Reloading For Money?

[glockfu]

Does anyone here reload for money? If one were to get all components at wholesale pricing, would there be any money in reloading for profit?

[CSACANNONEER]

A little but, it's a lot of work and a lot of liability. Also, you would need a license.

[Requiem]

Yeah... I imagine you could, but it'd be good to have ALOT of years of experience with no F-ups because someone could sue you if you F-up.

[gunboat]

I doubt you could make enough profit to pay the insurance premiums -- If you could get insurance ---

[22popnsplat]

If the gun blows up you will be sued , It wont matter if its your fault or not .

[freakshow10mm]

You will need a type 06 FFL, ammunition manufacturer. You will also need to register with the US State Dept under ITAR, even if you aren't exporting. ALL manufacturers, guns, ammo, even gun parts and optics, need to register.

Insurance can be had for about $2100 per year for general liability. Guninsurance.com is the best one. They've been around in the gun business for decades. Most gun manufacturers are underwritten by them.

It's $10/yr ($30/3) for the FFL, ITAR is $2250, and bottom dollar insurance is $2100. Your licensing and insurance is $4360 per year alone, or $364 per month.

My suggestion, from experience as an ammunition manufacturer, is pick a niche and go with it. You will never beat the prices of the big guys on the easy to find and common stuff and still make money.

If you want to load for things like the 30-06, .270, .308, etc I suggest specialty like using all copper bullets reasonably priced or like I do, load these common cartridges to recoil no more than a standard .243 Win round but still have all the ballistics of the actual headstamp cartridge. My ammunition I load reduces recoil by 45-53% off the factory loads and still kills with the same effect. Come hunting season, I sell out every time.

LE is a good source for customer base. Reloading for them is cost effective for them and profitable for you too. And you won't have to pay the 11% FET on the ammo.

Loading obsolete or hard to find expensive factory ammunition is also a good niche. Hot Shot makes a ton of money making 7.62 Nagant ammo. It's a ***** to load but they make it work. Like the medium and big bores? How about loading some ammo for those guys? Make two styles, African power and American power. The American power can be downloaded a bit to use on deer, bear, moose, etc and still be manageable. The African power can be full house loads with temperature insensitive powders to insure reliability in hot climates.

How about .300 Savage? .256 Win mag? .327 Fed Mag? Bring a few more loads out for the old .350 Rem Mag, load up some 6.8 SPC ammo.

There are many possibilities in the ammo world.

As far as safety goes, document, document, document. Keep samples of each lot and store them. Label everything. Twice. Triple check your double checks. Treat the single round in front of you like it will save your own child, then keep doing that.

If you don't give people a reason to sue, they won't.

My ammunition loading mentor (commercially) knew Mike McNett from Doublt Tap Ammo long before there even was DT ammo and he was the one that taught Mike all about the 10mm. Mike made it famous again with his loads.

The cool thing about being an 06 FFL is you can have access to St Marks in FL where 90% of the powder in the country is made. You have access to non-commercial blends that the big factories do. You think DT uses canister powders to get those velocities with trapdoor level pressures in 45/70? Think again. That's custom blended powder you can't buy at ABC Reloading Supply.

Hope that helps a bit.

[Beelzy]

You will need a type 06 FFL, ammunition manufacturer. You will also need to register with the US State Dept under ITAR, even if you aren't exporting. ALL manufacturers, guns, ammo, even gun parts and optics, need to register.

Insurance can be had for about $2100 per year for general liability. Guninsurance.com is the best one. They've been around in the gun business for decades. Most gun manufacturers are underwritten by them.

It's $10/yr ($30/3) for the FFL, ITAR is $2250, and bottom dollar insurance is $2100. Your licensing and insurance is $4360 per year alone, or $364 per month.

My suggestion, from experience as an ammunition manufacturer, is pick a niche and go with it. You will never beat the prices of the big guys on the easy to find and common stuff and still make money.

If you want to load for things like the 30-06, .270, .308, etc I suggest specialty like using all copper bullets reasonably priced or like I do, load these common cartridges to recoil no more than a standard .243 Win round but still have all the ballistics of the actual headstamp cartridge. My ammunition I load reduces recoil by 45-53% off the factory loads and still kills with the same effect. Come hunting season, I sell out every time.

LE is a good source for customer base. Reloading for them is cost effective for them and profitable for you too. And you won't have to pay the 11% FET on the ammo.

Loading obsolete or hard to find expensive factory ammunition is also a good niche. Hot Shot makes a ton of money making 7.62 Nagant ammo. It's a ***** to load but they make it work. Like the medium and big bores? How about loading some ammo for those guys? Make two styles, African power and American power. The American power can be downloaded a bit to use on deer, bear, moose, etc and still be manageable. The African power can be full house loads with temperature insensitive powders to insure reliability in hot climates.

How about .300 Savage? .256 Win mag? .327 Fed Mag? Bring a few more loads out for the old .350 Rem Mag, load up some 6.8 SPC ammo.

There are many possibilities in the ammo world.

As far as safety goes, document, document, document. Keep samples of each lot and store them. Label everything. Twice. Triple check your double checks. Treat the single round in front of you like it will save your own child, then keep doing that.

If you don't give people a reason to sue, they won't.

My ammunition loading mentor (commercially) knew Mike McNett from Doublt Tap Ammo long before there even was DT ammo and he was the one that taught Mike all about the 10mm. Mike made it famous again with his loads.

The cool thing about being an 06 FFL is you can have access to St Marks in FL where 90% of the powder in the country is made. You have access to non-commercial blends that the big factories do. You think DT uses canister powders to get those velocities with trapdoor level pressures in 45/70? Think again. That's custom blended powder you can't buy at ABC Reloading Supply.

Hope that helps a bit.

Or.......For the Layman: its a PITA!!!

[gottarollwithit]

Freakshow provides a LOT of good advice. This is my take on it, but from what it looks like CA is going towards more solid copper bullets required for hunting. Buying a box of loaded rounds is frickin pricey. 50 bucks for 20 rounds of .308 is a bit much...

If you can get components for dirt cheap and the numbers don't quite crunch out for reloading for profit, i'd suggest that you reload yourself, at least in part yourself. Presses, time, tools, space are all expensive. Reloading for straight walled is simple and fast. If you reload rifle, life is a lot easier if you send your brass off to get sized/trimmed/deprimed. This allows you to still build custom loads, but cuts out all of the dirty work. If ya line everything up right, it can still be cost effective.

[freakshow10mm]

Using Graf's dealer pricing for .308 Win using monolithic nonlead bullets:

Brass: $.34
Bullets: $.54
Powder: $.10
Primers: $.02

Total cost to load one round is exactly $1.00/rd or $20/20rds.

A box of Federal Premium loaded with Barnes bullets is $42.00/20rds at Graf's retail for the MRX bullets (about same price as the TSX bullets). So your markup at even 100% to $40/20rds will give you a $1/rd cut in profit and overhead. Say you can get licensed in your home or somewhere else where overhead is negligible. We'll say $.75 per round is your bottom line, all bills paid, profit. On a box of 20 rounds you're looking at $15.00 profit. For how long, maybe 20 minutes worth of work assuming all case prep steps etc are done too. Hell, when the case prep is done, crank them out on your progressive. I load .375 H&H Magnum on my Dillon 550 progressive at 500 rounds per hour just straight loading. I spend an hour or two loading and I'm set to sell for the season.

How how many thread on Calguns were started asking where to get such a round for x caliber? I've seen at least a dozen. Now how many hunters do you think would buy two boxes off the bat from a local loaded in California ammunition manufacturer, one for the range and one for the field? Sold.

I sell around 2-3,000 rounds of rifle ammo in the fall for hunting season. I load .270,.30-06, .308, 30-30, 375 H&H Mag, .256 Win Mag, 10mm Auto, 44 Mag, and 50AE and sell out of every singe box every time. My .50AE flies off the shelf at $30/20 for Gold Dots.

If you can get the licensing and find a niche to fill, you're golden.

Why not shotgun too? I cast my own slugs and load my own ammo for 20ga and sell sabot slugs in boxes of 25rds for $1/rd. Who else does that? No one I'm aware of. Who else loads #4 shot in 20ga that isn't an overpriced turkey load? I do.

Find a niche and milk it for all it's worth.

[glockfu]

Thanks...that's awesome information Freakshow. Sounds like there is a profit to be made as I suspected but I wasn't thinking of the odd calibers which definately sounds like the way to go.

[cousinkix1953]

A local gunshop used to have a bench full of MEC reloaders when I was a kid. They supplied the presses and components. You could reload your empty 12, 16 and 20 guage shotgun shells for $2.00 a box out the door. It wasn't gonna be much cheaper, if you bought your own press; but Ted Gray sold those too.

I don't know what kind of permits he had, othrer than the standard Class 01 FFL, that is required for the sellinng of rifles, shotguns, pistols and commercial ammo for them.

We used to have another place that reloaded for the police departments and sheriff's office too...

[merritt]

Someone actually asked me if he could buy my reloads today and I told him that I couldn't sell thanks to the licensing... but man that sounds quite manageable 5 grand a year isn't much overhead for a business that you can theoretically run out of your garage.
The only drawback for me would be that there already is a custom ammo shop in town.. but so tempting if I stumble on a niche market.

[Sampachi]

Don't you need to do an environmental impact study before you open shop? I seem to remember reading that somewhere once. Might also consider looking into bullet swages.

[ilbob]

I doubt you could make enough profit to pay the insurance premiums -- If you could get insurance ---

Lots of commercial reloaders out there.

I would bet most have liability insurance.

A friend of mine is just starting to get into commercial reloading. He is waiting for his license from the BATF so he can start selling his reloads.