35 Remington light loads

[brewer12345]

I think Trail Boss is great, I just haven't gotten around to trying it in .35 Rem yet. I'd be interested in hearing about your experience.

Will do. I think that is my next project once I get finished fooling with a jacketed 44 mag load.

 

[jdh]

I don't see where they list 357

They don't list many of what they can make. I inquired about a 32 ACP in 7.62X39. No problem, 2 week lead time. Send them an email and check.

 

[VoodooMountain]

How accurate is that setup?

 

[brewer12345]

Hmmm, so I took new Hornady brass and made up 5 rounds each with 7 grains of trail boss and 9 grains of unique. All used coated Missouri Cowboy 15 bullets, which are 12 Brinnell and 158 grain RNFPs. I encountered a couple of issues:

- I could not figure out how to flare the case mouth. I tried using a 357 expander die, but all I managed to do was crush a case. The bullets seemed to seat OK anyway, although I think I scraped off a little of the coating.

- Following skinnedknuckles' advice, I took one of my rounds and chambered it in my Marlin. I had to put a bit of pressure on the lever to fully close the bolt, all at the end of closing the bolt. When I ejected the round it took a bit of oomph to do so. There is a little scrape on the brass right around the case mouth. I think that is from the round hitting the concrete floor of the patio, but it could have been done in the chamber.

So do I have a problem with these rounds given that I have to try a little to close the bolt? I saw no marks on the bullet, so I don't think it engaged the rifling. Are these safe to fire? There isn't much powder in these rounds, but I also have zero experience loading bottleneck cartridges.

 

[Skinnedknuckles]

Hmmm, so I took new Hornady brass and made up 5 rounds each with 7 grains of trail boss and 9 grains of unique. All used coated Missouri Cowboy 15 bullets, which are 12 Brinnell and 158 grain RNFPs. I encountered a couple of issues:

- I could not figure out how to flare the case mouth. I tried using a 357 expander die, but all I managed to do was crush a case. The bullets seemed to seat OK anyway, although I think I scraped off a little of the coating.

- Following skinnedknuckles' advice, I took one of my rounds and chambered it in my Marlin. I had to put a bit of pressure on the lever to fully close the bolt, all at the end of closing the bolt. When I ejected the round it took a bit of oomph to do so. There is a little scrape on the brass right around the case mouth. I think that is from the round hitting the concrete floor of the patio, but it could have been done in the chamber.

So do I have a problem with these rounds given that I have to try a little to close the bolt? I saw no marks on the bullet, so I don't think it engaged the rifling. Are these safe to fire? There isn't much powder in these rounds, but I also have zero experience loading bottleneck cartridges.

I bought a Lyman M-type expander die in .35 Rem and I spun down the expander shank with sandpaper in a drill to keep it from expanding the neck below the expansion ledge after I have neck sized the case for pistol sized bullets (.002" undersize).

Did you trim the brass to length? If there is marking on the brass, it could be caused by hitting the end of the chamber. Try chambering a case with out a bullet and see if it is still hard to close the lever. Brass so long due to the neck length rather than the shoulder that it jams in the end of the chamber can be a bad thing, as I understand it.

 

[brewer12345]

Thanks, SK. Will try brass without the bullet for sizing.

Anyone tried this with jacketed rather than lead?

 

[brewer12345]

Hmmm, I ran a few of the pieces of new brass through my calipers and got 1.91 inches, all under the trim to length of 1.92. This may be a shoulder shape thing, rather than a brass length issue.

 

[brewer12345]

Just to follow up, I fired 5 rounds each of a 158 grain coated Missouri RNFP bullet with hardness of 12 brinnell and loaded with 7 grains of Trail Boss and 9 grains of Unique. The hit the target 4 to 6 inches lower than where my rifle is sighted in for factory Leverevolution and neither were especially accurate. I did not see a whole lot of different between the two powders, so I will probably try 10 grains of Unique next time.

