Another satisfied customer...

[LeadThrower]

... of Mountain Molds. A beautiful brass double cavity arrived a couple weeks ago and I finally had a chance to cast and shoot some. What a dream! They fell from the mould easily, look phenomenal (when I do my job), and shoot as straight as I can hold. Sorry, no chrony, and no pistol rest, so no hard data, but you can use your imagination to see what this will do to a deer using 10 grains (ish) of AA#9 in a Marlin 1894C.

It's got a 76% meplat, 215 grains (or so), drops at 359, sized to 358, loaded into 357 mag brass. Initial tests were over 7.5 and 8.0 gr AA#9, and were fun!

Lead's cheap and powder's expensive, so bigger is better :)

[Bret4207]

Sweet! Reminds me of a Lyman 358627 which I hope to be a thumper from my Marlin35 Rem.

[sav300]

Leadthrower,how would that boolit go in a 358win?Nice weight.mean looking too.:castmine:

[LeadThrower]

Sav300,
It's got a .320 nose. Crimping on the groove would put a bunch of it in the boiler room. Crimping at the first lube groove would make for a "nose" of about .490, and would keep the boolit in the neck of the case (roughly .360 in the case).

[nighthunter]

Beautiful boolit ... my best 44 boolit came from Dan. Must have been one of my lucky dreams. You guys know what I mean by that. Let us know how your boolit works out for you and what your loads are. This is what casting is all about.
Nighthunter

[LeadThrower]

I'll be "working up" some loads, but I lack the resources right now (chrony, etc.) to do real load development. I'll post what I can, tho'.

One thing I noticed with the initial 7.5 and 8.0 gr AA#9 loads is that there was a bit of unburned powder in the barrel. That was using regular primers. I'll try magnum primers in my next batch.

[LeadThrower]

Just an update:
up to 10 gr AA#9 using mag primers and it behaves like a gentleman from my GP100 and Marlin. I added a chrony and rest to my hardware collection but have yet to take it out for data collection. Time sure does fly by! (or as the frogs say: "times fun when you're having flies")

By the way, marlin owners: I have not feed issues with this boolit.

I did take my GP100 to the range with the rest. This boolit kept groups half the size of those I was able to find with Lee's 158RF.

More data when it's available...

oh yeah, one other addition to my hardware: a Forster hollow pointer. That ought to turn this thing into a real beast!

[LeadThrower]

Finally got time to load some more and get my **** to the range. I'm still at the indoor range, so no chrony action yet, but here's the latest from my GP100::Fire:

each load was a single shot, check the brass, then 4 additional rounds...
10.2 gr A9 No worries, nice kick. Boolits pulling under recoil w/ moderate crimp.
10.4 gr A9 No worries, nicer kick. Boolits pulling.
1st shot 10.6 gr A9 Flattened primer (no hard extraction).
1 additional shot of 10.6 gr A9, another flattened primer, all done.
All loads used cci 550 primers.
When I get outside on a sunny day with the chrony I'll post more. I'll also test from the marlin.

[LeadThrower]

Well, it's been a long time coming, and circumstances only allowed me to get four shots over my chrony, but here's something:

Boolit: The afore-mentioned 358215TC custom from MountainMolds
firearm: Marlin 1894c
4 shots (5th didn't register on the chrony)
10.6 gr A9
Magtech nickel-plated brass
CCI magnum small pistol primers
average velocity 1308 fps
es 49 fps

Using a BC of 0.2 (I welcome help in estimating this), online calculators show over 500 ft-lb of energy at 150 yards.

I'm learning to use the info the chrony provides, so I welcome all comments. (With this and all loads in all firearms I'm interested in accuracy and power to harvest meat.)

LeadThrower

[Crass Whackwords]

Wow, that's a very heavy bullet for the 357 !!! :)

Not much velocity but with all those lube grooves and bearing length, it should be accurate.:Fire: