Academy line for ammo

[Rez Exelon]

In todays climate your going to have to refigure the cost.
Primers is .25
brass is .60
Powder is .40 to .50
Bullets is .12
That is if you can find all of it.

Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree entirely there.
Primers - I paid $50/k at Dong's. I had to bath three times afterwards, but they had primers. That figures out to 5 cents each.
Powder - I paid $40/lb at Dong's as I had to buy it to get the primers. At least the three showers above counted for this too. 7000 grains/lb divided by 4.6 grains in my load gives 1500 rounds/lb = 2.5 cents
Bullets - In the last month I've got 9mm from Summit City for around .07, 55gr 22 cal from midsouth for .10/ea, and lots from Powder Valley and American Reloading recently all at sane pricing. Last night I got 2k of HST pulldowns for 15 cents each.
Brass - Talk to @mouthpiece --- he's the hookup. Super reasonable on pricing. I think range pickup on average is going 2.5-3 cents per.

That's all current on purchases within the last two weeks or less.

 

[Rez Exelon]

true, but I feel like for someone like myself that has zero reloading equipment or supplies that it’s not really feasible/possible to start right now. Or is it?

It's harder to do, but it's possible. I reworked my entire setup in the last month. I figure getting the bare minimums to get started would as I said above be around $800 right now. If you wait 6 months when the panic buyers need to pay their credit cards it'll be cheaper probably. Truthfully a lot of it comes down to two questions: 1. What do you want to load and 2. How much time do you have. Those are going to drive all reloading purchases anyways. Even though I just redid my whole setup for "common caliber" production, I can't get rid of all my single stage stuff because of a lot of calibers I load for.

 

[Blwnup03]

Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree entirely there.
Primers - I paid $50/k at Dong's. I had to bath three times afterwards, but they had primers. That figures out to 5 cents each.
Powder - I paid $40/lb at Dong's as I had to buy it to get the primers. At least the three showers above counted for this too. 7000 grains/lb divided by 4.6 grains in my load gives 1500 rounds/lb = 2.5 cents
Bullets - In the last month I've got 9mm from Summit City for around .07, 55gr 22 cal from midsouth for .10/ea, and lots from Powder Valley and American Reloading recently all at sane pricing. Last night I got 2k of HST pulldowns for 15 cents each.
Brass - Talk to @mouthpiece --- he's the hookup. Super reasonable on pricing. I think range pickup on average is going 2.5-3 cents per.

That's all current on purchases within the last two weeks or less.

Did you recently get primers from them? Online said you had to buy projectiles to get primers.

 

[Rez Exelon]

Did you recently get primers from them? Online said you had to buy projectiles to get primers.

Both times I went in I got a lb of CFE Pistol of some flavour. If I go this week I might check if they have Unique.

To be clear, I am not a fan of Dongs and much prefer Jerry's. But, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. And bath in lye and shame afterwards.

 

[mouthpiece]

When dongs got a shipment of primers a couple weeks ago, they started saying you have to buy our powder to get 1000 primers. By the end of the day it was you have to buy our bullets to get 100 primers.
They make it up as the day goes along
And to be clear, I was not able to go to dongs when they got primers in, I was at work. That was reported to me by @Rez Exelon and then 2 friends that went later in the day.

 

[HoLeChit]

It's harder to do, but it's possible. I reworked my entire setup in the last month. I figure getting the bare minimums to get started would as I said above be around $800 right now. If you wait 6 months when the panic buyers need to pay their credit cards it'll be cheaper probably. Truthfully a lot of it comes down to two questions: 1. What do you want to load and 2. How much time do you have. Those are going to drive all reloading purchases anyways. Even though I just redid my whole setup for "common caliber" production, I can't get rid of all my single stage stuff because of a lot of calibers I load for.

I shoot all common stuff, and have kept it that way for the sake of cost and availability, both have which have went out the window. I have tons of .308 smk ammo, and have started a pretty dirty love affair with rimfires recently. I guess I would start reloading 9mm, 10mm, 38spl/357mag, and 223 for the sake of saving money, 308 could be useful for tweaking it and saving money, eventually I want to get something in the flavor of 338LM and/or 50BMG, I could def see the virtue in reloading that. I can’t imagine reloading 762x39 being worthwhile, esp considering that I plan on buying a lifetime supply when this craziness lets up.

 

[Glock 40]

@HoLeChit 50BMG reloading takes its own special equipment and the components are outrageous even in noncrazy times.

 

[Rez Exelon]

I shoot all common stuff, and have kept it that way for the sake of cost and availability, both have which have went out the window. I have tons of .308 smk ammo, and have started a pretty dirty love affair with rimfires recently. I guess I would start reloading 9mm, 10mm, 38spl/357mag, and 223 for the sake of saving money, 308 could be useful for tweaking it and saving money, eventually I want to get something in the flavor of 338LM and/or 50BMG, I could def see the virtue in reloading that. I can’t imagine reloading 762x39 being worthwhile, esp considering that I plan on buying a lifetime supply when this craziness lets up.

So my personal assessment is this --- you'll want to have at least two presses --- a progressive setup for common stuff and a single stage for bigger stuff. I got both a Square Deal B and a RL550 recently, but like I said, I can't get rid of my single stages just yet. From your list, either of those Dillons would work great for the pistol calibers, but the Square Deal B can't do rifle cartridges, but it seems to run excellent and very fast on the calibers it does. Faster than the 550 would for those calibers even.

Now, say you were going to load 50/338. Most likely, I'd recommend going straight to the Lee 50 BMG press. If memory serves right you can get bushings to let you use regular dies in there to load things like 308/338 as well. As @Neckbeard stated, 50 cal equipment gets high. You're looking at 300 for the Lee press/kit setup, primers are 50 cents each, bullets are 50 cents to a dollar each, and you go through about 240grains of powder per shot IIRC. Remembering that there's 7000 grains/lb you get 29 shots per pound for about a buck a shot. Add that up and you're looking at two bucks a shot minimum, and that's using pulldown bullets and powders. Point being, IMHO it's more cost/time efficient to shoot milsurp or commercial loads for 50, since most likely the 50 isn't going to send 100 rounds/session downrange.

I say all that because were you to drop the 50 out of the equation, all the calibers could be handled on a 550 or similar press with the proper investment in the conversion kits. I'm relatively new to the progressive world, but after chucking 1600 rounds out in about 6-7 hours the last few days, then holy crap, that's a great return on investment for me in terms of savings and my time. Doing those same rounds on a single stage would be probably in the 20-24 hours range of time.

EDIT: I should note as well, that part of my personal reloading strategy is that once you start talking about powder weights in the 40-50+ grain range, I much prefer to do those single stage --- just more opportunity for quality control on a charge that large.

 

[Aku]

But, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. And bath in lye and shame afterwards.

LMAO. Guess my heads been in the sand. Didn't realize reloading supplies were that scarce.

 

[HoLeChit]

@HoLeChit 50BMG reloading takes its own special equipment and the components are outrageous even in noncrazy times.

Yeah true. Forgot about that. There’s a shop out in eastern ok that sells plenty of quality 50bmg, I doubt I would be able to beat their prices.