Old School .357 Magnum Duty Loads

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For duty loadings, I've always been interested in those that were reliable and equally important, controllable with a good street rep. A good Google search here or elsewhere would turn up the old "FBI" loading for their .357's from back in the day. My searches show loadings with ~158 gr LSWHP's with velocities from 900-970 fps in Magnum brass. These were/are offered by both Remington and Winchester for gov't contract, & available for civilian use wheh you could find them.

For my own use, I find they are very comfortable in most any .357, I own. (Currently: a pair of 3" J-frame Smiths, along with 4" K-frame M19 & M66's, a 5" Smith M27, a 6" M19, and a pair of Ruger 4-5/8" bbl'd BH's.) For all of these, my standard load, based along the lines of those throwback "FBI" loads, is 5.2 gr of Bullseye with Lyman's 358156GC LSWC for 950 fps (chrono'd in both of my 4" Smith's). Using Win WSF, 6.1 gr's will get you the same velocity. Note that either load will just barely make 900 fps from my 3" Smith M60, however...but still an authoritative bullet when cast from 50-50 lead to wheel weight alloy, even more if hollow pointed.

A lot of agencies issued 125 gr JHP's at really high velocities which won the .357 its reputation as a superb street stopper, but at the cost of wear on the gun and recoil that was problematic for many officers. The "FBI" load avoided those issues, and still garnered an enviable record of service over the years.

YMMv, Rod
 
Palladan44 said:
At the 6 o' clock position, the forcing cone on M19s (and 13s) is machined flat on the bottom/outside to make room for the crane, etc. I believe it was at this position where the fracturing would occur after a given number of "full house" magnum rounds ranging from 10 to 20,000.

The ideology of the day was to practice with .38s, and carry the magnums for duty, and only practice with the magnums once in a while....
The "L" frame came out to partly address this issue, allowing for more use of the Magnums. IMO this holds true.

When I compare my M27 or 28s forcing cone (the platform the original .357 was designed) to my M13s Its a huge, huge difference in metal thickness.
Click to expand...

Lnf Crzr said:
The 6 o’clock is definitely the weak spot in forcing cone of the K frame. From what I read was the gases would go around the 110/125 and than a force would pound on that weak spot…. add some lead build up and the jacketed 125 squeezed in there and tada! A cracked forcing cone.

What I was asking was- how often did you see that happen?
Click to expand...

My memory is not as good as it used to be, but I thought that the warning was not to use anything lighter than 125 grains for the reason Lnf Crzr noted. But the 125 grain was long enough to use.
 
dickydalton said:
Yep. CoreLoct
Click to expand...
For those who may not know what the “scalloped” bullets being referred to are, here is an image showing the scalloped .357 Mag Remington bullet jacket vs the standard Speer JHP .357 Mag bullet jacket:

518C7BFD-931A-42AB-9445-BAB2B862B71F.jpeg

7CA64B17-E8E5-4334-8F5F-52D0267EDA22.jpeg

I believe these scalloped edges gave the bullets places to separate and peel back (mushroom) since there are no external skive cuts in the jacket material like these Golden Saber or Win JHP bullets have that allow for the “petals” to form on an expanding bullet:

E8A77982-3F79-4D55-AC53-C759C8D901E9.jpeg 0081040E-8D49-48A6-B6D3-30F93D3D1972.jpeg

Fired Hornady bullets that are partially and fully expanded:

930D8C8D-CF6D-41FF-9E89-F4B58AF8439A.jpeg

Stay safe.
 
Pretty Damn ferocious stuff
A old officer provided me with a box.
Got my 180 xtps at about the same poi and fps
 
Is that a Lipseys order or just a regular Ruger

I always thought that was nice looking and I’m not a Ruger guy

Bet that’s a sweet shooter
 
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