Originally posted by stratman
Best thing you can do for your gun Is reload your own ammo.
For a number of reasons.
1.often cheaper
2. can taylor the loads to the way your gun shoots
3. can back off case pressures a bit and possibly extend chamber and barrel life.
4. can load more for accuracy.
5.its fun
Many many others as well.
good advice. you can get a basic "rock-chucker" set-up for about $250 new, or about $50 used (plus the price of the dies for your caliber.
if you are sure you are going to stick with it though, you are better off to go directly to a Dillon(Sp?) progressive press, for a couple hundred more. it has several stages that go at once so that once you get everything set, all you have to do is set the projectiles and pull the lever (unless you have the power press, in which case you push the button. I have friends who tell me they get over 500 rounds an hour on theirs.
which ever way you go it doesn't take very many rounds before you are saving money**, for 9mm rds it's about 4-5 cents to load a round vs about 20-30 cents for a factory load, more if you want anything close to the quality you get from re-loads
another benefit is you can control recoil and a few other factors by using different powders.
for example with my 9mm and jacketed bullets, I use Hercules blue-dot, it's the optimum burn rate for my gun (calibre/barrle length), I can get maximum fps (about 2,100), with a more steady recoil, it also burns way cleaner than factory loads, and the flame is a blueish-green instead of orange-yellow, so it doesn't blind you when fired at night.
if I load cast rds I have to slow it down to about 800 fps (to prevent barrel leading), if I try to load that light of a load with blue dot the recoil is so much slower that it doesn't have enough 'snap' to work the action, and I get jammed rds, and stove-pipes.
**disclaimer- to be truly honest, you wont actually save any money. you will pay less per round but you will just shoot more until you are spending the same.
btw- about the wolf ammo. I've never used that brand but one thing you have to be very careful about with discount ammo, particularly the types you can't re-prime is the chemical composition of the primer.
when blazer first came out (aluminum cases) it had corrosive primers, not a huge problem if you clean and oil your gun thoroughly and often but if left unchecked it can cause pitting. iirc they fixed that problem in fairly short order. of course I still don't use blazer when I buy factory loads because it doesn't contribute to my brass supply.