Reloading vs off the shelf ammo is vicious cycle. It’s easy to calculate how long it takes to get a return on your investment. First calculate the cost of your loaded rounds, compare that to the cost of purchased rounds and you have a base number. This allows you to calculate the number of rounds needed to recoup your investment, without counting labor.
To make this simple, let’s use $1 per round savings.
If you spend $1500 for your initial setup and supplies, then you need to load 1500 rounds to break even. At that point you’re out of supplies and you spend another $500. Another 500 rounds needed to load to get get back to “0”.
The good news is that after loading those 500 rounds you still have supplies left over to load a second 500 rounds. These extra rounds are pure profit.
Once you reach the point of paying off your initial investment and earning a profit. That $1 per round you are saving becomes like Bitcoin, you can’t see it or feel it in your pocket, but it’s there. Now when loading you’re getting paid $1 a round like a sub contractor. An experienced ammunition tech, (after serving as an apprentice) on a single stage press can easily load 20 rounds per hour of ammo that meets or exceeds the quality of off the shelf ammo. Basically earning a wage of $20 an hour before taxes. Depending on lifestyle and dependents, that may or may not justify the moonlighting as an ammo tech. The $40 earned loading ammo in the evening, won’t pay enough to the take the wife and kids to dinner because they don’t see you as often tax. But it’s a start.
There are a couple ways to improve your financial position. Make better ammo, or more. Maybe a combination of both. This requires another investment.
If you go the easy way and produce more, average ammo. You’ll need a progressive press. At 100-150 rounds an hour, you can easily pay off that investment the first weekend.
If you choose quality over quantity, this requires more and better tools. Precision measuring tools, scales, maybe a computer and program. Not normally calculated in the mix, but needs to be, is a test platform that can test the quality ammunition to prove its worth. That means things like a new custom rifle, maybe a scope, front rest. Those sort of things. As you can see, the initial investment in producing custom ammo is pretty big, but it can be done over time. The good news is that is that custom ammo with development is easily $15-20 per round, so it won’t be long before the initial investment is returned.
There aren’t too many evening jobs that can generate $1-200 per hour from home. Hand loading in one of them. The biggest problem is the taxation depending on your lifestyle. Many tax agents are narrow minded and refuse to see the income actually generated by turning the extra bedroom or their parking spot in the garage into a loading area. So keep that in mind when considering the supplemental income.
Also it’s not really a good idea to quit your day job to pursue this career full time. It’s best to reinvest in materials for a few years and develop a stock pile deep enough to continue loading for a number of years. Then it’s like free ammo money in your golden years. Pounds of powder, thousands of bullets, a bench full of presses, all paid for, ready to turn components into profit. With unlimited time to crank out loaded rounds.
This post should not be considered sound marital or financial advice.