Finally decided to get serious about developing cast loads for my 9X57. It is a homemade 9X57 put together with a new .358 barrel on a FN action. It has shot well with jacketed reloads (and took a nice 8 pt), but I am ready to turn it into a dedicated cast bullet rifle. In fact, I'm doing that with several of my deer rifles.
I have recently dived head first into PCing and have some excellent results for my 30 cals and 45-70. I have no 35 cal molds and am hoping y'all can ID the mold a certain bullet came from. Several years ago, I acquired a batch of 35 cal bullets from an older gentleman that apparently was thru reloading. You could tell that he was pretty good at casting. I tried the first one today and got outstanding results (see below). Now, the rifle may shoot great with other bullets and, it may not ever shoot like this again with this bullet, but it certainly caught my eye today.
I loaded 5 rounds with 23 gr of 5744 and seated these bullets to touch the lands. The first shot was called left when the trigger broke. The next 4 went into .7" and all five were a little under 2.5". My next move is to load some more and see if this group was a fluke or if the accuracy is repeatable. Can't believe it'll shoot like this all the time but if is consistently below 2MOA I would love to find this mold and make some more. Then I'd PC them and see if they'll still shoot well.....
The bullet is 197 gr as lubed and gas checked, and sized to .359". It may be a tumble lube designed bullet, but the gent seated a gas check and ran it thru a luber/sizer. It has a very generous meplat that should perform very well on medium game. I googled 358 molds but have found nothing as yet that is close to it. Any ideas????
I only received 49 of this particular bullet from the gentleman. This is how he shipped them to me. You can tell he was particular about his boolits!
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