TBH if you are short of cash, bulk-loading may NOT be the best way to save money.
I used to do it as a student, quarter century ago; when there wasn't an alternative to film; but even then..... a bulk length of decent film, was no cheaper than buying cheap film ready rolled in cans... buying cheap film in bulk lengths... yeah... I have lots of wonderfully grainy photo's from that era!!!!! BUT... I got photo's!
The 'savings' if there were any... take heed, expenditure tends to budget plus over-draft..... were to be found in processing... or more precisely NOT processing!
Mini-lab type commercial developers were always rather squiffy about bulk-loaded or re-used cassettes.... they didn't know what was in them, they often would refuse to develop them... meant that for the most part, bulk-loaded film demanded kitchen-sink-souping.....
Again, costs tend to budget plus credit..... set-up top home-soup needn't be an arm and a leg, and you may already be tooled up... but.. you need add cost of tank and chemicals at the least, and now you can, IF you do enough films, start to save money, over handing the can over the counter at Happy-Slaps..... BUT, you do have to do enough films to start see savings, and that can be quite a lot, as in 30 or more.
DOES put you in control, but doesn't necesserily save you money, and depending on teh set-up CAN actually beg you spend more money, before you start seeing any potential savings... which as said... you oft wont... you'll just take more pictures!
AND you still need a way to look at pictures..... means you either only shoot slide.... which these days is more expensive both to buy and process than C41 colour.. so longer to start saving...... and no-one else looks at'em... cos they are the size of a postage stamp, and by the time you have the projector set up and the curtains closed and found the projector bulb blown.... they've all bogged off down pub!
Shoot 'Print' film... you need make prints.... even harder looking at the raw negs to see what you got, especially Colour-Print, with heavy orange cast in the base; So how you going to look at them? Start sending negs to the lab, and individiual prints, even in packet sizes are often quite expensive, and you only need to get three or four individual ';reprints' before it would have been cheaper to just give them the whole film to Devc and print.... the whole roll of 36!!!
Colour-Printing, at home... masocists only need apply.. RICH masocists! I have tried it, some-what succesfully, BUT.... see comments on B&W.
B&W printing, at home, can be a joy... it isn't done 'completely 'blind' like colour, and it is a lot more tolerant, so easier to get half decent results, reliably, AND you can re-use a lot of the chemicals... BUT even though lab dev of B&W has been more expensive than for colour for some decades, it's still not all 'that' cheap, and the biggest cost is the paper...... again heed the warning about expendatiure expanding to consume funds available, plus a bit....
Shoot a roll of 36 B&W, you kitchen sink the film, and hang to dry.. lop to strips of 6, and then have a gander under a lupe.... NOT you make a contact sheet, of the whole lot, using one bit of 10x8 paper, so you can see what you got..... oh dear, theres si=x frames that need a bit of tweeking, and you cant see in contact.... so do you make another contact... and waste another sheet of 10x8... or do you just get on and print them all?
Oh sod-it... print the lot.... I'll 'just' chop the 10x8 cheets up 5x4... and print 4 photo's per page... for four pics a sheet, or even smaller, 6 pics a sheet... 10x8 is cheaper chopped down than pre-=cut small sizes... so more money saved.... and you can 'window' the sheet with an old envelope; make four exposures on it, then develop the sheet as one, and cut after, to save so much faff that end....
B-U-T... expenditure expands..... you quicklyu find that you are going straight to print to save contact sheets.... then you are printing all frames, 'cos you have the settings after your first couple of test strips, and easier to to them all at the same time and only waste one set of test strips...... So you end up printing pretty much the whole roll, not selected frames, and more, you get frustrated by the small quarter prints you make, and start doing them all full-size 10x8.... NOW 24 10x8's have cost you more to home process than sending to the lab....
WHICH is all to say that its a very slippy slope you are at the top of, and IF the imperative here is to 'save money'.... dont take photo's... dont take so many photo's.. get discerning about choosing what you point camera at, and when and how often you press the shutter release.... And stick to widgetal... cost per frame of wigi-pics is almost negligible, as long as you don't start spending the assumed 'savings' on more gear.... remember, expenditure expands!!!!
20 years ago, I had home dark-=room, and was very early to widgetal, by way of scanned prints and digi-dark-room... you call it 'Photo-shop' these days!!! Faced with the exhorbitany price of what was then 'Direct to Digital' cxameras, coupled to the pretty dire quality of them, I initially had the notion to avoid them... and did, pretty much until about five years ago.... I bought, a then very expensive Film-Scanner.... principle to buy half decent slide film, home soup it, and scan... got to look at it without the faff of a projector, no need to make prints to scan, and I could print selectively via desk-jet 'reasonably' cost effectively.....
B-U-T bulk lengths of film have not got all that cheap.... choice has got rather thin, and most of what is out there is either long out of date, or more expensive emulsions... often in prety short length, 10 or 15m, and little or no real 'saving' over buying in the can, whether B&W or Slide, or colour... in fact, of the budget offerings these days, 'burget' C41 colour is probably the cheapest alternative any-way, and what you may bulk-load, probably more expensive either which way....
And IF you are going to shoot and scan to digital, to dodge the printing costs..... you are perversely spending money on film, and on chemicals, to get a digital photo yuu could have taken direct on digital and saved ALL the cost.....
Ergo.. you do NOT do it for the assumed savings... either shoot film, home develop, or bulk load.... to wit, helping you out by way of offering some empty and redundant re-loadable cans, like wot you got buying cheap croation film 'off the shelf' from Jessops years ago, may NOT actually be helping you out that much.....
It IS fun, but it is also faff, and likely wont help you save money, or take better photo's, but give you a lot more chances for eff-ups.....
Your call, really IF you wish to persue this, 'just' to make use of a 'free' bulk-loader.... re-useable cassetes and potential costs to solve that one, may be the thin end of the wedge, of spending money to NOT save money... if that's what you are hoping.