 

[Skinnedknuckles]

Just to follow up, I fired 5 rounds each of a 158 grain coated Missouri RNFP bullet with hardness of 12 brinnell and loaded with 7 grains of Trail Boss and 9 grains of Unique. The hit the target 4 to 6 inches lower than where my rifle is sighted in for factory Leverevolution and neither were especially accurate. I did not see a whole lot of different between the two powders, so I will probably try 10 grains of Unique next time.

I also found they shot about 6" low at 50 yards when zeroed with LeveRevolution. The bullets are moving about 40% faster at the muzzle. POI does move up with increasing charge. I'd recommend doing a ladder with Unique up to no more than 11 or 12 gr (my groups opened up at 11 gr). I found grouping improved (I was using the BHN18 bullets) as I increased to about 10.5 gr then it opened up abruptly. I assumed the bullets started skidding instead of grabbing the lands at that point. MBC thought the softer bullet might be accurate to higher velocities. My current load with Universal shot about 3" low compared to LVR, but all my Universal trials seemed to shoot a bit higher than equal charges of Unique but I haven't gotten out the chronograph yet. I also felt the Universal loads were more accurate.

 

[Skinnedknuckles]

Finally got to chronograph the Universal loads. Just got a Lab Radar and tried it out with the Marlin. Turns out those reloads using Universal and coated MBC bullets are amazingly consistent.

With 12 shots (it took me a few to figure out where to position the Radar to get it to trigger), I got an average velocity of 1615 at 3 yds (1624 at Vo) with an extreme spread of 32 fps and a standard deviation of 12 fps. I've never had a reload this consistent! As expected, this load is shooting a bit faster than the Unique load (1475 fps).

Also, I wasn't doing anything special to position the powder. I just loaded 5 in the magazine, sat down at the bench, and shot them as a string working the lever with the rifle horizontal, so I'm going to jump to the conclusion that they aren't particularly powder position sensitive.

Interestingly, the velocity only dropped about 90 fps at 20 yds, which was the max measurement distance I had set. If I was interested enough, I guess with the Lab Radar data I could estimate a ballistic coefficient, but at 50 yds (may stretch it out to 100 yds given the results to date) I don't think it is worth the effort.

 

[brewer12345]

Nifty. I might try 10 grains of both unique and universal next time.

 

[Skinnedknuckles]

Nifty. I might try 10 grains of both unique and universal next time.

Sounds like a good plan. I went back and checked the chrony results for 10 gr Unique and was surprised to see that the extreme spread and std deviations were almost equal to 10.4 gr Universal. The key difference for me was that I had to trickle measure every charge with Unique because of the variation I was getting with the powder measure but was able to use the Lee Auto Disk with Universal, vastly simplifying the reloading effort. Good luck.

 

[brewer12345]

Sounds like a good plan. I went back and checked the chrony results for 10 gr Unique and was surprised to see that the extreme spread and std deviations were almost equal to 10.4 gr Universal. The key difference for me was that I had to trickle measure every charge with Unique because of the variation I was getting with the powder measure but was able to use the Lee Auto Disk with Universal, vastly simplifying the reloading effort. Good luck.

Thanks for all the really helpful info. I am a patient person and will never be loading a ton of these gallery loads, so I do not mind if I have to had weigh them.

I have been reading the Lyman lead bullet manual and they have data for gas checked lead bullets for 35 Rem that supposedly have good accuracy with a minimum charge and do a touch under 1400FPS with a 200 grain bullet. Perhaps a bit big for a gallery/small game load, but something I might look into if I take up casting.

 

[Skinnedknuckles]

I am a patient person and will never be loading a ton of these gallery loads, so I do not mind if I have to had weigh them.

.

Be careful, they are habit forming.

 

[brewer12345]

Be careful, they are habit forming.

For sure, but I also own a 357 lever action, so scratching the itch is far more straightforward with 38 special loads.