doesn't matter, go by primers because that's going to be the most difficult
thing to find if you ever had a without rule of law situation or some situation
where you had to create your own ammunition.
The most difficult thing to find is always going to be the primers.
Welcome to episode six of the frugal firearms podcast, the podcast designed
to help you, the shooter get the most value for your money, get the most
enjoyment, get the most pleasure, get the most product that you can possibly
afford and bring it to the range, bring it out on the hunt, show to your friends.
Really enjoy shooting sports to the maximum for the
investment that you're making.
My cohost is Ken.
Say hello, Ken.
Hello everyone.
Listen to me in today.
And today's topic is what Ken?
Reloading frugal basis, sort of a thing.
Yeah.
Today actually, you know, Ken being my cohost actually is the guest as well
because he's the expert in reloading and I am not.
So I'm going to play the part of the ignorant interviewer and he's going to
play the part of the subject matter expert.
Everything we say here today though, is we give our common disclaimer about,
you know, you're responsible for any actions or decisions you take based
on the content of our show.
We're only representing our own opinions and nothing more than that.
None of this is legal advice, but specifically today consider safety
because reloading, you know, can get you in a world of hurt if you do it wrong.
So, you know, always refer to the Sammy manuals, other reloading references
and plan accordingly plan to be safe, but also get the most out of
your reloading experience.
So Ken, you know what?
Something we've never done for the listeners before.
We've never really talked about, you know, who we are.
And how we got into shooting.
So why don't you do a little bit of, you know, kind of intro yourself and maybe
I'll introduce myself a little bit and then we'll get into that.
Sure.
Um, I, um, I was never really brought up with shooting, um, with the, with the
exception of my, I had at my father who passed away when I was only three and a
half years old, he was primarily a duck hunter back on the East coast and he had
a lot of shotguns, a lot of side by side shotguns and so forth.
My mom was 29 years old with three kids under the age of six when she was widowed
and, um, she had his gun collection.
What happened over time was, you know, she was concerned with two boys under
the age of six, inquisitive boys.
We knew what guns were.
We've seen them on TV, uh, very interested in them.
Wanted to play with them and stuff and no, couldn't do any of that.
My mom had them all locked away, but over time and the fact that she needed money,
she ended up, uh, selling, uh, pretty much all of my dad's firearms collection,
which is kind of always saddened me, uh, over time, uh, a lot of his side by
sides and went, went, went away.
And, um, there was only one firearm that was retained, which was the last
firearm that was given to him by his father, my grandfather, which was a, uh,
a Saco or Saco Bixson, uh, in 222, Remington, very beautiful firearm.
I'm fortunate to have it today.
And it fires the 222, um, which if anybody knows, it's also known as the triple deuce.
It was an incredibly accurate bench, uh, rifle still is today.
And it was the case and cartridge that was used for the five, five, six military.
The 223 and the five, five, six military were based on the, on the
222, uh, Remington cartridge.
It came out about 1950 or something like that.
And that was used.
So all of the M16s and all those two, two, three, five, five, six ammo, and all
your AR platforms, those all come, uh, because of the, uh, the 222 Remington.
And actually the first ARs that were ever built by Armalite, uh, were built in,
uh, 222 Remington.
And I actually about 35 years ago, had a chance of actually buying one of those.
And idiot, I didn't do it.
I should have picked up one of those early AR, uh, semi-autos in 222 Remington.
It would have been very interesting.
So let me ask you a question based on that, because, um, you know, for our
listeners, just background, Ken and I have a somewhat different perspective on,
on collecting, if you will, guns.
You have a lot more than I do.
And it is part of that last statement is that, you know, because of the
regret, maybe sort of a FOMO thing, you know, fear of missing out that now you
are inclined to buy things that probably I would not be inclined to buy.
I mean, over time, uh, I had the opportunity of, you know, talking to my
uncles, uh, who, who knew my dad and, uh, and they would say, Oh, you know, your
dad had a 16 gauge side by side, uh, I think Stevens or, or, or
Stirling worth or something, and, um, I was like, gotta get a 16 gauge side by
side.
So I own a 16 gauge side by side, even though 16 gauge is kind of a, it's more
unusual gauge by today's standards.
It's not as popular, but it was, but that's a really good one to, I mean, not
that we want to segue right this moment into talking about reloading, which is,
you know, the central topic today, but that's probably one you would need to
reload to be able to make it affordable to use.
Yeah.
To make it affordable.
Yeah.
I mean, they do sell it.
You can't find it at the big box stores, 16 gauge.
It's still there because they made a ton of 16 gauge shotguns back in the early
part of the 20th century.
And I think there are even still a few manufacturers that are chambering in
that they call it the sweet 16.
It's a gauge, which is halfway between a, a 12 gauge and a 20 gauge.
Uh, it had a lot more use back in the day because there were, there actually
were probably more differences, but in today's loadings of both 20 gauge and
12 gauge, you can, they pretty much overlap or they're very close to overlapping.
So the 16 gauge kind of got squeezed out, but it's, it's kind of a classic,
uh, classic gauge and whenever I do take it out and shoot with it, it is a
nostalgic piece for me.
And I really liked that.
So, and I've done that other things.
