I was wondering if anyone can tell me (or point me to a guide maybe) the general idea about breaking down ammo at a bench. Repair is one of my tag skills (although I'm only about 4 hours in and have it at like, 40 I think so far) and at the bench the only thing I am able to do is break down ammo. I also have tons of empty magazines and cases that I'm not sure what to do with. I tried breaking down one thing just to see if it would give me components to make other stuff...but everything is still grayed out. How do I know what to break down and what to keep? Does this work the way I am thinking it does? Sorry for the noob questions. -Meg

As a rule, breaking down an ammo type gives you components necessary to make other ammo types. Specifically the primers and stuff. Primers are restricted to similar ammo types, while cases are limited to a SPECIFIC weapon type. As a rule, to make one kind of ammo, you will need to break down a similar type of ammo. For example, 10mm and .44 magnum are both "large pistol ammo" and as a result yeild large pistol primers and pistol powder. You will need cases for the type of ammo you are creating, which you can get from vendors (usually for 0 caps), from people you fight, or from firing your own weapon. to get all the lead you'll probably need to break down a scrap metal or two as well.

How do you make advanced ammo types (ammo piercing etc.)? I only just started looking into crafting last night after playing for 18 hours, and when I use the reloading bench a bunch of recipes (and breakdown options) are shown, but it only seems to be basic ammo types.
It doesn't look like the recipes showing up are tied to my skill levels, as several of the recipes available are above my repair level.

Yeah, it's not very well explained, and the naming of some ammo parts doesn't really make it clear what the part is or is used for. I have tons of ammo parts except primers. Now I wonder if the ammo 'boxes' that some vendors have are boxes of primers? I'm not quite sure where to get powder either--I don't think I've seen it in any vendor lists yet.

Part of my problem is that I haven't found very many vendors in the early part of the game. you find lots of ammo cases in the world (and scrap metal for lead), but it seems like you need to buy the rest of of the stuff... somewhere.

Powder and Primer pretty much come from breaking down ammo you don't want. So if you want 10mm ammo break down .44 magnum ammo and then you can make 10mm.

Until you get up near Vegas, the primers are going to be your bottleneck. So if you're trying to make 9mm pistol ammo, buy the *other* small-pistol ammo (.357) and break it down for primers (and leads/powder).

12ga and 20ga are "shotgun"
9mm and .357 are "small pistol"
10mm and 44 magnum are "large pistol"
5mm and 5.56mm are "small rifle"
.308 and 45-70 are "large rifle"

There's also a few oddball ammo types which aren't used in any implemented weapon and mostly exist as a breakdown material to make other ammo.

I have not done the math yet to figure out whether converting from one ammo type to another is a lossless conversion. For instance, I don't know whether you can take N rounds of .357, make M rounds of 9mm from it, then convert back and get exactly N rounds of .357.

I'm not sure, but I think you lose some powder in the transaction. I broke down some 10mm ammo early on to see if I could make some 9mm, but it was the wrong primers... later I remade the 10mm ammo, but I don't think I could make quite as much as I had broken down. Could be wrong, I don't remember the exact numbers.

Hmmm...seems a bit confusing! I guess I will just keep playing around with it, hopefully eventually it will make more sense. Thanks for all the info!