Reloading question - Do you enjoy it?

I don't find reloading relaxing or fun. Even reloading with a Dillon is not fun.

My true time is about 20 rounds per hour with case prep, which takes the longest. But this is with a Lee hand press and doing everything in a single station. The way I see it, FGMM goes for about $35 per 20. It cost me about $10 in components for 20 rounds, so that means I am paying myself $25 an hour. Now if I sit in front of the TV for an hour, that is like I am paying myself to watch TV ;D

I do plan to get a Dillon 650XL ($504) with all the accessories, electric case feeded ($200), tumbler, separator, and all. For the ultimate set up, it will only cost me about $1500 or so with 5 different caliber heads with dies. Dillon 650 can easily pump out a 1000 rounds per hour if you are motivated, 500 rounds per hour if you go slow. The price of of reloading components is high these days.

If you don't count the brass, complete plinking rounds of .223 will cost you about 13 cents a round, .308 will be about 20 cents a round. So if you shoot a lot you can save a lot of money reloading. Got to figure 5000 rounds of .308 surplus ammo will cost you about $2600. If you reload with a Dillon, 5000 rounds will cost you $1000, + 5 hours of your time. And if you factor in the cost of the Dillon, that means the first 5000 rounds alone you will break even! But will end up with a machine for life.

Here is my buddies Dillon set up. He has 4 of them!

I'm about to buy a reloading setup. I'm new to reloading so I've been doing some research on equipment and my needs/capabilities. I've decided on a Dillon 550b instead of the 650. There does not appear to be much advantage to the 650 over the 550 unless you buy the case feeder (auto indexing seems to have pluses and minus in term of flexibly since I can use the 550b as a single stage when I want to do just case prep or custom hand loads). I know the 650 will be somewhat faster (especially with the case feeder) and has one extra station. The price differential is not that great so it's really not a cost issue, except that caliber conversions are more expensive for the 650. The price difference on the press a pretty small percentage by the time you add in bullets, powder, primers, lube, case gages, spare primer tubes, case cleaner, scales, calipers, dies, tumblers, media, media separators, et al.

The 550b seems like it would be quicker to change calibers and especially primers (large vs small) unless you spring for duplicating entire primer system on the 650 and caliber conversions are cheaper so I can afford to by the complete kit. I figure most of my reloading runs will be in the 100 to 500 round runs in any caliber.

I guess the net is that 550b appears to be a simpler machine on which to learn reloading. It should have a much lower learning curve and due to its open design, easier for a novice to notice and solve problems. I think it would be much too easy for me to screw up on a full 650xl system with case feeder.

I figure once I have more experience, I can add a 650 with a case feeder later for certain calibers I would make long runs on (like 1000 at at time). I'd keep the 550b for my pistol and maybe a pistol case feeder to it.