He had, um, a supermatic, uh, semi-automatic 22 target pistol from high
standard, and that was sold off and I acquired another one of those.
And again, it's an original from about 1958 or 59, beautiful pistol.
I came with the original box of the one I got.
Ultimately, the one that you got that was, I think to you, the most important
was, was representative of what your dad carried in the war, right?
Oh yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
My dad carried the, uh, a BAR in Korea and got two bronze stars, uh, for
Valor, uh, with a, with a BAR Browning Automatic Rifle model, 1918.
And of course, since that's a, generally speaking, a fully automatic firearm,
uh, and can't be purchased here.
Um, they do make a variant called the Browning, uh, BAR 1918A3, which is
a semi-automatic firearm.
It's basically made with a new receiver, but basically made on all original
parts, original barrel, original stock, a lot of the, a lot of the components,
a bipod and so forth are all original pieces that came off of either, uh, mainly
World War II and Korean, uh, Korean War era type things.
And it's a semi-automatic 30-06, fires from a closed bolt.
So it has much of the same feel as if you were watching Band of Brothers, um,
same firepower basically, but semi-automatic and, uh, and closed bolt.
It's actually super accurate, incredibly accurate.
People are floored by the accuracy of that rifle.
It weighs 18 pounds unloaded and loaded.
It's like 22 pounds.
And that's part of the experience of having that gun, which is it's the same
weight.
Oh yeah.
And you have to, you have to really put your, take your hat off to the people who
carried that firearm, uh, in combat, both in World War II, actually starting in
World War I and then World War II.
And of course in Korea and actually was used all the way up through Vietnam.
Um, and, uh, you occasionally even see one showing up on the, uh, on the news
in the Philippines or something like that.
It's, it's fascinating.
Right.
Yeah.
I think by contrast, the difference with me, I mean, to tell you the truth, you
were there as a friend right at the beginning of my gun experience, Ken and I,
our first common interest was actually in cars.
Uh, and, and that was, uh, preceded by years before guns.
And I think that some point you said, you know, you should get into guns or
something.
I don't remember exactly what the, what the tipping point for me was.
Perhaps you do.
I don't happen to remember that, but all of my purchases have been sort of to
fulfill a specific purpose or niche.
So my collection is smaller because if I don't perceive that a gun doesn't do
something different or better than another gun that I already have, then I
don't buy it.
So, you know,
Whereas I, my philosophy is different.
I look at things and go, now that's a really weird and unusual design.
I need that.
Right.
I need that to add to my collection because I mean, they didn't make very
many of those.
That's a really strange looking thing.
And you know, odd, odd action to it or something about it's different, very
different, but I'm intrigued by it.
I'll buy one sometimes too.
And I did insert the word quote, I need that deliberately because I've heard you
say that any number of times, like Ken, why do you need that?
Like, and the question is,
You need a roof over your head.
You need food.
You need water.
The question is, how many firearms do you need?
Oh, that's very easy.
Easy question to answer.
It's one or two more than I currently have.
It's the answer to that question.
And for anybody who's a collector, they ask a collector, how many of those
things do you need?
And it's always one or two more than I have.
I have a friend who collects bass guitars and he has electric bass guitars.
And I go, how many, he's got like 15 of them.
How many you need?
And he's like, I need one or two more than I have.
Okay.
Everyone's a little different.
There you go.
Right.
There you go.
So that leads us into the discussion, the primary discussion today,
which is reloading and how you can be frugal.
And actually you've, you've touched on this before, Ken,
getting better results via the reloading route.
And, and so what I want to talk about as the, you know, the person who doesn't
reload, doesn't have reloading equipment in all honesty.
I'm not just, I'm not just playing the ignorant card here.
I am ignorant.
So, uh, I'm going to ask questions that might seem a little elemental, but, uh,
I'm assuming that some of our, our listeners also don't have that background as well.
So I'll start off just, you know, since we were talking history, so
based on your firearms journey, what led you to reloading?
Was it boredom or was it a need for a better round or was it a need to save money or something else?
It was probably a need to save money and a need to be somewhat self-reliant, not have to rely upon
because as I say, I got a bunch of unusual calibers and, uh, it's very difficult to get
factory loaded ammunition on some of these things, but I always tell people save your brass because
your brass, most pieces of brass can be reloaded anywhere from 10 to 30 or 40 times.
It depends on the pressure and stuff. So a lot of it was, you know, I would get a certain amount of
brass and then from there it would be, okay, I can reload that thing, you know, 10 times.
So if you have a hundred pieces of brass and you can reload it 10 times, you really have a thousand
pieces you could go out and shoot really by the time you needed more stuff. And I didn't want to
rely upon the supply chain because we've had runs on, runs on various, uh, ammunition things when
we had different presidential elections and so forth. There's been runs on ammunition and you
couldn't get it. And the prices have gone up astronomically from when you and I started shooting.
Do you mean in reloading supplies or in factory made ammunition? Are you talking about both?
I'm talking about both, but historically we used to be able to get a single round of 22 long rifle
for about a penny around. Now they're about 10 cents around. I mean, granted we've been
shooting for 30 plus years, but you know, it's gone up dramatically. A primer, your typical
rifle primer or pistol primer, they come in different sizes. They're small, they're small
pistols, small, small rifle, and then there's large pistol and large rifle. There are bunches
of variations on it, but I mean, they were typically around two cents, three cents a piece.
Now they're typically around 12 cents a piece, 10, 12 cents a piece. So sometimes less,
sometimes more depends on what it is, but they've gone up significantly. A pound of gun powder
used to routinely be about 20 bucks at the gun show, about 20, 21, $22. Now ranging anywhere
from 35 to $50 a pound. And you've looked recently, these are relatively recent prices.
Yeah, relatively recent prices. Wow. Now is that because we're in California or, or did you say
that that's partly that is California, but I mean, you know, we're going to be somewhat skewed
because we're out here on the left coast and we, we experienced the prices that are out here on the
left coast, which are higher, I grant you than most of the other parts of the country, but
nonetheless, um, and there have been runs on primers, for example, primers were very, very
difficult to get ahold of and that included by the main, by the ammunition manufacturers, but
surprisingly some ammunition manufacturers making factory ammunition, uh, don't make their own
primers and they rely upon actually a fairly small number Remington CCI. Right. And then there are
some overseas ones that come out there that from, you know, Europe and stuff. So primers were very
difficult to get, get. And the first one, I first started getting into reloading and somebody said
to me, he says, if you go to a gun show and you walk around, you bring in a couple of hundred bucks
with you or whatever you're going to spend and buy some stuff. He says, at the end of the show,
if you got 20 or 30, 40 bucks left in your pocket that you hadn't spent, cause you didn't find what
you're looking for, go over and buy some primers. I'd be like, but you know, I'm not really even that
into reloading yet. He goes, does matter. Go buy primers because that's going to be the most
difficult thing to find. If you ever had a, without rule of law situation or some sort of thing,
situation where you had to create your own ammunition, the most difficult thing to find
is always going to be the primers powder. You can, you can burn all sorts of things. Heck,
you can make your own black powder in your house. You know, I mean, there's lots of YouTube videos
on how to create black powder and that type of thing. So finding something to burn is not,
that's the problem. Igniting it reliably with a primer is the most single, most difficult thing.
So I started collecting primers, you know, just as get a box here and it used to buy them a box of
a thousand, you know, and get a box of a thousand for like 25, 30 bucks. Now a box of a thousand
when you buy the a hundred bucks, you know, sort of a dime a piece. So what's the economics. So
let's, let's talk about, you know, when you're going to build this bullet or round, I should say
from the bullet, the primer, the powder and the case. Yep. Four components that make up a
cartridge. As, as a function of a factory load, what do you expect to spend as a percentage?
Okay. Or, or, or is that the wrong argument? No, no, no, it varies. Now say for example,
you were talking about making your own or reloading your own nine millimeter. Well, nine millimeters,
the single most popular center fire, handgun cartridge in the world. Okay. They make gazillions
of them, right? You can buy a thousand rounds now for around 350 bucks for a thousand or 35 cents
a piece. That's the typical factory price, even in California right now. And then that price had been
higher and it's been coming down a little bit, which is good, but 35 cents. If you're going to
be reloading nine millimeter, the argument is I just want range ammo, plinking ammo, just to go
in and practice and stuff like that. It could be more of a hard sell to say, no, I'm going to
reload my own just because the amount of time you're going to be invested in and you've got to get
the components and so forth. Uh, I mean, you might be able to make your own round force. Let's say,
assuming you already had the brass, you got to clean the brass, you know, clean up, put new powder,
new primer. So, uh, primer is going to run, you say eight cents, eight cents for a primer powder.
You know, I don't know. That's probably 10 cents in there, say up to 18 cents and the bullet's
going to cost you a dime. Uh, depends on what, just a range bullet, nothing special, maybe 11,
12 cents. So you're already up to, you know, pretty close to 30 cents. Okay. But you can buy
a factory loaded piece of ammunition, like 35 cents. So if you're talking about nine millimeter
to reload, yes, I think you should be able to do it. Yes, I think you should have the components
to do it at home, but can you make a case where you absolutely positively have to reload nine?
No. Now you start talking the rifle cartridges, uh, or some of the more unusual cartridges,
you know, you got yourself a British 303N field bolt action rifle from the world war two, or you
got yourself a, a 30, 30, the Winchester lever action. Okay. Now you're talking that those rounds
of ammunition are costing factory loaded ammunition or dollar, sometimes $2 a round for some of those.
Now you absolutely can make a much better financial decision reloading it yourself. Even some of like
the 44 magnums or the, uh, uh, some of the more unusual handgun cartridges, the economics of it
are definitely there. Plus, and what you alluded to Craig earlier was the ability to create your own
custom load because every firearms, you had two identical firearms, two identical rifles that came
off the factory and you both took them to the range and you started playing with the loads, the same
exact rifle, same caliber, same barrel twist rate. Everything's identical, two identical rifles.
You take them to the range and begin shooting them next to each other using loads that start
differing by like a 10th of a grain or one grain of powder this way or that way. You'll find out
that each rifle will have better accuracy on probably different loads. They'll be close,
but they'll be different. So every firearm is slightly different. It's slightly different.
