You guys need to look into reloading your own. I shoot all I want for $3 per thousand. Yeah, it's time consuming. Yeah, there's some upfront cost. Yeah, there's a lot to learn but you will never again be hostage to the primer manufacturer's greed.
https://aardvarkreloading.com/
Exactly. There is crazy inflation, shortages of nearly everything, and labor issues, but still, there no other product out there right now that has gone up in price as much as primers have. I guess Gasoline has, but that's a little different. Right at this moment I'm seeing Federal small rifle primers for $95. In 2019 those same primers were about $32 per thousand. That's basically a 200% price increase. There's simply no justification for it. I know not too many think highly of Expansion Ammunition, but between their new primer plant, and all the imported primers showing up, this will probably come back to bite the big 3 (really just big 2 now) in the ass unless they get their prices down soon.
I've looked into it plenty. Stockpiling when the prices are good makes way more sense. How fast can you load 1000 primers? Can you even make 100 in an hour? I don't know about you, but my time is worth more than $5 an hour. That looks like a bigger rip than paying $100/1000 primers. And all that to end up with a primer that is not as good as new. I'd protect my life with my flintlock before I did that, which I do like flintlocks.
To make that a practical option is going to take improvements. Someone is going to need to come up with a machine/press that can cut and shape new primer cups and anvils, and it's going to have to be better than the tap-o-cap die for making percussion caps. That with a machined accompanying tray so you can fill at least a few hundred at a time like a real manufacturer does it. If you can't load 1000 primers in 1-2 hour its basically a waste of time to me. That might sound odd coming from a bullet caster, since some of the same logic can be applied to cheap jacketed bullets. The difference is a dirt cheap casting setup you can be casting thousands of bullets quickly. I'm not about to sit there and finagle tiny little primers for an hour and get 50 sub-par primers, that's ridiculous.
I watched several segments on the aardvark site. I’m not going to go into purchasing the ingredients in big enough quantities. You may be able to produce non-corrosive primers around $3 / 1,000. The last screen on the non-corrosive clip carried a statement that the suggested purchase quantities were enough to load ‘tens of thousands’ of primers. I guesstimated the ingredients list totaled around $100. So yeah, 4 or 5 cents each for the ingredients.
But how much does all the lab-type equipment set you back? Again, I didn’t add it up but it looks like an easy $200-$300 for the recommended equipment. Amortizing the equipment, after 20,000 loads your overall cost has to be bumping 8-10 cents each. My math could be screwed up.
If (or when) primers become forever unavailable yours would certainly be a very useful skill and investment, same as casting boolits.
As noted previously (and quoted above), the cost per primer with EPH-2x is very low. Using my guestimates above, I am at around $0.0125 per primer including non-consumables.
Consumables only for SPP/SRP are less than $0.005 per primer at current prices. I was lucky on timing for my initial purchases and my actual cost of consumables is about half of the above.
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |