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Mossy-dog

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Looking at maybe starting to load my own bullets to cut costs a bit and help consistency. 

Currently use hornaday superformance .22-250 and they are more accurate than me in my rifle but hope to cut the cost a bit. 

Whay do I need to get started? 

Scales obviously

Dies

Press (are the really basic hand presses any good?)

Comparator thing for measuring length

Looking for a fairly basic set up to start with and see how I get on. 

Cheers

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How many rounds do shoot a year? 

It might not really be worth the effort. Especially when you have a factory round that works. 

 

Take the initial hit of buying a couple hundred rounds. But unless you are putting down over 200 rounds a year it’s not worth the time, effort or investment in the required tools. 

 

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As scotch egg says but it is an absorbing pastime! I find a lot of pleasure in chasing after the elusive perfect load! Not got there yet and probably never will but it does engage the grey matter.

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200 rounds a year?? We get through more than that in a month........!!

If I didn't reload, I wouldn't be shooting centrefire.

Re-Pete

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1 hour ago, Mossy-dog said:

Probably go through 300 rounds a year so sounds quite marginal to be fair.

Do you know anyone local that reloads?

If so, by far the best way to learn basics.

There are also some good YouTube tutorials. Be aware there are also some crap/dangerous ones!

Once you start you'l definitely see your round cound go up. So don't expect to save money.

When you shoot you first one hole group or drop the first fox with your own ammo.

Well worth for that feeling alone in my opinion

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Have done it in the past scrounging off a mate  but now he lives 500 miles away so the kit isn't easily accessible.

Dont mind the round count going up and not worried about the cost at the moment but would like to be able to shoot more rounds at that same variable cost.

Basically want to have my cake and eat it!

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3 hours ago, Mossy-dog said:

Probably go through 300 rounds a year so sounds quite marginal to be fair.

Whereabouts Aberdeenshire are you ? PM if you wish. Can easy let you have a look a reloading setup and talk through what you'd need ?

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53 minutes ago, Mossy-dog said:

Have done it in the past scrounging off a mate  but now he lives 500 miles away so the kit isn't easily accessible.

Dont mind the round count going up and not worried about the cost at the moment but would like to be able to shoot more rounds at that same variable cost.

Basically want to have my cake and eat it!

As long as you are realistic that at 200 to 300 rounds per annum, you'll probably not recoup the costs of reloading gear in terms of the difference in factory to reloaded costs (based on an initial outlay of say £200 for the kit and including re-use of cases in the reloaded cost equation) for 3 to 4 years.

What tends to happen is

1) buy kit.....

2) buy more kit than needed (thanks to forums like this one!) and up costs

3) spend your first few hundred round count costs on load development (you'll want to experiment with different bullets/propellants etc)

4) have a blind panic when you total up what you've spent in the first 6 months and then hide the receipts from the Mrs, telling her "it works out cheaper..."

5) work out that you'll now have to shoot well past retirement or "miss" a lot to get through more ammo

I jest.  If you only want to try it out a Lee  Classic Loader costs very little and is capable of some great results.  If you then decide it's not for you, you can sell it on and only lose 15 quid on the deal (probably).

If you decide you have the bug, you can acquire used kit relatively inexpensively (I'd always suggest buying dies new as you never know what you'll end up with used) and off you go.

You'll learn a lot more about internal (and probably external) ballistics and it'll be another hobby of interest.

 

Good luck with it all.  Lots of good opinions on this site but you don;t need to get carried away...it doesn't have to be expensive or complicated.  The fact that we tend to make it so is our own fault!

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