so whats a

[white eagle]

heavy weight boolit for the 357 magnum?
I am use to 44 and 45 cal but this little 357 I am not sure of [smilie=w:
I ordered a mold from Tom @ Accurate Molds for 160gr.
not sure if it is a lite weight or what :bigsmyl2:

[GP100man]

I consider 160gr up heavy for the 357 & once ya pass 175grs. you really have to drop the rear site to get em out there !! but they`ll sure kik up the dirt/dust !!

We use to shoot at an old truck rim across the feild 200+yds maybe ?? & the heavies never wandered windage wise but elevation was a booger but once ya got dialed in !!!!

[357shooter]

Sounds right. I think of a 160 as a 158. 2 grains at that weight doesn't make much a difference. That's right in the middle of the pack. From there up is on the heavy side of the 357 world.

[bhn22]

173 grains seems to be the top end for the likes of Lyman & RCBS. I really like the 185 LBTs & am also experimenting with a 200 gr NOE. I bought the NOE mould because I wanted a heave gas checked hollowpoint mould. I can't wait for spring!

[stubshaft]

I have an old NEI/SSK 180 gr. .359" mould that I used extensively for my Maxi.

[357shooter]

173 grains seems to be the top end for the likes of Lyman & RCBS. I really like the 185 LBTs & am also experimenting with a 200 gr NOE. I bought the NOE mould because I wanted a heave gas checked hollowpoint mould. I can't wait for spring!
I have a 200 SWC from NOE too, it's plain base and shoots great. Need more time with it to work out the best loads.

[jmsj]

I have always considered a 158 grain bullet standard for the .38 Special/ .357 Magnum. Most store bought standard(non premium) loads seem to weigh around 158 grains.
When I think of heavyweight bullets in the .357 Magnum, 170 grains and up seems to come to mind. I have a S&W 686 that really likes Remington 180 grain SJHP's, I haven't shot it a lot lately. I have bought a Lyman 358429 in hopes that it will shoot it as good as those Remington J-bullets. I just haven't had time to work on it yet.
Good luck, jmsj

[white eagle]

the boy shot his birthday present today
he truly likes shooting it
he really didn't care for my 44 mag or my 45 colt

[turbo1889]

For a 357-mag I call a 148 to 160 grain boolit weight the "mid range weight" all below are light weights and all above are the heavy weights.

As to what I consider a heavy weight; a few pictures are worth a few thousand words:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4127/5041806329_a668695e50_z.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4127/5041745875_7c08cbfdcd_z.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4148/5094831259_5c105b3ecd_z.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/5066225751_888bda3ec0_z.jpg


Yes, you're reading the mold designation right a 210 grain heavy hitter. I've been able to break the 1,500fps mark with her in my 357-Max carbine, been over 1,100fps in a 357-mag handgun, and even got the muzzle velocity up over 700fps with the 38-spl. with a fairly shot barrel length and did it all safe and sound without any pressure problems. I like heavy hitters; it's all in how you load them.

[leadman]

I have a Saeco mold that drops a 180gr RFN GC that shoots really well. Carries to 200 yards in my model 27 real well. does great in my son's (was mine) Marlin also with microgroove rifling.

[warf73]

I've got a new NEI 180gr mold that I was going to use but the boolit is to heavy for my use. I would call it heavy for 357mag but not as heavy as that 210gr lol

[MT Gianni]

358627 @ 215 gr is a heavy as is the 358430 @ 195 gr. I consider the Keith 358429 to be the bottom end of the heavies in 358.

[BeeMan]

Back in my handgun silhouette days the RCBS 357-180-SIL got the nod. The need was for weight and the resulting momentum that gave steel target knockdown at 200 meters.

See http://www.midwayusa.com/viewProduct/default.aspx?productNumber=160766

Checked and lubed it was 194 grains. It performed quite well in a Contender with both the 357 Mag and 357 Maximum barrels.

BeeMan

[HighHook]

For a 357-mag I call a 148 to 160 grain boolit weight the "mid range weight" all below are light weights and all above are the heavy weights.

