The oldest manuals I have, Lyman 45th do not have a listed oal. The new stuff 49th and later and 4th cast manual give oal tested. Oddly some of the oal's tested are not loaded to the crimp grove as I found with the Lyman 358429. The listed oal in 357 is 1.553 and when seated to the crimp grove with a properly trimm3d case at 1.280 gives an oal of 1.665 significantly longer than Sammi spec.
I think I have a winning load range here. These are 158 grain MBC SWC bullets over 2400 powder. Loads 2 and three seem to be in the magic range for my Blackhawk. I think the off shot in group II was me pulling the shot though I’ll have to shoot a little more to confirm.
It’s a phrase that predates the .357Magnum. Up until the mid-50’s, in the Ideal manuals it was commonly referred to as a .38Spl “Heavy Duty” load. It means a .38Spl load suitable only for .44-frame (large or N-frame) revolvers, not the standard K-frame or J-frame (D-frame for Colts) .38 frames. The .38-44 and .38HD designations gave way to +P but I don’t recall exactly when.
If you read the history of the 357 it started with heavy loadings of 38s. When Keith started blowing up pistols Smith and weason cam out with a gun N frame built on the 44 platform to contain the pressures. There are a few examples of pistols they built that carry the nomenclature. Anyway the reason that is important is that's how a lot of the bullets he designed fit correctly. In the above pictures you can see that the Lyman 358429 sticks way out of my cylinder when loaded to the driving band. My solution is to load the bullet as designed and reduce powder charges to maintain the correct 35kpsi load limits of Sammi. I also have been doing this with the 358-180-sil bullet. I would very much like to have 357 maximum chambers and just run 357 cases. I have no idea why they reduced the maximum bullet length forward of the case by .100 when they created the Sammi specification from 38 to 357....
Same deal as shooting 454 in a 460 chamber.
I feel like we're in the same boat, or at least sailing in the same fleet. I don't trust my handgun trigger work enough yet to completely belive that variations among groups are truly reflections of the loads instead of my abilities, even when I'm shooting from a rest. I'd really like to find someone who is a known good shooter and have them shoot my loads in my gun for something to compare against.
I have good days and bad days as a trigger jerk. I shoot a standard load for comparison during the session to give myself a benchmark. One of those loads is 7.0 grains of Unique behind a 154 noe cast bullet. It's useful to me because it gives me a relative performance against something I have faith in and if their both bad I just try again another day. If my unique load is good and the test load is garbage then I move on.
As a ruff reference I'm using 9 grains of #9 with a 180. I can go higher but not 11.
That's 38+p speeds. I don't think less than a thousand is reasonable out of a mag. I did all my testing without crono numbers but it wasn't a powder that I was pleased with the results. I do t know your bullet speed limit, but I know there is one.
