Bought some Berry’s Bullets...

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Mr_Flintstone

Mr_Flintstone

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I bought some Berry’s plated 125 gr FP bullets a while back to load in .357 for my Henry. After finally getting around to opening them up and trying them, I was a little let down by the max velocity of 1250 FPS. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they are excellent bullets, and it’s my own fault for not checking before I bought them, but at the time I needed .357 bullets, and they were available. It looks like I’m going to have to stick to standard .38 Special loads (or the equivalent in .357 cases) for my rifle. Oh well, I always need plinking loads, and these look to fit the bill for that; I just can’t up the velocity to where I wanted.
 
that is a pistol bullet. i would pick a handgun load from a reloading manual that has a "book" velocity of 1250 fps (work up to this load) and try it in the rifle. if you don't get copper fouling or have accuracy issues, load em' up.

luck,

murf
 
Berry’s also makes most of their bullets in 1500 fps models too. Just gotta look close, and pay a lil more.

But a .357, 125 gr bullet out of a rifle length barrel will probably exceed 1500 anyways.
 
In the past X-Treme bullets made a lot of heavy plated bullet choices made to go faster. Not sure what is available from them lately though. They are probably making whatever is less time consuming and thus faster to market for max profit. Dont blame them either.
 
Mr_Flintstone said:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they are excellent bullets
Click to expand...

I wouldn’t call them excellent but they are cheap. If they were as good as an jacketed bullet they would cost a lot more. Better than a jacketed bullet and they would be even more expensive.

I used to order them by the pallet and won a lot of matches with them but always knew they were not the best, just not the worst either.
 
Lennyjoe said:
FYI, don’t overcrimp plated bullets.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I used to use Rainier plated bullets, and I had to be careful with those as well. They were rated at about 1500 fps though. I guess I was just thinking of those when I bought these.

I've been looking at loads for these, and it looks like I can go to about 4 grains of Titegroup, Bullseye, or 231 or about 4.5 gr Unique and still be right at 1200 fps from a 20" barrel using .357 Magnum Brass. I'm going to start some chronograph tests today if the rain holds off.
 
murf said:
that is a pistol bullet. i would pick a handgun load from a reloading manual that has a "book" velocity of 1250 fps (work up to this load) and try it in the rifle. if you don't get copper fouling or have accuracy issues, load em' up.

luck,

murf
Click to expand...
I agree.
I've run them with h110 in a Rossi 92 with no issues. I never did try them in a revolver.
 
Not that I’m trying to make extra work for you, but I would be interested to see how far past 1200fps you could drive them and still get away with. I’ve shot a lot of Berrys, but I don’t know if I’ve ever pushed them that far.
 
Mr_Flintstone said:
Thanks. I used to use Rainier plated bullets, and I had to be careful with those as well. They were rated at about 1500 fps though. I guess I was just thinking of those when I bought these.

I've been looking at loads for these, and it looks like I can go to about 4 grains of Titegroup, Bullseye, or 231 or about 4.5 gr Unique and still be right at 1200 fps from a 20" barrel using .357 Magnum Brass. I'm going to start some chronograph tests today if the rain holds off.
Click to expand...
I bought nearly 1k 158 gr. plated bullets off of a member here sometime back. I load them with Titegroup and HP-38/W231 for 50 yd. target shooting, out of my 77/357. I don't recall the amount of powder I use. But it works okay.
 
Mr_Flintstone said:
Thanks. I used to use Rainier plated bullets, and I had to be careful with those as well. They were rated at about 1500 fps though. I guess I was just thinking of those when I bought these.

I've been looking at loads for these, and it looks like I can go to about 4 grains of Titegroup, Bullseye, or 231 or about 4.5 gr Unique and still be right at 1200 fps from a 20" barrel using .357 Magnum Brass. I'm going to start some chronograph tests today if the rain holds off.
Click to expand...
One thing to consider, if you haven't already. With the faster powders like Bullseye and W231, the bullet velocity may peak in the barrel and be slower at the muzzle.
 
Mr_Flintstone said:
Thanks. I used to use Rainier plated bullets, and I had to be careful with those as well. They were rated at about 1500 fps though. I guess I was just thinking of those when I bought these.

I've been looking at loads for these, and it looks like I can go to about 4 grains of Titegroup, Bullseye, or 231 or about 4.5 gr Unique and still be right at 1200 fps from a 20" barrel using .357 Magnum Brass. I'm going to start some chronograph tests today if the rain holds off.
Click to expand...
Grizzly/Cast Performance rates their hard cast 18BHN .358" gas checked bullets up to 3100fps. They are real consistent but not cheap. I use their 200gr. WFN in my .357Max Handi-Rifle. I load the same bullet in .35Rem for my Marlin 336T. I use 18gr. of IMR 4227 or 15gr. of Alliant 2400 in both. I'm getting better than 1500fps with no leading from either rifle. Good for wild pigs. Goes clean through, end to end, and rolls them like they got hit by a pickup truck. Kind of funny how the straight-walled .357Max and the bottle-necked .35Rem perform the same with the same bullet and powder. The Handi-Rifle is a 22" barrel; the Marlin barrel is 2" shorter.
 
All of you post important things to consider. I wish I had some way to test where the bullet reaches maximum velocity inside the barrel of a gun, but I have to rely on exit velocity estimates and measurements. While pondering and researching fast powders though, I came across Widener's guide to smokeless powder. https://www.wideners.com/smokeless-powder-guide Then I did some estimations, and Gordons Reloading Tool backed up the statement in the guide that when you decrease the load density of a powder in a cartridge, it extends the point of peak pressure and powder burnout point forward in the barrel, sometimes moving the burnout point after the bullet exits the barrel.

As an example, GRT estimates 4.2 gr Bullseye with a 125 gr plated bullet to have a muzzle velocity of around 1200 fps with a powder burnout point at 9.6" into the barrel. If I reduce the charge to 3.6 gr Bullseye, it estimates 1120 FPS with a powder burnout point just as the bullet leaves the barrel at 19.4". When I compare this to a medium charge for a 125 gr xtp @ 7.5 gr Bullseye, the burnout point is at 2.4"

Like I said above, I have no way of testing this, but it would seem that if the load was still burning powder, the bullet would still be accelerating; albeit at a lower rate. That makes me think that the maximum velocity wouldn't be reached until after all of the powder was burned, and that a lower charge would get me to 1200 fps without the worry of exceeding the maximum rated velocity of the bullet. Or, I could just be overthinking the situation.
 
Berry's are a soft swaged bullet for handguns. For your use you bought the wrong bullet. As you know. I did see some 125 Hornady jacketed bullets for sale at Midway a few days ago but then they went back out of stock. Hang in there. It will not be long now before you can get real bullets again. I shoot lots of the Berry's. But...I do it because I can shoot them slower than I can shoot jacketed bullets.
 
I love Berry's bullets for range ammo. They're almost as cheap as lead bullets without all the smoke and they run better than lead bullets in my autos. I just bought 6000 Berry's 9mm bullets just last week.
 
Well, I decided to try Titegroup today, and I ran some more sims first. GRT said the 125 gr Berry’s loaded with 5.0 gr Titegroup should produce 1279 FPS. I decided that was close enough to try since the Bullseye loads were about 150-200 FPS slow. Here’s my chrono results.
0F2B46B4-6BDE-4A3C-A3F7-83DC4CD153AF.jpeg

I think this load is pretty good. I just used some old untrimmed brass, and I could tell they weren’t the same lengths, because some of them crimped heavier than the others. They were pretty darn accurate too, but I didn’t take a picture of the target. Maybe next time.
 
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