Wanting to adjust lighter my copper plated 357 load.

[gonoles_1980]

Last time I went to the range and fired 15 357 158gr xtreme copper plated flat nose bullets with 6.2gr of HP-38. That load gave a pretty good bang, I'm waiting to drop slight so I'm thinking of going to 6.0gr of HP-38.

xtreme says "Our Copper Plated Bullets can be run at mid-range jacketed velocities or higher end lead velocities"

Hodgen has the mid-range jacketed as 6.55gr, and the lead bullet high end as 5.0 gr. That tells me it should be ok from 5.0-6.5. I want to go ahead and make 50 bullets, any reason I shouldn't?

 

[PJSprog]

...any reason I shouldn't?

Nope, not with that powder. It's quite flexible.

 

[PO2Hammer]

I don't use HP-38, but that sounds about right.
I've pushed Rainier 158 plated pretty good in my revolvers. Some of my loads are max jacketed data, but the sweet spot seems to be 5.5 to 6.5 grains of Unique or 4756, which have similar data to HP-38.

I don't think you're going to notice the drop from 6.2 to 6.0, If you want to reduce recoil, drop about a half a grain to 5.7 or so.

 

[Drop45]

4 grains of Trail Boss. Recoils less than a 9mm. Just found that out yesterday.

 

[Walkalong]

Or 4.0 Grs Competition or WST. I tried TB with plated bullets, and it is very inconsistent.

You could drop to 5.5 Grs HP-38 and work back up as wanted.

 

[gonoles_1980]

I assume I should pull the two bullets that jumped as opposed to pushing the bullet in.

 

[tightgroup tiger]

I assume I should pull the two bullets that jumped as opposed to pushing the bullet in.

Dropping down to 6.0 gr of 231 won't hurt anything. Just remember that with .38spl you can go down a lot lower than that and still shoot it from the same length barrel.

If your bullet jumped from just 6.2 gr of 231 you better pull the last two and find out why you don't have enough neck tension in your cases. You shouldn't be able to budge those bullets after their seated. 6.2 gr is only .2 of a grain from minimum load for .357.

How much are you flaring them? They should only have enough flare on them to allow you get a bullet to stick in the case long enough to get it in the seating die. Plated bullets like lead bullets should be .001 over bore so if anything they should run a little tight.

 

[gonoles_1980]

Ironically it was the lead bullets that jumped with just 4.5gr. I apparently didn't tighten the roll crimp enough when I tried using it the first time on my copper plated bullets. Since I bought the taper grip for the 38/357 for the copper plated with the 6.0, those did well.

 

[tightgroup tiger]

Sounds like you already figured that one out.

 

[PO2Hammer]

Cases seem to get pretty good grab on plated bullets. I use a very light profile (roll) crimp. Even my heavy plated loads have no trouble with pulling in my GP100.
The nice thing about plated is they need very little flaring/expansion at the case mouth. Makes for good bullet tension and should make for longer case life. .357 brass is expensive and you never find it lying around