As to what I consider a heavy weight; a few pictures are worth a few thousand words:


http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/5066225751_888bda3ec0_z.jpg


Yes, you're reading the mold designation right a 210 grain heavy hitter. I've been able to break the 1,500fps mark with her in my 357-Max carbine, been over 1,100fps in a 357-mag handgun, and even got the muzzle velocity up over 700fps with the 38-spl. with a fairly shot barrel length and did it all safe and sound without any pressure problems. I like heavy hitters; it's all in how you load them.

Hey Turbo,

That is a great looking Boolit for what it is. What powder are you using to push it in the 357 at 1100 fps ???

[MtGun44]

Why the bands on the front?

Bill

[lathesmith]

That's sure a cool-looking slug turbo! Definitely a heavy hitter for a 357... I have used both of the slugs pictured in my 357 carbine, one is a Lee copy of the 358430, and the other is a GB 360-220. I've also got a 358627 but don't have any of those cast up yet. This is about the top end for 357, and like Gianni said, 173 or so is about the bottom end for 357 mag/38 Spl "heavies".

lathesmith

[nanuk]

Why the bands on the front?

Bill


I'm gonna take a guess and say "Multiple Crimp Grooves" so you can tailor the seating depth for any throat/chamber length

[looseprojectile]

Ranch Dog is just about the only boolit I use in the .357 rifle these days.
Make em soft and they expand and still penetrate like an arrow.
Good deer medicine.

Life is good

[turbo1889]

Hey Turbo,

That is a great looking Boolit for what it is. What powder are you using to push it in the 357 at 1100 fps ???


Why the bands on the front?

Bill


I'm gonna take a guess and say "Multiple Crimp Grooves" so you can tailor the seating depth for any throat/chamber length



As to the purpose of having the micro grooves/bands on the nose section. Nanuk is correct but that is only a small part of the whole concept. Basically, the theory goes like this:

1 ~ Lee type tumble lube grooves are great in some ways and suck in some ways compared to regular crimp grooves and vice-a-versa.

2 ~ Why couldn’t one make a boolit with both regular and TL type lube grooves and body bands and do it in such a way that the combination maximizes each methods strengths and minimizes the weaknesses.

3 ~ A boolit made with regular grooves and bands on the butt end that goes inside the case and TL type lube grooves and bands on the nose section outside the case is pretty much exactly that proposed hybrid super-boolit.

As Nanuk hinted at with a TL type boolit one has no need of a crimp groove since the whole length of the boolit is for all practical purposes a series of evenly spaced crimp grooves and you can use whichever one works best for your particular application.

The main advantage, however, is that that the thin little TL bands are easily squeezed down with minimal force. Normally that is a disadvantage to the TL design since one can quite easily end up with undersize boolits after seating since the cartridge neck can size down the boolit. With conventional type lube-grooves/body-bands inside the case neck this doesn’t happen which is exactly how we want to keep that part of the boolit. For the nose, on the other hand, it would actually be preferred that it was easily sized down. Then we could make the nose slightly oversize diameter for the guns throat and the bearing diameter of the nose would be sized to perfectly fit the guns throat when the cartridge was chambered. A boolit nose that fits a guns throat as a tight “hand in glove” fit has definite accuracy advantages especially if one has a nose shape where nearly the entire nose length is bearing surface.

For my revolvers firm thumb pressure is required to seat the cartridges in the chambers loading each round one at a time. This is not a boolit that can be loaded with a speed loader, but it was never intended for that kind of use. For my 357-max. carbine the situation is even better since it has a short throat length of only about 0.15” before the rifling begins. Since this gun is a single shot break action (NEF 357-mag. reamed out to the longer chamber) that has a cam action extractor that holds the cartridge out a ways when the action is open there is a large amount of mechanical advantage that chambers the round when a fresh cartridge is inserted and then fully seated when the action is closed. Thus, this boolit effectively becomes a REAL (Rifling Engraved At Loading) boolit for nearly the first half of the nose in that gun with the 357-max. cartridge. A solid WW alloy full bore diameter nose that length outside the case without all those little grooves in it would not engrave in the rifling like those TL bands do and a solid diameter nose sized 0.001” over throat diameter certainly wouldn’t be just a simple heavy thumb pressure chambering proposition when loading up one’s cylinder on one’s wheel guns.

