Re: [HOE] Makin' Bullets

[Aaron Chusid <aaron@to-the-point.org>]

At 01:55 AM 1/16/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>>That means that with buying a bullet press and lead, and percussion caps,
>>and shell casings (which admittedly can be scrounged or saved), that you?re
>>better off buying whole bullets than manufacturing them. Is this a typo?

Things like the press are (relatively) major one-time investments.  Over
the course of enough bullets its cost gets reduced greatly.  So the big
question is should the price of led, caps, powder, and cases be less than
the cost of bullets?  Personally, I'd say yes and rewrite one of the prices
accordingly.

However; we can't apply modern free-market ideas to this.  Suppy & demand
aren't the driving forces anymore.  Availability depends more on what you
can find.  Consider that most of the boxes of ammo you buy now aren't being
home made (or even factory made, at least not in the last 13 years or so);
most of them are boxes that someone found in a bunker or closet somewhere,
and after keeping several boxes for themselves, they're selling off the
remaining 10 or so usable boxes.  On the other hand, someone who *is*
selling home made ammo probably found a store of lead, casings, caps, or
powder somewhere (or more than one of them), and can easily trade for or
buy the rest of the bits and still sell ammo at the "normal" price for a
profit. 

In this model, the finished bullets would sell for less than the parts.
That's not even using modern theories like economies of scale & bulk buying
(sounds like a Junker Tool Trick).  Which means you would be well within
rights to charge more for completely home made ammo, to reflect the cost of
buying each of the "ingredients".