The chambers are different. The barrels are different. It just, it different. And if you're
going to go for absolute accuracy, you're going to become a bench rest shooter or you're shooting
for a hunting round where you you're going to take a 700 yard shot at a bull moose, you know,
or something like this, you really want the distance, then you're going to want to reload
and you're going to want to do it yourself. And you're going to probably build specifically
right onto that rifle where that cartridge may function in other firearms of the same caliber,
but it's going to function best in your particular rifle. And that's where hand loading really comes
in. All right. So let's talk about, you know, you've got me interested, right? So, but I'm
going to rely on you, but not everyone has you as a resource. So for, for listeners who are interested
in pursuing this because they see the benefit and they see the economics behind it. So kind of scale
the investment here. If, if a person wants to, like, you can start off with this, you know,
a single station and you can, you know, move up to progressives and things like that. I mean,
how would you, I mean, assuming that, you know, again, this is the frugal firearms podcast,
and we're assuming that most of our listeners are going to not write the check for, you know, the
best thing that they can find from the most expensive provider. How would you approach,
you know, scaling up the investment process? The entry level one, I would probably start out with,
just to see if you like this by a hundred primers. Okay. That's going to run you about 10 bucks.
Okay. You get a hundred primers, you're probably getting down to supporting good stores, something
like that. They sell them in packs of a hundred, 500 and a thousand. Okay. And 5,000 actually too,
but you probably just come by a hundred and it's going to be a little tiny pack, about four inches
square. And it's going to be a hundred primers and make sure you get the proper ones. It'll be small
pistol, you know, Magnum pistol, large, large pistol, large rifle. Make sure you get the right
one for the cartridge that you're going to try to reload. Great. Let's call it, let's call it a
diamond piece. You've hopefully been saving your brass, your range brass. You've been shooting at
the range and picking that stuff up and saving it, which I would encourage everyone to save
for several reasons. Obviously the most pieces of brass are worth anywhere from eight cents to,
you know, or more up to a dollar or more, some of the more unusual rounds. So it's always save your
brass and you can trade the brass. Even if you're not a reloader, you go to a gun show with a whole
bag full of 30 out of six brass that's been once fired. You can walk up to a table and go, Hey,
um, I need some loaded ammunition or kind of, you know, some factory ammunition. I trade you some of
these. And most of the time the guys behind the table will say, absolutely, because they know that
reloaders are going to be there doing it. So, okay, you buy yourself a hundred primers, okay, 10 bucks
and then go out and, and, uh, probably buy one pound of powder. Let's call it 30 bucks. And again,
before you do any of this, you probably got to look up on a website or a book. You're going to
come up with basically a recipe and you're going to pick one of the recipes that have been tried
and true. There's, they're on the website, uh, Hornady Hodgkin has some websites that do it.
And they basically have, I'm going to call them recipes for creating a loaded cartridge.
Are those, are those reliable enough to not just from a performance perspective, but do they need
to look at the, you know, the Sammy guidelines to say that the round is, is quote unquote safe
based on the component tree, the load and so on. I mean, is that, yeah. I mean, I would say that
that would probably be at a minimum standard, you'd want to know that it has passed muster that way.
Correct. I mean, you basically can, your, whatever you reload, you never start at the maximum.
Um, you always start at the minimum, way down, way down at the minimum. And you work your way up
by a 10th of a grain or a grain, depending on the thing. Let me tell you a little bit about grains.
Powder, modern powder, actually even old powder, but powder is measured in grains.
It's one of those throwbacks to the English system prior to the metric system. And we have pounds
instead of kilos and all the rest of stuff. So you buy a pound of powder. So how many grains
are in a pound? That's an interesting question. Well, it's a seventh thousandth of a, is it seven
thousandth of a, yes, right. It's one seven thousandth of a pound. And you're like, what,
what drunkard picked one seven thousandth of a, of a pound to equal a grain. Okay. I don't know who
did it, but it was done, you know, centuries ago. And that's what we're stuck with. So, so, uh,
I think it had an agricultural reference, didn't it? To like grains of rice. I mean,
like a carrot is actually based on a seed. So it's, it's, it's along those lines. I would get
anybody by now, probably half our listeners have already pulled up Wikipedia and already have the
answer. So right. They probably have the answers now back in the day when we only had black powder,
just as like prior to like, you know, year 1900, okay. When things mean a lot, most firearms are
still using black powder. Black powder was measured not by weight, was measured volumetrically.
So they measured it by volume. So black powder was measured by volume. Okay. Modern powders,
because the chemistry and the chemists have gotten really good at being able to get a lot of energy
into a much lighter and smaller amount of powder. That's not, modern powders are not measured
volumetrically. They are measured by grains, by weight. So it's very important that when you
start reloading, the single most important thing you have to do is to make sure that you have the
proper weight of the powder or whatever the charge is that you're putting into it. And the
differences can be stark. Like there's a particular powder that I like for reloading handgun ammunition
for both 38 special, 357 Magnum, nine millimeter, all of that stuff, which is called tight group.