The little bands on the nose thus serve, primarily to provide a squeeze tight fit in a range of different throats without unreasonable chambering effort, secondarily they serve as crimp grooves and dirt grooves, and last of all they can serve as tumble lube grooves if one is so inclined as to dip lube the boolit noses after the boolits have been loaded into the cartridges. Usually, that is not necessary but the option is there.

As to what powders I have been using to load them to get the velocity levels I previously mentioned:

For the 38-spl. I started out thinking that IMR4227 was going to be the best choice based off of the assorted collection of heavy boolit load data I have scraped together but it instead turned out that Blue Dot worked best.

For 357-mag. I have used both 2400 and H-110 to produce top end loads with the H-110 loads getting a lot more time, thought, and effort put into them before the first cartridge was ever loaded. I ended up interpolating some load data I had for the 358315 & 358627 which are on both sides of my mold as far as weight with one being about five grains lighter and the other about five grains heavier. The reason of course for this extra caution being that H-110 is a rather temperamental powder with a narrow sweet spot range where loads outside of that range on both the light and heavy side can be dangerous. I’m not convinced that the resulting H-110 loads are superior to the 2400 loads as of yet because I need to do more accuracy testing but they are slightly faster at the muzzle.

For 357-max. in the carbine I have been using Accurate 2015 and Reloader-7 which are doing the job marvelously but I would like to try to figure out something just a little bit slower and just as energy dense to use that would give me a slightly longer burn curve and get me bumped up to about 102% powder space fill (slightly compressed powder load).

[nanuk]

I have a .357 IMI Timberwolf and was looking for something heavy and interesting

I have looked at the RD and it does look interesting, but that 210 powerpole insulator looks like it would be a sledgehammer as a short range bush load.

[nanuk]

Turbo1889: your explanation sounds good.

kind of like the old adage about engineers designing a new horse and coming up with a camel.

Now, where does one get that mould?

[turbo1889]

I already answered nanuk's queries via PM but for general FYI for any other interested parties out there if I were to do a second generation mold of this same type of design this is how it would look and the changes I would make (original for comparison to the right):

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5057/5434899198_9f151cd2af.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/54455625@N04/5434899198/)

Changes/Reasons:

1. ~ 200gr. lead boolit load data is far more common and available then 210 grain boolit load data so reducing the weight by just a smidgen to get it down to an even 200gr. or slightly less when cast from WW alloy would be beneficial.
----- a. ~ The nose length is just right for a revolver, so I would lighten it on the base end rather then the nose end which also results in a slight increase in internal case capacity with the resulting reduction in seating depth.
----- b. ~ The top drive band just below the micro groove nose above the upper of the two main lube grooves could stand to be beefed up when crimping in the bottom micro groove on the nose which is where I usually set me seating depth and crimp for most loads so I would borrow 0.02” of bearing band length from the drive band between the lube grooves and move it up to that band making them both 0.05” long drive bands.
----- c. ~ The design holds plenty of lube so I would shorten it up in the lube grooves shrinking both of their width from 0.10” to 0.07” which brings me back down to a 200gr. weight or just slightly below depending on exact alloy density.

2. ~ I have also found that when pushing this boolit hard in the 357-mag. & 357-max. I do wish I had made it a gas check design instead of a plain base so changing the base to a gas check shank would be beneficial. PB is fine for 38-spl. loads or softer loads in the bigger cartridges. I have been using a hard card or two from circlyfly.com loaded under the boolit over the powder to protect the PB boolit base from the heavier loads with good results but a regular gas check set-up would be a lot simpler.