358 winchester and bp

[2AMMD]

Anyone ever loaded 358 winchester with bp? have two mexican 7mm Mausers and considering conversion to 358 for one. Case size close, rim size same. Would like to load black powder as well as the norm. Any insight welcome.

[Nobade]

If you can satisfy some needs - proper boolit that seats about halfway down the neck and has plenty of grease grooves, you could likely get it to work reasonably well. The sharp shoulder is going to be kind of hard on the brass, but I could see a correct boolit fitted to the right throat design shooting decently, likely with a duplex load and at least a felt wad between the boolit and powder.

With a fair amount of work I managed to get my 30-30 to shoot reasonably well with black, so it can be done but rifles specifically made for black are a lot easier to get to work.

I have been trying to think of a good BP cartridge that would work in a Mex Mauser and can't come up with any. Anybody else got any good suggestions?

A 375X308 might be pretty decent, lots more good BP boolits available for it and almost no shoulder to impede powder and gas flow. That would be good with smokeless too.

-Nobade

[2AMMD]

Nobade,

Thanks for the help. I'll give it some more thought and look for some other cartridges that might work better.

2ammd

[missionary5155]

Good morning
Seeing as you are going to rebarrel or rerifle I would also go with the fatter caliber. With the caliber .375 you have a miriad of molds running from 200 - 280 grainers that will serve you well hunting most any game.
As the case is going to be the limiting factor I would consider a throat long enough to long seat your boolit and pick up as much powder sopace as the magazine will permit. Start with 3F. You will see a good 100 fps velocity gain, plus it burns much cleaner.
Any reason you would not use the 7mm case as your brass ? Would easily open up and is a little bit longer ? Or even any other brass that would fit the action.. Always nice to have that extra room for another 10 grains of 3F.
Mike in Peru

[blackpowder man]

I have a .338 federal t/c encore rifle barrel that I have debated about trying blackpowder duplex loads in. I haven't checked capacity, but if it would get a 250 grain boolit to at least 1400 fps it might be a fun load for target and maybe smaller deer. Thing is 1800 -2000 with the same boolit would be much more effective and I have other Bp cartridge guns.