Okay. All right. Well, tight group, I load, I reload like my 38 special in it. And a light
load and 38 specialist 2.7 grains and a heavier load would be like a 3.5 grains. So one pound of
powder, okay. At 3.5 grains would allow me to reload 2000 rounds of 38 special. 2000 rounds out
of one single pound of powder. So you're like, wow, that's an amazing thing. Nine millimeter,
you know, uses a little more powder because higher pressure and stuff like that. But since the
chemistry is so good on the modern powders, it's absolutely critical that you don't overcharge or
put too much powder in because you can literally grenade, turn it, turn your handgun into a hand
grenade. And you can watch YouTube videos where people have put the wrong powder in. They thought
they were putting in a certain brand and a certain type of powder in there and they picked the wrong
one. All the powders burn at different rates and they have different expansions. They expand at a
different rate because they are technically a propellant or I guess you call them a class one
explosive or whatever. They're not a high explosive. They're a low explosive. I think that's the
difference. But a powder is a propellant really. And the propellants burn at different rates and
expand at different rates. And it's absolutely critical. The single most important thing that
you have to do in reloading is make sure that the weight is proper, which is why you usually want
to get a really good scale. Now they've got scales that are little mechanical tipping scales. They do
work. But I would tend not to use a mechanical scale, although they do function. You can get one
of these digital scales. You can get them for 30 bucks or something on Amazon. Zillions of brands,
they have test weights that you sit on there. You put it on a little scale that says, oh yeah,
that's 10 grains or whatever it is. You zero it out. You calibrate your scale every time before
you use it, that type of thing. That all works great. So again, if you learn nothing else,
the most important thing is that you have a good, I'm going to call it recipe for your reload,
which means that it's a certain caliber. It's a certain type of primer. It's a certain exact
certain type of powder, because powders are all very different. It's not just the weight of the
powder. It's that you know that this is a tight group powder or this is a, there are probably 50
to 75 different powders that you can probably purchase. And whatever recipe that you've gotten
from either a book or from a website, you have to stick with it and start very low on that scale,
low amount of powder. And then if you need to work your way up, you can work your way up a little
tiny bit at a time, but you'll learn that over time. Yeah. Well, or you'll learn it one way or
the other. What would you say would be then as far as the reloading equipment? So now we've talked
about, I mean, maybe we were, you know, beyond the scope of this show would be bullet choice,
because that has a lot to do with terminal ballistics and things like that. And the purpose
of the round, and this could get three dimensional very, very quickly. But let's talk a little bit
about the actual reloading presses, you know, going from single stage all the way up through
progressives. Initially, if a person were interested in getting into reloading and they're
going to try it like a handgun or a rifle or a loader or loading, and they want to go in totally
cheaply, there's something called a Lee loader, L E E loader, and they've been making these for decades.
And this is for a lot of people, their first way into, into reloading, they actually don't require
a press at all. You require a tap hammer, and that's about it. It's a little kit, they sell them on,
on Amazon, they're roughly around 40 bucks or so for whatever caliber you're looking for.
And you can actually create reloadable usable ammunition for about 40 bucks. And this is a,
is a kit that you can also, you know, wrap up and toss into your, you know, your backpack or
something. If you were going out into the forest, you can actually reload in the field with this as
well without having to have, have a lot. So the company Lee, L E E, I actually have a huge amount
of respect for. They are both a budget entry level sort of a company, but they also have a ton of
patents and they've been in it for longer than probably most other reloading companies. And
they make very quality stuff and I'm very happy about that. But I would consider going with a Lee
loader at first and would probably send people off to YouTube. And there are a bunch of YouTube
videos on how to use a Lee loader. It's a nice thing to have, even if you don't like want to
reload in the field or something like that, but it's a, it's a very tiny package. The thing comes
in about a six inch by five inch by one inch thick little box. All you need is your primers, you need
some powder and you need your bullets that you're going to all be buying at the local sporting goods
store and a scale of course, the most carefully measure the amount of powder and the exact type
of powder you're going to be using because you've already gotten an approved recipe that you've
gotten off the internet or something. So a Lee loader is not a bad way for a person to start.
But you also need dyes though, don't you? Because you have to get the seat depth.
You don't need the Lee loader. The Lee loader is the Lee loaders are unique to each, um,
to each caliber. Oh, okay. So it's, it's essentially the dye is already built into the product. Okay.
Yeah. So as you get into, for real now, if you get into other, like a traditional bench mounted
press, then you're talking about dyes that can be, well, obviously can expand geometrically
according to your interest in, in, in how you want, how many different calibers you want and so on
and so forth. Where would you say sort of the wise investment is the next step up? Again,
I would stick with Lee Lee makes a bunch of very interesting tools that, uh, reloading tools that
I think, uh, if you're just getting into it and want to see if you like it or not,
or if you just think you want to be able to reload, but only in the case of an emergency type of deal
where you want to know how to do it, but you don't necessarily want to do it every time.
There are some people who poo poo Lee. Oh, you know, you only have Lee, but that's not true.
These guys are really good at what they do. And to be honest with you, if all you ever owned in
your life was Lee equipment, you'd be doing just great. There's no problem with it at all. So
anyway, we talked about the Lee loader as kind of being entry level one or a field field reloading.
And if it's something that I would consider buying, they're about $40 for Lee loader,
get them probably used on eBay and stuff. They make them for decades and decades.
Uh, and it's a way to get into reloading to try it out. You like it, you don't like it.
I totally understand one way or the other, but it's also nice thing to have in case, uh,
you can't find ammunition and you have the ability to create your own. That's always a possible thing.
