I like to shoot pistols. A lot. A whole lot. With that in mind, I was looking for a "fun factor" load. By that, I mean I needed a load that I could afford to shoot in large quantities, yet accurate enough to have some fun while shooting. The missus I shoot every weekend and, between the two of us fire somewhere between 300 - 500 .40 S&W, and 0 - 250 .45 ACP. We also own several glocks.

Since I don't buy brass, the most expensive component I have to worry about are the bullets. So I immediately started thinking about lead bullets, but the internet quickly changed my mind. I guess there's two rumors:

1.) Glocks lead foul very easily due to the polygonal style of rifling, so don't use lead bullets or buy a lead safe barrel.
2.) Don't worry about it. Just clean it often.

Considering that I might put 150 or more at max load through a single glock, I don't want any leading induced pressure increases. I don't want to be constantly cleaning barrels at the range. Considering I own several glocks, I don't want to buy a separate lead safe barrel for each of my glocks.

So, I found a decent cheap, fully copper jacketed, bullet from Rainier Ballistics, and that solved my problem. I haven't seen any copper fouling on my pistols with these rounds, and I get 1000 .40 S&W for $89-$99 from Dillon. The price varies by whats on sale in their retail store that day, and how much you've spent there that day. Usually if I want to buy $500 worth of components and toys, they'll slip me a break on things like powder and bullets.

I live in Arizona where Dillon is located, so I pay sales tax instead of shipping on items.
My .40 S&W load, including per-unit costs w/tax are:

155gr Rainier Ballistics FPFCJ ($0.11)
5.7gr Hodgdon TiteGroup ($0.02)
Winchester Small Pistol Primer ($0.02)

This load makes a single round for $0.15 and a box of 50 for $7.50. I can get them to into a 1.25" group unsupported at 35 feet. Which is well in the fun-factor zone

My .45ACP load breaks down like this:

200 gr Rainier Ballistics RNFCJ ($0.14)
5.0 gr Hodgdon TiteGroup ($0.02)
Winchester Large Pistol Primer ($0.02)

This load makes a single round for $0.18 each, and a box of 50 for $9.00. This is still a load in progress, I can shoot 3 inch groups at 35 feet with this load. The powder charge still has room enough to grow.

If you have a Glock and decide to stick to jacketed rounds, these aren't bad for the price, provided you aren't trying to keyhole every shot. If you decide to work up on these or similar loads, the Rainier Ballistics shouldn't be used at over 1250fps. I don't know why, but their website says to keep the rounds below that velocity.

John,

Yea, doing that with my XD40...'cept I'm using Blue Dot and Fed primers, figured approx. $0.15/round. The Rainier bullets are copper plated rather than a cup/core (jacketed) bullet, so are allegedly a good bit softer than self-defense ("real") bullets, thus the lower muzzle V recommendation....as I understand it. Being an XD, I don't have the polygonal barrel thing going on, but that's academic with this set up anyhow.

I liked the Rainier bullets so much that I bought some in .38 for a S&W 638...and some brass..and some dies...well, at some point I'll actually buy a .38 snubby...soon.

Thanks for that cost analysis. A friend just bought a new S&W 40 the other day. He bought two boxes of ammo at around $16, I think. He wants to reload. Now we have a place to start...