I had a few shots through the Chrony...

[Tom W.]

Yesterday at the range a gentleman was kind enough to chronograph a few shots from my .480, using 400 grain cast bullets and H110 powder... seems that they averaged 1260 fps.... I'm impressed.....My .357 with 158 gr jhp (excuse me, but I haven't purchased any gas checks for my cast boolets yet) and 10.5 grains of Blue Dot was doing about the same.

[shooting on a shoestring]

If you've got a .357 mould, you may not need your GCs at 1200. Try it, if you fail, you only have some lead in the barrel and something to do with a bronze brush for a few minutes. I regularly shoot 148 wadcutters (358091) at 1100 out my SP101 2.25" with 7.5 grs Herco. I can also push 358156 SWC without GCs to 1050 with Blue Dot or 2400.

I also occasionally use Cream of Wheat (COW) on top of the powder to fill the space between the powder and the boolit base. They make short work of taking lead out of a barrel. You can also use COW as poor boy gas checks. Works in straight wall cases, can give interesting problems in bottleneck cases.

[Tom W.]

The Lee mold that I have has some history, as well as my .357 revolver. I bought both of them new many years ago, and shot the bullets "as cast" using LLA. The mold is a Lee double cavity C358-158 SWC GC design, but I did shoot them w/o the gas checks from my Security Six, and from a Charter Arms Undercover. I sold the Security Six and the mold to a friend of mine, he kept it up untill about three years ago, when he asked if I'd like to buy it back. I did, and got the mold, some speedloaders , and two or three holsters, including the original one that I sold to him.

I'll be loading some up w/o gaschecks until I either buy some, or get a mold that doesn't need them.