The next step up is another Lee product. Um, it seems like I'm, I, we always probably get Lee on
the, on the, I was going to say, I didn't know this was going to turn into an advertisement for Lee.
I mean, I'm just saying, I really liked their stuff. Uh, the next step up was they have a hand
press, which is kind of like this little, uh, it looks like a kind of giant nutcracker type of a
deal. And it lets you put in standard dies and a Lee hand press, uh, is where you're actually going
to step up to a set of dies. When you buy a set of, uh, reloading dies, you buy them for a caliber
specific and they are precision machined. Oftentimes they have, uh, you know, high, high speed
steel and carbide components to it. And then it's the best way you can, it's the way you can get the
absolute closest to a factory load than anything else is with, with a set of, uh, of actual dies.
So, and a set of dies will run you anywhere from 50 to $75, uh, depending on the caliber type of
deal. And there are oftentimes there are different types of dies and we can go into that as well.
There's full length dies. There's, there's a neck only dies, you know, there's, so there's a lot of
variation and they're interesting and we can, we could talk about that for a while, but anyway,
you're going to need a set of dies.
How much does it take to offset the cost? I mean, if you're talking $75 just for a die,
for one caliber, then I guess we'll all let people do their own math about that.
That's a consideration of where the return on investment.
Yeah. So not only do you need the, the, the primers, the powder and the bullets. Okay.
Those are going to, you're going to need those anyway. You're now going to need,
okay, you're going to set up, uh, get a set of dies. Okay. Let's call it, um,
50 to $60. Okay. Let's call it $60 for a set of really quality dies. Okay. Great.
Then you're going to need some sort of a press and that's going to be like a hand press,
which is going to be probably $75. It's called $75. Um, and so you start adding up those costs
and yes, you're, you're thinking, well, gee, that's, that's a big investment. Yeah. You're,
you're approaching, you're over a hundred bucks now. You're probably getting closer to $200 for
your investment. And what are you buying for that? Well, if you're just going to be doing range ammo
and nine millimeter stuff may not be, may not be an investment you want to make. However,
if it's something that you're going to sit there and go, well, I got kind of a more unusual,
I got a 30, 30, I got a center fire or 308 or a 30 at six or two 70 or some, uh, you know,
more unusual one. I think it's, it becomes your investment at that point in time, your $200
investment becomes something where this is a good thing because you can then start, uh, reloading
your own and then making the custom ammunition that allows you to tune it specifically to your
rifle for either a light load. If you don't want to do something to rip your shoulder off on some
of these Magnum rounds, or you just want a plinking round, something you just want to punch holes in
paper with or whatever it might be. It's the ability to create the exact one that you, the
load that you want for your particular handgun or rifle. And also the fact that you now have the
ability to create your own ammunition, provided of course, you have some commercially available
components like the primers and the powder and the bullets and, uh, you know, all of those things,
you can make yourself at home as well, but you're really getting kind of an esoteric,
the vast majority of reloaders never do any of that. Well, actually, but, you know,
what someone does do that, that we, that we've been in contact with, uh, not to be named right now,
but there's a potential guest coming up on the show who reached out to us, who is interested in,
he does exactly that. He makes his own ammunition now sells it commercially.
Yeah, it can absolutely be done. Um, so when you're making ammunition, you mentioned it
commercially, when you're making ammunition, you're really making it for yourself, for your
own consumption at this point in time, because if you mess it up, um, and you sell it, you're
selling it commercially and somebody, you give it, make it too hot a load or something like that.
Somebody else puts it in their gun and blows it up and purchase themselves. Well, you're,
you know, you've got a liability there, but reloading is, is really done primarily as an
individual or maybe a family type of thing. Somebody you trust, but, uh, it's not something
that you, you, you should always be very concerned that if you're buying reloaded ammunition, that
you buy from a reputable source or from somebody, you know, who makes reputable ammunition because.
So let's, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, because you can't be making a hand grenade.
You can, you it's done wrong with the wrong pattern, too much of it or whatever.
You have a hand grenade in your hand, literally. So tell me now, let's go to the other end of the
scale. Someone, you know, says, cool, I'm, I'm all in, but I don't want to do the progressive
investments of start with a single stage and then go up to a three stage and then so on, so on, so
on. Uh, what do you get if you go right for the top end? Because, you know, maybe there's an
efficiency argument there that I know I'm going to want to do this, but I'm not going to, like I
mentioned before, use the reloading press as a substitute for going to the gym. And I'm not
going to stand there and do multiple swipes per round. So tell us about the progressive reloaders.
Okay. At the high end of the scale, Craig's talking about is the progressive reloaders and the, and
there are several manufacturers who make them, but many people consider Dylan to be the gold
standard up there. And you're, you're now in that 1500 to $3,000 reloading press range.
