Thread: friends asking how much for load development

Interesting question.

Would you include an hourly rate? $40/hour would be cheap.

My handloads without amortising barrel & case wear are $0.50 for primer & powder plus extra for projectile plus labour.
Projectiles from my stock range from $0.40 to $1.20 each.
Labour for priming, adding powder & projectile $0.50 per round.
Say $2.00 per round.
My components, primer, powder and projectiles, are on the cheap side because I buy in bulk.

Load development or load testing
I've just done some where I had a known close starting point close to the end point.
About 100 rounds. About 10 hours of range time plus 4 hours driving.
(Includes lots of cleaning as I was also running in the new barrel.)

So for me it would be about $760 dollars plus the cost of any dies, cases, that may be required.

Depriming, annealing, sizing & cleaning cases is another story and/or another cost.