El cheapo 9mm; I've not seen the question yet; so I'll ask it here. Have you thought about cast bullets? They may not be worth the hassle depending on what you're after, but say 147ish gr where velocities are low anyway, could be an option?
To minimize costs, I see the following:
Cost of materials
Brass - I love my range; lots of fresh 9mm to be had.
powder - trade off between what's cheap and available, vs what is popular. Mil-surp or bulk are my recommendations.
Primer - I found this new primer; super low cost, it's called "out of stock". 100% ignition failure though, so I don't recommend them.
Bullets - again bulk, which makes it hard to test them if you've committed to 10,000.
Materials thoughts:
Brass, I love range pick-up, but yes it's more labor, and questionable as to what's it's history. This is a $ vs hrs question. I SS wet tumble the batch and sit at home inspecting the bunch in multiple small batches to break up the monotony. Brass collection to reuse brass and divide it's costs across the uses is important.
Primer, I buy what I can find. Sub $0.05 each if I can; but honestly I'm out of small pistol at this moment.
Powder, like bullets this is hard to test having already committed to bulk. Good news 1lb lasts a long time and 9mm is usually 5.0gr or less meaning that price if 1lb is divided to at least 1400 rounds. Question then is do you acquire a popular but more $$ powder; or go super cheap and get something that you know will function? (I've got 8lbs of Unique; it's a lifetime supply for me, oops ~7.699478lbs now).
Bullets, here's the biggest cost of a loaded round. Bulk, sale, estate sales, cast, or cast your own. Pay the $$ up front for small boxes and get out and try them all, whatever you can find. You want to learn what works, what does what you want, and what to avoid. Good news, you don't lose the whole bulk investment if you buy 10k and they don't work for you, post em here and re-coup some costs.
Equipment:. Ammortize (haha, see what I did there?) Your equipment over your ammo, how much do you need to load to make a purchase worth while? How much labor do you save? I once loaded up a $1500 9mm round because I was curious. Now that I have all this free equipment, might as well keep shooting.
Labor: ok let's be honest; we all pay ourselves very poorly, but we get to enjoy being responsible for the outcome. If only the shooter that I load for (which is also me) would practice more and get better!
I used to load on a single stage system. Totally doable, 100/200 round batches are my recommendation. I highly recommend you get loading using your equipment first, any idea how many people just give up on 9mm cause they can buy it and don't want to spend the time?
I moved to a Hornady lnl ap just because of pistol and 223. Love it, takes me 30 minutes to get everything dialed in nicely. 1 hour = 300-400 rounds. Limited by how often you check the system is still dialed in. I use a Wilson case gauge or a barrel from my pistol as a check on each one. Scale checks every 10. Biggest labor time now is loading up the 100 primer feed tube; and I've fixed that too; but I need to keep some safety as well.
My loaded cost?
Primer 0.032
Powder even at $500 for 8lbs, that comes out to $0.044 per round (5gr)
Bullet - cast. I like to say recycled. Say $0.12
Brass - free, I toss all the Glocks into a recycle bin. I get about $1.5/lb for brass recycle.
Bacon - about 5lbs for the whole process. Dang that stuff is $$$. Need to make my own now. That or fire my laborer and hire a new one, maybe one who knows how to shoot better.
Option I've not explored: coated bullets. I'm not loading for PCC, but that's a powder/velocity choice question where the answer sets your costs.
-Mac
