.
Then again, it's all not about saving money. It's about the experience, the knowledge, the time spent with friends, and the satisfaction that comes from hitting targets with ammo that you assembled yourself. Who knows, this might be some very important information to know one day...
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