cherryriver
Member
Stir crazyness is clearly setting in with the annoying winter redux we're having in this neck of the woods. It leaves too much time to cook up silly loads, but not enough chances to get to the outdoor club range to chrono them.
I prefer to only use .357 cases in .357 chambers, having seen a couple of cylinders ruined by excessive use of .38s leaving a burn ring in each hole. A Model 28 Smith I got a year ago would be a great shooter except that if fired with full-power magnum loads, you have to pound the brass out because it flows into the burn rings. That's bad.
So I keep working on a good .38-level load in the long case. But I also prefer the round-nose bullets to help speed loading for match practice. You can make good target loads with wadcutters and Winchester Super-Target, but that's not what I was looking for.
IMR Trailboss seems as though it's made for this, filling the long magnum case with those smelly Cheerios pretty full. It's made for large-volume cases with low-power loads.
The book doesn't show plated bullets, but I'm stuck on Berry's and I usually find they need a bit of extra powder compared to plain lead. So I went with the max load for 158s, 4.2gr and ran off four hundred rounds.
It turned out a little soft, only about 720fps in my Colt .357 Model. I was looking for 800 (to make IDPA SSR power), so I'll go up a bit.
It was quiet and poofy, and felt more like .38 wadcutter loads in the Colt. Accuracy was satisfactory, but that's coming from a terrible benchrest shot guy who rates his ammo by how often it rings the 12" gong at 45-50 yards, standing, freestyle. For actual science, please go to the next post.
Meanwhile, after a thread about appropriate powders in a different caliber, I was looking at the Alliant book and couldn't ignore the Bullseye loads, most of which are full-power loads. The 158gr JHP load shows significant velocity, over 1100 as I recall.
I'm always looking for 1100fps loads (in four-inch guns) to make both major, and significant noise, so I did a couple of hundred with 6.0gr Bullseye shoving the 158s.
Well, it's a pretty decent load, smells good, and doesn't have any large velocity problems or overpressure signs. It timed out something like 1060fps, but lake-effect snow was starting to interfere with the timings.
Oddly, it wasn't too dirty, either, unlike what one always thinks of with Bullseye. I guess if you get the pressure up it burns off just like any other powder.
Needless to say, the accuracy was good, as Bullseye almost always will produce. Kind of a good flash, too, if you like that sort of thing.
I alternated it in a couple of cylinderfuls with my standard 1100 load, 7.2 gr of Unique (also Berry's 158s), which comes in right at 1100 with decent variation. It wasn't really different, apart from the obvious velocity/recoil increase.
I can't say what good a Bullseye load in .357 is, except for scaring the other folks at the indoor range, so there it is.
Bill
I prefer to only use .357 cases in .357 chambers, having seen a couple of cylinders ruined by excessive use of .38s leaving a burn ring in each hole. A Model 28 Smith I got a year ago would be a great shooter except that if fired with full-power magnum loads, you have to pound the brass out because it flows into the burn rings. That's bad.
So I keep working on a good .38-level load in the long case. But I also prefer the round-nose bullets to help speed loading for match practice. You can make good target loads with wadcutters and Winchester Super-Target, but that's not what I was looking for.
IMR Trailboss seems as though it's made for this, filling the long magnum case with those smelly Cheerios pretty full. It's made for large-volume cases with low-power loads.
The book doesn't show plated bullets, but I'm stuck on Berry's and I usually find they need a bit of extra powder compared to plain lead. So I went with the max load for 158s, 4.2gr and ran off four hundred rounds.
It turned out a little soft, only about 720fps in my Colt .357 Model. I was looking for 800 (to make IDPA SSR power), so I'll go up a bit.
It was quiet and poofy, and felt more like .38 wadcutter loads in the Colt. Accuracy was satisfactory, but that's coming from a terrible benchrest shot guy who rates his ammo by how often it rings the 12" gong at 45-50 yards, standing, freestyle. For actual science, please go to the next post.
Meanwhile, after a thread about appropriate powders in a different caliber, I was looking at the Alliant book and couldn't ignore the Bullseye loads, most of which are full-power loads. The 158gr JHP load shows significant velocity, over 1100 as I recall.
I'm always looking for 1100fps loads (in four-inch guns) to make both major, and significant noise, so I did a couple of hundred with 6.0gr Bullseye shoving the 158s.
Well, it's a pretty decent load, smells good, and doesn't have any large velocity problems or overpressure signs. It timed out something like 1060fps, but lake-effect snow was starting to interfere with the timings.
Oddly, it wasn't too dirty, either, unlike what one always thinks of with Bullseye. I guess if you get the pressure up it burns off just like any other powder.
Needless to say, the accuracy was good, as Bullseye almost always will produce. Kind of a good flash, too, if you like that sort of thing.
I alternated it in a couple of cylinderfuls with my standard 1100 load, 7.2 gr of Unique (also Berry's 158s), which comes in right at 1100 with decent variation. It wasn't really different, apart from the obvious velocity/recoil increase.
I can't say what good a Bullseye load in .357 is, except for scaring the other folks at the indoor range, so there it is.
Bill