For really, Oh, I didn't know there were that much. Oh yeah. I mean, they've got a stuff,
some that are a little bit less, maybe around a grand, but when you start getting up there
and you get automatic case feeders and automatic bullet feeders and priming stations and powder
checkers that check and weigh the powder and you know, you're now at a commercial, it's one pull
of the handle. You're getting one round out and that this is at the high end of the scale. So yeah,
you can spend, you know, $3,000, $4,000 to get yourself completely set up on a, what's called a,
you know, a progressive press. You know, it's great, great tool, but you really have to then say,
is that the type of shooter I am? Am I really putting, you know, a thousand rounds down range
every month that I need to come home and do it? Most people aren't, they're going to start
frugally, shall we say, and they're going to start at that low end of the scale and they'll
advance. They'll move things up. Let me give you an example of this. One of the things that you want
to do with your brass is you want to clean it. Okay. So one of the first ways, I mean, you can
clean it by tossing it into your, into your, put it in a special bag and put it into your dishwasher
and it cleans it up reasonably well. But in reality, most people, the first thing they do is they
get a vibratory cleaner. They get a little, they still have harbor freight, they vibrate,
they get little containers, they vibrate and you put in, typically speaking, crushed walnut shells
inside of it. And then you toss your brass into it and the thing just vibrates away for an hour or
two and it just rubs all those little pieces of walnut shell all over your brass and it polishes
them up. And in an hour or two later, you take that thing out and it looks gorgeous. It looks
beautiful. It's, I mean, it's polished brass, just like somebody sat there and polished it amazing.
So when you do that, that's, that's like one of the first things for cleaning a brass when you want
to clean a hundred cases or maybe, maybe 200 cases of brass. You've got to toss into your vibratory
cleaner, turn it on, set the timer, go watch a movie on TV, come back in a couple hours and
take them out and then they got to separate the media, the cleaning media out from the brass cases.
It's not a bad way to go. A lot of people start there. I started there. I have a couple of vibratory
cleaners, but after a while, what you find out is the little tiny pieces of a walnut shell get
themselves wedged in the primer hole. After you punched a primer hole out. So then you're, you
know, I'm, I'm taking up and looking down there with a light behind it and punching out with a
little pin, punching out the little pieces of a walnut shell that gets stuck in there. It's not,
it's not necessarily bad. It's just okay. So what are your next steps up from there? Well, then they
have liquid where, and this is where I go over to Franklin Armory. Franklin Armory makes another
bunch of really good tools that I consider to be frugal. And it's another step up. They have these
cleaners. They've got two different sizes and it's basically a little tiny bathtub. It's about the
size of a five pound coffee can back in the day, you know, about a foot long and about eight
inches in diameter. And it's totally sealed. So you, you put it in there. You add some, you fill
it up with water, put your cases in there, add some dish soap and typically a little bit of a lemon.
No, no, it's a lemon additive that they use for dishwashers to keep the spots away from your,
Oh, a rinse aid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Add a little that in there and a couple of little capful of,
you know, your favorite dishwashing stuff like that. And you put the whole thing in there along with
the stainless steel media, the stainless steel pins that are about maybe, maybe a little less,
little more than a quarter inch long. And they're really little tiny things. They put about two and
a half pounds of these little tiny pins. They're like, they look exactly like pins that are about,
you know, about a quarter inch long. You drop them in there along with your brass,
and then you just turn this thing on and it just turns and rotates constantly. Now, the nice thing
about it is it's quiet. Whereas the vibratory cleaners, you got to have the thing in the garage
someplace because the thing's buzzing away, making noise all the time. This thing, they're quieter.
They make noise, but it's pretty quiet. And then you come back in about an hour and all of a sudden
the water that was in there is just filthy and you got to pour it, pour it out, you know, maybe add
some more water if it was really dirty and do it again for another hour or so. And then ultimately
you got to pour the whole thing out and then you got to separate it, separate all the pins out,
which you can do. They've got separators, you know, for doing it. They're magnetic too. You
can pull them off with magnets and stuff like that. You rinse out all the brass. Brass comes out looking
gorgeous on the inside, on the outside, everywhere. And that's cleaning it with these water and pins.
So if you start getting into reloading more, you do that. And I guess since you're not reloading
steel cases, and maybe you should just make a quick mention of why, but you know, the brass and the
magnetic steel, you know, that's maybe the best way to separate those. Maybe not. I don't know.
I'm not really sure about that if I think about it, because if I have, you know, 10,000 little
quarter inch pins stuck to my magnet, how the hell do I get them off my magnet? You know,
unless it's an electromagnetic that I can turn off and have them all dropped or something. I mean,
that sounds painful. Well, generally speaking, nobody reloads steel case ammunition.
Steel case ammunition, although it's popular. I mean, Tula makes it. A lot of stuff comes up
from Russia and the Eastern Bloc, maybe not now during the Ukraine War, but it used to come in
there. There's a lot of it out there. Steel case ammunition is generally speaking, fire once and
walk away. And that's it. You know, just recycle it as steel, but it's not anything you're going to
try to reload. Also, I can talk about another thing about primer types. Oddly enough. I knew that was
coming. Right. Yeah, primer types. There are really two types of primers in the reloading world.
There's something called Boxer primed, and there's something called Burdan primed. Interestingly
enough, if you go back and do the history on it, Burdan primers were invented here in the United
States during the Civil War, I believe by a gentleman, one of the union officer Burdan,
and they are wildly popular in Europe. The other priming method that is used is Boxer primed.
And Boxer primed, I believe, if you look it up, were invented in, I think, the UK, England.
