.38 wadcutters in the Freedom .357

[44man]

My friend came over today and had two different wadcutters his father loaded with Unique. I have steel targets at 100 yd's and he wanted to shoot at them. I told him that everyone says they go to pot in a short distance (With a wink, of course.) He laughed too. :-D
Most of you know I like the WLN and WFN boolits for any distance but these even surprised me. We shot almost 100 rounds at the steel chicken at 100 yd's and almost never missed it. It was hard with open sights because we had to aim at the top of the chicken, blotting it unless we kept both eyes open. But to clang steel shot after shot makes me wonder where the myth came from! [smilie=1:
I have to tell you his father did not do too good of a job seating the boolits either. Some were so crooked, they would not chamber because of a bulge in the brass on one side. But if they would go in, steel would clang.
I have a new appreciation of the lowly wadcutter! :Fire:

[felix]

Were those boolits full blown wadcutters, entirely flat, i.e., without any hat, teat, beanie, etc.? ... felix

[dubber123]

I wonder what velocity they were loaded at? I shot about 30,000 wadcutters over a healthy charge of Unique back in High School. All of these went through a Mod. 10 Smith.

I never had a chrono then, but the same load was 970 fps from a 1-7/8" Chiefs Special, so I'm sure they were faster in the 4". Mod 10. They shot very flat and accurate to at least 100 yds. If they started out at 700 fps. who knows?

[Ricochet]

I wish I had the URL, but a couple of years ago I saw a page with information from high-resolution Doppler radar tracking of bullets regarding their stability. They did have some .38 wadcutter info showing them yawing and precessing a good bit, as I recall. Never having tried shooting them at long range myself, I can't add anything about their accuracy, but it's interesting that the technology's there to track bullets' flight in considerable detail. Someone else on here may have that site marked...

[44man]

We shot two styles, one is flat and the other had a small flat point like the Lyman 358091. If I remember they were loaded with 4.5 gr's of Unique. I don't know how fast they are out of the 10" Freedom but they must be stepping out.
I didn't see any difference except a small aiming correction between them.
Who knows if they wobbled? :confused: The chicken is pretty small at 100. We didn't use a fancy rest, just set the butt on a bag. However we both were also able to hit it a lot off hand too. I have an old oxygen tank chained down there for a gong, it makes a nice noise. I watched him clang it every shot off hand.
Then he rolled to an empty chamber and flinched :mrgreen: I had to beat him with a stick. :drinks: Thats the best cure for a flinch, stand over him with a billy club. [smilie=1: