Gary Reeder
Developing a new cartrtidge is time consuming and expensive
Friday, January 17, 2025, 18:01

If I have a cartridge in mind I do the numbers and send them to good friend Dave Manson (who recently retired) and he goes over the proposed cartridge to make sure nobody else has already come up with the cartridge. He has a book of all new cartridges that have actually been listed and registered. If it is a "clean" cartridge,then I go ahead with the idea.
I have Dave make me a reamer and ream out a rough chamber. That usually takes a couple of months to get the reamer made. I then ream out a chamber in a TC barrel and make up some rough chambers and rough rounds of the proposed cartridge and test a few rounds. This is the part that is frustrating as I have to start with just an idea and have to go over similar cartridges and come up with some shootable cartridges without infringing on someone else's idea. If it works out accurate and worthwhile then the brass of 3 or 4 fired rounds is sent to Hornady. All this takes usually close to a year and another couple thousand dollars spent. Hornady makes me 2 sets of dies to try the cartridge out as far as being easy to make from the base brass and is the base brass available. That is another 6 months and usually around $750 to $800. If the new cartridge is easy to make, accurate and better than the cartridge that it is an "improved" version of then I send a set of dies to my ballistician that is Sean Harper and he does a full accuracy and pressure testing of the new cartridge. Another couple of months.
Then if Sean says it is as good as I had hoped I get with Hornady and have them make me a batch (usually a dozen) sets of dies to start with. Another thousand dollars and 6 months before I get the new dies and run a test batch of rounds to make sure it is an easy cartridge to load for and that the brass and bullets are readily available. If it turns out to be easily loaded for then I post it on here and hope folks like the idea.
In the past it normally has taken me around 2 years from idea to the first 2 sets of dies from Hornady and around $3500 spent for each new cartridge. Of the 70 rounds I have come up with 2 or 3 have been flops and not worth the expense and time wasted, but the other 65 or so rounds have done well. It is also not unusual that somebody copies your idea and comes out with your cartridge with their name on it. It happens. It is not illegal, just not right. There are 3 new cartridges right now that I designed that have been "borrowed" by a large company and put out under their name. You just suck it up. Nobody wants to hear you whining and bitching that you designed that cartridge and it was all your idea.

Some cartridges that do well are not going to be an overnight success but that is just what happens. You take 40 good selling cartridges and maybe 20 that are so so as far as selling. But you can't get into designing cartridges to make any money. It just doesn't happen. Right now I have 68 good cartridhes and a dozen sets of dies for each cartridge. That means I have over 800 sets of dies sitting in my shop that hopefully will sell eventually.


I don't recommend going thru all this for anyone unless they have a lot of spare time and some expendable cash.