brewer12345
Member
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2015
- Messages
- 2,753
I am fooling with cast bullet loads in 350 Legend in an effort to come up with an accurate, short range, heavy bullet thumper with minimal blast and recoil. This is in my RAR bolt gun, which has become my dedicated beaver and muskrat hunting gun. In low light conditions on a small (headshot) and generally moving target, 50 yards is about as far as I go. I was using factory Win FMJ, but I found it to be overly destructive on muskrats and far noisier than necessary. My guess is that 180 grains of lead arriving at 1000 FPS or more will fully penetrate a beaver skull at my intended ranges. I figured I would document my process here for any who want to play with downloaded cast in this cartridge for which there is precious little data available.
I ordered the Accurate 36-180L mold, a plain based, 180 grain design that looks a lot like the shape of factory jacketed fodder. Cast the bullets out of fairly soft alloy (~10 BHN), tumble lubed them with Ben's Liquid Lube, and sized to .357. I found that I had to seat the bullet pretty far down to get them to feed nicely and I think I need to do a little more. My test loads were 2.13" OAL. I also cut off a case at the bullet base and used it to figure out a 100% load for Trail Boss, which was about 7.5 grains. I tested Trail boss at 6.5, 7.0 and 7.3 grains, and Unique at 7, 8, 9, and 10 grains. I also shot a 5 round group of factory FMJ to compare.
The Trail Boss seemed to have too many fliers in all three loads, which is a shame. All the Unique loads shot at least OK, but 7 grains was the winner with about a .75" group at 25 yards. The FMJ was similar. I'd guess that the rifle actually shoots better than that, but I have a basic 4X scope on it, eyes were a little tired, and I had a less than idea rest. Since I consistently hit moving muskrats in the field at up to 40 yards with the factory FMJ, I am going to call matching or exceeding those groups to be sufficient for my purposes. All of my cast loads had way, way less blast, recoil and noise than the FMJ. The cast brass was minimally beat up and almost looked unfired. No leading and the bore looked very clean. Minimal barrel heating given the small powder charges.
Second round testing will be slightly shorter seated bullets to promote easier feeding and I will load both 357 and 356 sized bullets over 6.5, 7.0 and 7.5 grains of Unique. The groups got bigger as my charges went up today, so I am guessing that 7,5 grains will not be a winner, but who knows.
I ordered the Accurate 36-180L mold, a plain based, 180 grain design that looks a lot like the shape of factory jacketed fodder. Cast the bullets out of fairly soft alloy (~10 BHN), tumble lubed them with Ben's Liquid Lube, and sized to .357. I found that I had to seat the bullet pretty far down to get them to feed nicely and I think I need to do a little more. My test loads were 2.13" OAL. I also cut off a case at the bullet base and used it to figure out a 100% load for Trail Boss, which was about 7.5 grains. I tested Trail boss at 6.5, 7.0 and 7.3 grains, and Unique at 7, 8, 9, and 10 grains. I also shot a 5 round group of factory FMJ to compare.
The Trail Boss seemed to have too many fliers in all three loads, which is a shame. All the Unique loads shot at least OK, but 7 grains was the winner with about a .75" group at 25 yards. The FMJ was similar. I'd guess that the rifle actually shoots better than that, but I have a basic 4X scope on it, eyes were a little tired, and I had a less than idea rest. Since I consistently hit moving muskrats in the field at up to 40 yards with the factory FMJ, I am going to call matching or exceeding those groups to be sufficient for my purposes. All of my cast loads had way, way less blast, recoil and noise than the FMJ. The cast brass was minimally beat up and almost looked unfired. No leading and the bore looked very clean. Minimal barrel heating given the small powder charges.
Second round testing will be slightly shorter seated bullets to promote easier feeding and I will load both 357 and 356 sized bullets over 6.5, 7.0 and 7.5 grains of Unique. The groups got bigger as my charges went up today, so I am guessing that 7,5 grains will not be a winner, but who knows.