upside down cast wadcutter 358495 accurate

[catboat]

I bought a used Lyman 4 hole 38 caliber wadcutter from a fellow board member recently, and have been testing loads with it.

It is the Lyman 358495 flat base wadcutter, 141 grain, button nose. I'm loading it it in 38 special cases for my SW 586. I've shot different loads of Bullseye (2.5-3.5 grains), and seating at different overall lengths. Overall accuracy is running about 1.5-1.75+ inches for 5 shots at 50 feet (rested muzzle, two hand grip). I'm am sizing to .360", which pretty much just lubes the bullet, and may kiss a spot or two on the bullet.

Alloy is wheelweights, with a pinch of tin (maybe 50:1 lead:tin).

In general, higher powder loads were more accurate (3.5 grains better than 2.5, 2.75, and 3.0 of Bullseye).

I loaded 10 rounds of this bullet, seated to leave one large lube groove (not lubed) and the small crimping grooved exposed, @ 3.5 grains/Bullseye. On a whim, after reading a comment about it somewhere, I loaded my last 5 rounds of this bullet UPSIDE down. No charge of seating depth. It left 2 lubed grooves exposed.

Wouldn't you know it. The upside down load wadcutter posted the tightest group so far. It put 5 shots, rested, into a round cluster just under an inch.

Time to load up some more, and retest. Interesting so far.

[Jack Stanley]

Congrats on your great results with those new boatailed wadcutters , I've heard a lot abot them and I've known guys to use the 158 grain semi-boatailed wadcutters with great results . Unfortunately , I only have the double ended wadcutter mold to use .

I do have some experience with a spire-tailed wadcutter in a thirty caliber that didn't want to shoot [smilie=l:


Seriously though , any ideas why it works better backwards ??

Jack

[deltaenterprizes]

The uniform noses make uniform bases. The base is the steering wheel of the bullet, that is why serious cast boolit rifle shooters use nose pour molds.

[1Shirt]

A number of years ago, I loaded backwards, some swaged hollow based wad cutters in 38S. Now there was a hollow point to put other hollow points to shame. Only ran them abou 650-700, but that was more than adequate. They opened up to about 60-70 cal at 20 yds on a clay bank. They were about as accurate I as any other wc that I shot loaded the right way. They also did in one feral cat, and you can imagine what that thing looked like.
1Shirt!:coffeecom

[Hardcast416taylor]

Speaking about reversing bullets in a case. I recall reading in a book written by an old time African white hunter about doing just that. Seems they were very short of FMJ rounds for the main back up rifle. He would loosen the soft point bullets in the cases, pull the bullets and reverse them into the case they were just pulled from. For short distances, he wrote, the animals shot with them never knew the difference.Robert

[1Shirt]

Hardcast, Seems like I remember reading that as well. Might have been Taylor.
1Shirt!:coffee: