By the way: there's nothing inherently nasty to the gun about 180s. It's just that people buying that weight class generally use them for business against critters and expect big power; specialty ammo houses like Cor-Bon, Buffalo Bore, Grizzly, Doubletap and the like brew up stuff accordingly. Even the Winchester 180gr 357 ("Partition Gold") is a high-steppin' slug.
Very hot 125s are hard on the gun for another reason: they accellerate quickly and hit the front of the cylinder and back of the barrel hard. The S&W K-Frames have a known weak point at the rear of the barrel and hot 125s tended to tear them up. Our guns have no such weak point and a hair more heft than a K-frame, but those slugs are still rougher on the guns than, say, standard-pressure 158gr 357s doing between 1,200 and 1,300fps out of 4.68" (or 4 and 3/4ths) barrels like mine and (probably) yours.
I found the Speer Gold Dot 135gr 357 load to be very accurate in my gun. It's a "mild load" 357 really meant for magnum snubbies but being a Gold Dot I'm betting they'll hold together out of a 4" to 5" tube. I wouldn't use 'em from a 7.5" or longer (carbine) as they'll fragment at some point past their designed speed.
Hey Guys, I found this forum, The High Road, while trying to google for some info on Uberti Replicas. Just some quick specs on me; my name is Nathan Cowlishaw, I'm 25 and live in Southern Utah. Currently I'm the owner of a relatively new Uberti .357 Single Action Revolver. The model is an 1873 Cattleman replica. There's not a whole lot of information in cyberspace about these guns. All I know is that Uberti has a strong reputation and I've heard nothing but good about them from the locals around here in Utah. I work on a ranch, and my boss thinks Uberti makes pretty dependable replicas. Unfortunately the user manual for this gun is not very extensive, so I'm left pondering what is safe and isn't safe to load into the gun. I'm wandering if it can handle higher pressure loads, like 180 Grain. I've seen cartridges as high as 200 Grain from Corbon. And if there's any other info about these guns on the net, other the Uberti's own site, I would appreciate some guidance. Thanks guys! 