O.K. This may seem a little off the wall for many of you but I am looking for some info on hollow base boolits in 38 caliber. I like to "play" and along with that, goes many things.
I load both BP and smokeless in 38 Colt Short, Long and Special. I was looking for a hollow base 38 mold and was about to try to have one custom made when I picked up a nice Rapine HB 145 gr. RN mold from a member here. So bear with me please.
The handgun I will be using is a Ubeerti 1851 "Richards & Mason" conversion with 7 1/2 inch barrel - chambered in 38 Special - bore size .357.
I haven't cast any out of the Rapine mold yet but I know they will be just fin in loading BP cartridges. A compressed load of 3F, a tight cardboard "wafer wad" cut out of thin waxed card stock over the powder, my BP lube smear in the hollow base and I will have an internal lubed cartridge very similar to the original 38 Colt Long. I see no issues so far with that load - the card over powder will prevent lube migration and upon firing, will pretty much burn and allow the gases to expand the skirt of the HB boolit.
The question I have pertains to using the same HB boolit in a smokeless load. I plan on tumble lubing them in paste wax/alox for lube and loading with the empty hollow base. I will also mention that I will be using 38 special brass so there won't be the bullet jump that there would be in the 38 Colt Short or Long.
I am not "high tech" like a lot of you fellows and I say that with admiration for those that are in to the alloys, chronos, etc. I've been casting for over 50 years with the dipper. I have two Lee electric pots now - one for soft lead and one for "range lead" that I have purchased form a variety of folks on here. I've never owned a chronograph nor fiddled with mixing up different alloys, etc. as for the shooting I do, I don't really find it necessary - I don't shoot competition or hunt and just mainly send lead down range.
So . . on to my questions.
I was going to cast them out of soft lead for both BP and smokeless loads.
Looking at our friend, Mr. Wikipedia - the original internal lubed slug used in the 38 Colt Long was of two weights - 125 grain which with BP traveled at 772 FPS and the second was the 150 grain which with BP traveled at 777 FPS.
I have read of those who use hollow base wadcutters (38s) and that you have to keep the load down or you can blow the skirt. The skirt thickness on what the Rapine mold casts is heavier that what is on the HB wadcutters I've seen.
I usually use either Bulls Eye or Red Dot for most of my straight wall pistol cartridges and will be loading samples for both for this little project. Looking at my Lyman Cast Boolit Handbook - 3rd edition, they show that for the 142 grain RN Lyman/Ideal 358-212, the follow "beginning loads" give the following FPS
Bulls Eye 2.7 grains 612 FPS
Red Dot 2.8 grains 650 FPS
So, if I load the beginning loads above, which is below FPS that is given for the original BP 38 Colt Long cartridge, and use the HB boolit from the Rapine mold (with nothing in the HB), will I be O.K. and not blow he skirt and the boolit travel like it should? I would of course load single rounds when testing and check for squib and leading between each fired cartridge.
AND
If I try the HB Rapine over smokeless . . which would be better to use? Pure lead or range lead. My guess is that the smokeless is going to expand the skirt of either of them just fine and if I load low, it won't blow the skirt. But then again . . . that's supposition on my part. I'm thinking that if the boolit is traveling at around the same rate as the original Colt Longs did, then pure lead would work O.K.?
Yea . . . I could just use a plain base boolit and I have plenty of different molds to use but I'd like to see how the HB would work. I don't plan on using heavy loads out of the '51 "open top" - just experimenting and see what I can end up with for an accurate plinking and paper load of rout to 25 yards. With the .357 bore on the Uberti, it does't require a heeled boolit like the originals die but I'd still like to see what the results would be. My thinking is that the HB will expand with the gases behind it but it can't expand any further than what the throats are and once in the barrel and on the way out, it can't expand any further than the bore allows.
Your thoughts, comments, etc. would be greatly appreciated and if I'm missing something here, I'd like to know about it.
Many thanks.
Jim