one unique case-357 >360 throats
I was thinking about this the other day and was just wondering if anyone can put it all into good perspective. Used to be I could remember all the good details so I never wrote any thing down. Now that I have the sense to write things down I cant remember any thing to write down. Probably about 30 years ago I bought a Taurus 66- 357 mag SS 4". Nice well balanced nice handling handgun. Imitation S&W 66. But less pricey. Due to the QC or the engineering Dept the throats were on the order of 0.360, even a bit +. Accuracy was on the order of a blunderbus loaded with 6 -3/0 buckshot . Jacketed or cast 6-10" at 20 yds. The biggest cast bullet I had was 0.359"
I was messing with firelapping at the time and wondered about using a polyethelene wad as an over powder wad, but I couldnt find any combination of sheet or"stuff" that would work. Just no change. Finally using a moderate charge of Unique, a Lyman 358477(?) lubed with home made lube-cookie cutter stuff. Alloy was WW with enough 50-50 solder to fill the mold groovesI decided to fill the excess space in the case with some "Grex" analogue in an effort to keep a wad in place. This had an astonishing effect on the accuracy of the revolver. Test firing at 35yds , Thats where the backstop stump happened to be, started producing grops on the order of 1-1 1/2". Let me mention that was back in the days when I could see. Worked with this combination and found that I didnt need the wad on the bullet base. Firing with a Lee rest often gave groups under one inch at 35 yds. With the rest, not much bigger with sand bags. All I was doing at this point was dumping the powder charge and filling the dead space with a lightly compressed volume of the powdered Grex. The Grex was measured out with a Lee dipper to keep the volume and compression consistent. The load was a moderate one so the reduction of case volume didnt give excess pressures. I dont remember if I had chronographed the load but the recoil level was not excessive- so a WASG gives 1100+/-. Trying the analogue with jacketed bullets gave a lot of improvement but nowhere near the improvement as with the cast SWC. It was fun to shoot it because it was so fantastically accurate, in such a nice balanced gun, but the tedium of loading th Grex which had to be hand dipped since it would not run thru a powder measure got to be as much fun as I could stand. So I traded it for a Ruger SS-SS 4" that shot anything well without all the special attention. Never to the consistant <1" at 35 yds, but good enough.
Just put this in for anyone's amusement or thoughts on the matter. I havent tried to duplicate this loading with any other gun . I do have Redhawk 45C that I dont think shoots as well as I think it should. The sighting systems(eyes) are not working as well as it used to so results may be as good as before. I may have to try one of the cheater sighting systems.
