Bayou Bullets, Anyone heard from them lately?

[ysrracer]

Maybe my order will come in by the time primers are back to $35 per 1000?

 

 

 

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Edited August 30, 2021 by ysrracer

[ysrracer]

Are these guys even still in business?

 

Order Status: Awaiting Fulfillment
Order Date: 12th Apr 2021
Order Total: $281.00 USD

YOUR ORDER CONTAINS:

• 1 x .38/.357 160 Gr. RN
  (Box Qty: 2800 Ct. (Case) $266.00, Color: Gold)

[Cuz]

On 8/30/2021 at 10:28 AM, ysrracer said:

Maybe my order will come in by the time primers are back to $35 per 1000?

 

 

 

.

Lol, I’m just hoping for the delivered price to come down to $50 / 1000. That’s when I’ll start to restock. 

[twodownzero]

On 8/8/2021 at 9:42 AM, Darrell said:

Bayou Bullets is local to me. They had issues with casting machines and not having reliable employee's. They are cranking out bullets as fast as they can. Most of the machines are up and running now, but they really need a couple of more to keep up with demand. Bayou's are a great bullet and is the original coated bullet and I noticed that some of the coated bullet offering from other manufacturers are not the quality you get from Bayou. DG bullets and Brazos Bullets are two of the top I recommend. The sudden surge since Covid  has impacted orders from everyone, primers being the hardest component to get right now, and prices have more than doubled on primers. 

 

The original coated bullet?  I was shooting Bear Creek bullets when this website was still on dial up!  I make my own cast and powdercoated bullets now, but I highly doubt Bayou are the original.

[Darrell]

Bayou bullets were never powder coated the polymer coating was propietary and came from Austrailia. Anyone wanted to use the coating had to buy it from Donnie, including all the manufacturers using the coating today. Donnie sold the chemical. business to Alan Esterly and they have to. buy from him. So yes  Bayou is the original polymer coated bullet.

[RickT]

Just received shipment notice on an order for 4000 115gr I order in April.  Since then i've been buying Brass Monkey, Black Bullets and Missouri Bullets without an issue.  Bullets are a non-issue; not so for primers.

[jejb]

Agreed. Small pistol primers were getting pretty easy to source for me locally, but it has all but dried up the last month or so. Glad I bought a bunch while they were available. 

 

Bullets have not been an issue through this shortage. Just have to plan ahead a little. 

Edited September 23, 2021 by jejb

[Just4FunLP]

The order I placed on April 3rd finally shipped…. Unfortunately they probably lost a customer…. Too bad.
 

 If the big Ammo manufacturers keep manipulating the primer market I’ll be moving onto other hobbies.  

Edited September 25, 2021 by Just4FunLP

[jejb]

10 hours ago, Just4FunLP said:

 If the big Ammo manufacturers keep manipulating the primer market I’ll be moving onto other hobbies.  

Curious about this. How are they manipulating the market? 

[ysrracer]

2 hours ago, jejb said:

Curious about this. How are they manipulating the market? 

 

Agreed, I gotta believe any manufacturer with customers begging for their products are producing all they can.

 

This isn't like the South African diamond trade.

[Just4FunLP]

I’ve been in manufacturing all my life. They CAN increase production. Just like petroleum producing countries, they control production to suit their needs. It’s not evil, they’re doing what’s right for their shareholders. A primer manufacturer who was dedicated to supplying the reloading market would increase production to meet the demand. 

[lll Otto lll]

10 hours ago, jejb said:

Curious about this. How are they manipulating the market? 

One way is to buy out the competition and then kill-off the product.

That's what Vista Outdoor did when they took over Remington. 
As a result, you'll never see Remington primers again, except for shotshells.   

[AHI]

name all the manufactures of primers. While your at it .Who owns said manufactures.

Edited September 25, 2021 by AHI

[lll Otto lll]

There are only 2 US primer manufactures. Vista and Winchester. 
Imported primers are no more. 

[Just4FunLP]

BAM!

[AHI]

OK now how would they increase production? If loading ther ammo is job #1.

Edited September 25, 2021 by AHI

[AHI]

by the way Vista buying Remington was increasing production for Vista.

You can look at the actual manufacturer of powder the same way.

Edited September 26, 2021 by AHI

[Just4FunLP]

16 minutes ago, AHI said:

OK now how would they increase production? If loading ther ammo is job #1.

You bring the equipment manufacturers into your facility and tell them to make new equipment based on the machines sitting on the floor.  It’s really that simple. Most any square footage issue could be resolved in less than a year. If you’re low on engineering staff, you assign one senior engineer to lead the project and transfer a few from other departments, then backfill their slots with new guys. Maybe relocate your primer production to a larger existing facility. I was involved with relocating a manufacturing plant from Canada to the US. We did it without interrupting output.  It happens all the time. 
 

Now, I saw a video from a guy who claimed to have inside info. He said the way they’ve handled these sudden increases in demand in past was to just hold tight and wait till he political climate changed and everything eventually settled down. That’s smart business. He said they’ve recognized the market has now changed, and recreational shooting has skyrocketed. Demand is here to stay. His sources say they’ve pulled the trigger on the capital investments needed to make it happen. There are a lot of “sources” and “they” in all this, but it is the most logical thing I’ve heard about the subject. Unfortunately, I think this has more to do with cartridges, not primers for reloaders. 
 

If they are “trying as hard as they can”, why don’t they have someone come out and say they’re dedicated to supporting there customers in the reloading community, and then explain what they’re doing to make it happen. I’m not holding my breath… I don’t blame them, it’s a free market, let someone else produce primers. It would be interesting to see, if someone else tried to break into the market, would big ammo then flood the market to drive them under. 

[ysrracer]

42 minutes ago, Just4FunLP said:

We did it without interrupting output.  It happens all the time.

 

These days with half the country hiding from the rona, and the other half getting paid to stay home from work, finding decent employees isn't as easy as it used to be.

.

Edited September 26, 2021 by ysrracer

[Just4FunLP]

Truth’

[Sigarmsp226]

Removed - not thread topic related

 

Edited September 27, 2021 by Sigarmsp226

[jejb]

11 hours ago, Just4FunLP said:

Now, I saw a video from a guy who claimed to have inside info. He said the way they’ve handled these sudden

If they are “trincreases in demand in past was to just hold tight and wait till he political climate changed and everything eventually settled down. That’s smart business. He said they’ve recognized the market has now changed, and recreational shooting has skyrocketed. Demand is here to stay. His sources say they’ve pulled the trigger on the capital investments needed to make it happen. There are a lot of “sources” and “they” in all this, but it is the most logical thing I’ve heard about the subject. Unfortunately, I think this has more to do with cartridges, not primers for reloaders. 

This makes more sense, that they are being cautious about over-expanding rather than trying to manipulate the market. And now it's just taking some time for them to get the new factories/machines/supplies/employees in place to try to meet the new normal. Sig has said they will start producing their own primers for their ammo in their new plant in Ark. So that should put more primers on the market, from whomever is supplying Sig now. 

[Farmer]

Don’t think it helps that the products that they deal with are High Explosives and the regulations that goes along with that are probably staggering. Like powder I’m thinking they can only store X amount on site and any new additions would take miles of red tape to get approval. That takes time and money, and we know how the feds like to waste both.  I’m sure they would like to speed things up but one bad screw up could take you down for months. My bil occasionally works with some demo people and they even said getting blasting materials has been more difficult. I just find it a bit strange that the whole world is affected. 

[Just4FunLP]

Farmer

 

Yes, there's got to be strict procedures involved, for sure. I watched a video about a fireworks manufacturing company here in the US, and their safety procedures seemed to be pretty simple. They had a lot of small buildings spaced far enough apart so if one exploded it wouldn't blow up half the state. It was a small family company. 

 

This is a short article about the primer process. https://www.nrafamily.org/articles/2020/3/5/ammunition-science-all-about-primers

 

It's interesting how there are no photos of the primer manufacturing process. You can find all kinds of videos on cartridges, but not primers. Most manufacturing companies don't allow photos to be taken in their facilities, and there are areas where they don't even allow visitors. Let me tell you a little secret... sometimes it's not because they're hiding a super high-tech process, often it's because the process is super simple and anyone could do it, along with a few details that could be discovered with some "creative" research. They like to show photos of the front of their "high-tech" facility, along with some very carefully angled photos of their most sophisticated equipment. Sprinkle in a few guys with lab coats and they can make a dairy farm look like a nuclear research facility. lol...  This, along with an awesome website can give the impression that they're so technologically advanced it would be financial suicide to try to compete. 

 

I'm certainly not saying breaking into primer manufacturing would be easy or cheap, but it's certainly not impossible. In fact, I've got an engineering school right around the corner, and one of the largest powder manufacturers in the country, maybe the world, about 45 minutes from my house. I think, with a chemist, a mechanical engineer, a machinist, and a few consultants, I could setup a very small pilot plant. Like tiny... The fist step would be to find a supplier for the chemicals. Usually, they're extremely helpful on the technical issues. If you're successful, they make money... Come up with an estimate on the regulatory stuff and then decide if you can proceed with a small test lab. The mechanical stuff looks like it would be pretty straight forward. Very similar to small metal cased transistors. If you ever work in an R&D environment you'll soon realize that these guys are really just a bunch of goobers, with various skills, being pushed along by another goober with access to funds. All they need to do is reverse engineer something that's been in production for over 150 years. 

 

Question is, why don't I do it?  Because my wife would hit me in the head with a hammer for even mentioning it... lol

 

 

[AHI]

at about 3:57