And they're wildly popular in the United States. So it's kind of interesting that the two different
methods of priming cartridges, one invented in the United States, popular in Europe, the other
invented in Europe, popular in the United States. The advantage of Boxer primed, if you ever get a
piece of brass and you, and that's been fired and the bullets already gone, the powder's gone,
you take a little flashlight and you look down inside the brass, inside the case, you look down
all the way to the bottom of the case and you see a single hole down at the bottom that is Boxer
primed. And that's typically speaking, probably 98% of all the reloading that you'll probably ever
hear about being done in the United States, maybe 99%, is going to be reloading Boxer primed. The
reason is it's very easy to take a single punch, go right down through the center of the cartridge
and then just push through the little primer hole and it pops out the primer. Very easy to do.
Yeah. Whereas there's two holes that are not on center.
Right. In the other.
In Berdan primed brass, which you will see, and you'll see it in particular if you collect brass
at the range and it's on the ground, you pick it up, you flash a little flashlight down there and
you look down into the bottom of the case, sometimes you see two holes, sometimes you see three
holes that are down off center. They're little, they're smaller holes. These are flash holes.
This is where the primer would flash a little jet of flame out to ignite the powder inside the case.
Whereas in a Boxer primed, you have a single hole, in a Berdan primed, you have two or three holes
and they're off centered. And it's very difficult to reload Berdan primed brass. It can be done.
There are special tools for it. Almost nobody does it. I only know one person who does it.
And that's only because he has some very, very unusual pieces of brass that have not been
manufactured in like almost a hundred years. I mean, it's just very unusual stuff. And you
can reload it. They do sell Berdan primers, but they're rare, very rare. You won't hardly ever see
them. And frankly, they're almost not worth talking about in the United States because you're not going
to, I would not recommend reloading Berdan at all. Sure. And a lot of the Eastern block stuff,
the Eastern block ammunition or the surplus ammunition you might come over, even if it's in
an American caliber, like a 30 at six, you look down, Craig, some of the 30 out that I think you've
given me, I've looked down there and it is Berdan primed. Oh, really? Oh yeah. Although it's a nice
piece of brass, 30 at six brass, probably not ever going to reload that piece. Yeah. So yeah, reminder
to the listeners too, even if you're not a reloader picking up your brass at the range, it's not only a
good thing just to keep the range clean, but you know, make a new friend who's a reloader and,
and give them that brass and maybe they'll reciprocate and give you some, some made up rounds or,
I don't know, buy you a six pack or whatever the case might be. So I guess, you know, finishing out
here, uh, what would you say if you wanted to, your average guy is probably not going to go for, for
the, you know, the six station, you know, automated reloader. He's probably not going to go for the Lee,
you know, handheld, you know, one bowl at a time thing. Can you recommend maybe not by brand, but
like, you know, where, where's the kind of the compromise in the middle, would you say that most
people like the best value proposition for most people to go to? Right. I would think that you're
going to need to get a budget probably to kind of get yourself into it somewhere between two and
$300 worth of equipment. Um, I do like, uh, the Lee equipment and I like, uh, Franklin armory equipment.
Um, about Redding and others, there's other brands, beautiful stuff, Redding, Dylan,
RCBS, these are all great stuff. I mean, fantastic quality stuff, little bit higher end. Uh, and
again, look for, look for a lot of these things on, on your eBay or, or in your local pregs list,
you know, search for reloading and reloader, uh, those two keywords. And occasionally you'll come
across some fantastic deals on presses and on various things. So educate yourself, take what
I've said, send us in some questions. I'd love to answer them. That's right. Um, and, uh, you know,
tell you what my thoughts are on various things, but there's a lot to learn and there are a lot of
different ways to do it. But again, the one single thing that I would say is know what your powder
is and be very careful about the weight of that powder. That is the single most important thing.
Cause that's the difference between having a, a, a loaded cartridge and having a hand grenade.
Right. And I think that maybe if we get one of the companies on like Hornaday, you were mentioning
or Barnes or one of the other companies to talk about the bullets themselves, then we can start
talking about things like terminal ballistics and perhaps the experience they've had. Uh, I've reached
out to a few different companies, so we're looking forward to having those as guests in the future.
And as a reminder to our guests, uh, our next couple of shows, uh, should have a couple of
different companies, you know, keeping variety of topics here, but those will be coming up in the
next few weeks. And anyone who wants to reach out to us as, as Ken mentioned, uh, can do so at
frugal firearms podcast at gmail.com, uh, or drop us a note on one of the social media, uh, either
Instagram or we're up on Twitter now as well, or Facebook, obviously hitting the, you know, the
like subscribe and leaving comments is, is definitely welcome because it helps more people see the show.
And by the way, thanks to the, uh, new international listeners, we have, we've got, uh, people in,
let's see Belgium and Poland and Germany and Hong Kong and a few others, Canada that, that have joined
the show. Uh, so that's very much appreciated as well. So what are the closing comments do you have
for us, Ken? That was, that was very informative and I think it's going to be useful for a lot of
people. Yeah, I look forward to it. I mean, there are a lot of nuances there that we could go into
further. Um, just let us know what you like to hear and, and we will try to tailor something, uh,
to talk to you all about. And if it's about reloading or something collecting, I'm your guy.
Thank you so much. Thanks very much for listening. And we hope to hear from you soon, but you will
definitely be hearing from us soon. Good night.