Cost of shooting muzzleloading shotguns for me.

[biliff]

I just priced out all my components.
Bag of shot 25 Pounds $85
Pyrodex 1 - pound $24
Wads (card, fiber and over) total 1000 each $38.07

70 grains load powder and 1 oz. of shot, 1 of each card per load.

25- Shots = $5.30 in shot (Magnum Lead); $6 in powder and $0.95 in wads.

$12.25 per 25-shots or $.049 each shot.

If you reduce the amount of shot to 7/8 oz. the price per 25-shots goes down to $4.24. Using the square load, the cost of powder goes down to $4.80. The total per 25-shots is now $9.13

You guys that say you can get shot for $50 per 25- pounds would only spend $3.12 in shot for a total of $10.07 for twenty five 1-ounce loads and $2.58 in shot for a total of $8.33 for twenty five 7/8 oz. loads.

If you made your own wads from scrap material you'd save just about a buck per 25-rounds.

The cheapest conventional 7/8 oz. loaded cartridges on-line are $7.99 and the better quality 1-oz. loaded cartridges are $11.99 per 25-round box. This is on-par with the cost of shooting a muzzleloading shotgun.

You left out caps/flint cost.

 

[Archer 756]

Price in-house is nice have shipped $$$

 

[Timber Wolf]

I haven’t taken the time to figure it all up, and don’t really want to know. But, I just paid another club member $50 each for two 25 pound bags of Magnum #8 shot. I have lots of Pyrodex RS I have purchased over the years at ChinaMart on close-out at $5 a pound. I bought my wads years ago but punch my over shot cards out of scrap. I just last night converted my old CVA SXS smoke-pole (a $180 kit I put together in 1984!) to Musket nipples. I bought Musket caps a while back at $75 a thousand, ordered with other stuff to share the hazmat fee. Bought a $40 .690 round ball mold, don’t know how to amortize that cost. I have only shot a dozen or so balls so far so the per shot cost is pretty steep in spite of having free lead. Oh, I suppose I should figure something for my time and propane to cast. So, all things considered, maybe I can’t really afford this hobby?

 

[Sparkitoff]

I did leave out the flint or cap cost. If you're using recently bought percussion caps you'll have to add $2.50 per 25-rounds to the cost cited. I make my own and they cost about $.03 each or $0.75 per 25-rounds additional. I don't know how to figure the cost of flint due the various prices and shots per flint.

 

[THBailey]

https://www.rotometals.com/
Shipping included if you order enough.

 

[Darkgael]

Reading through the posts above tells me that I did the right thing years ago when I invested in a shot maker and scavanged all the wheelweights I could find before they became unusable. Nowadays I have access to waste lead from a pistol range. Shot costs me only my time. The machine was amortized long ago.

 

[maillemaker]

I think the last time I did the math it came out to around $.30 a shot for a military percussion musket. I was surprised. At the time that was about the same cost per shot as 5.56 NATO.

What makes muzzleloading cheaper to shoot is the time factor. You can shoot 100 rounds of a modern gun in 15 minutes or so easily. 100 rounds of muzzle loader is all day.