What a round actually costs, with the brass spread across every firing you
get out of it. Compare up to eight recipes at once. Equipment, consumables,
your time, and factory ammunition are all optional.
Loads
A new load copies the one above it, so a
component swap only takes one edit. Factory ammunition goes in as its own entry,
priced by the box. Past two entries the older ones fold away to keep the page
short.
Brass Amortization
How Far To Amortize
firings
Sets how far the charts run and which point the savings
and break even figures are quoted at. Read the curve, not the endpoint.
Cost per round above counts the case at full price, which is
what the first firing actually costs you. Nobody can tell you what a case will
give you after that, so the charts below read across a range instead of quoting
a number.
Optional Cost Factors
IncludeAll four are off by default. Each one adds
its own fields and its own charts, nothing else moves.
Brass Detail
Case loss and scrap value, entered per load in the fields that
just appeared on each row. Loss is the share of cases retired early each firing:
split necks, loose pockets, and the ones that walk off the bench.
$/lb
Zero if you keep or bin your fired brass. Case weight per
load drives what that is worth.
Consumables
Anything you buy by the bottle, bag or bottle-of-gas and use up
over a known number of rounds.
ItemPriceRounds it covers
Your Time
Costing your own labour is a choice, not an accounting rule. It
is here because at 40 rounds an hour it usually outweighs the powder.
$/hr
What an hour at the bench is worth to you.
rd/hr
Full cycle, including case prep and cleanup. Single stage
match loading runs 40 to 80. A progressive runs several hundred.
Equipment
Fixed costs spread across the rounds you expect the gear to
produce. This is the number that makes early rounds expensive and later rounds
cheap.
ItemPrice
rd
Total rounds you expect to load on this equipment before
it is replaced or you stop.
rd
Optional. Turns a break-even round count into a break-even
date.
Cost Per Round
Charts
Cost Per Round Against Brass Life
Component By Component
Every load's spend on each line item, side by side. The tall
bar is where your money is going, and it is rarely the powder.
Share Of One Round
One load at a time, as a share of its own cost. Pick the load
below.
Equipment Washing Out
Break Even Against Factory
Comparison
Brass Life Detail
Every firing count out to your horizon, per load. The first
row is a case bought new, which is the figure quoted above.
The Bottom Line
How This Is Worked Out
The arithmetic
Powder, bullet and primer are consumed once and cost what they cost. Brass is the
only component you buy once and use many times, so its cost per round is the case
price divided by the number of firings you get out of it. That single number moves
the total more than any other input on the page.
Powder is priced per pound and there are 7000 grains in a pound, so a
44 grain charge out of a 1 lb container is 159 charges.
Brass is counted at full case price in the cost per round, because that
is what the first firing costs and it needs no assumption. What a case gives you
after that depends on the chamber, the load, the sizing, and luck, so the charts
amortize it across a range you set rather than quoting a life. Turn on Brass
Detail and each firing also carries a chance of retiring the case early, which
pulls the average below the nominal count. Expected life becomes the sum of the
odds of surviving each firing, and scrap is credited only against the cases that
reach retirement.
Equipment is not a per round cost at all. It is a fixed sum divided by the
rounds you expect to make with it, which is why the first thousand rounds off a new
press are expensive and the tenth thousand are not.
Factory ammunition is entered as its own line, priced by the box, because
that is all anyone can actually know about it. A match load might name its bullet
and its brass, but the powder, the charge weight and the primer are not published,
so there is no component split to show and no brass life to amortize. It is
compared finished round against finished round.
Break even is the equipment total divided by the saving per round against
the cheapest box you entered, quoted at your amortization horizon rather than at
new brass prices. If your handload costs more in components than that
box costs to buy, there is no break even and the page says so rather than printing
a number.
What this will not tell you
Nothing here says a round is worth loading. A handload that costs more than factory
can still be the right answer if it shoots half the group, and cheap components that
do not group are the most expensive rounds on the bench once you count the match you
lost. Cost is one input to that decision and this page only does cost.
Prices move. Anything you save here is a snapshot of what you paid, not what the
shelf says today. Component availability tends to move prices harder than anything
else in this trade, so revisit the numbers when you restock.