357 Sig Casting

[Daryl]

Current project is to try a cast load for the 357 Sig. I have a Glock 22 with a Lone Wolf barrel.

I've found a reasonable supply of reloading data to get started. I have some Lee 120 TC that I was going to try.

Has anyone tried this here and have info to share?

My 9MM experience was that I needed to back off on the BHN and get down to the low teens (12-14) with good lube and no leading problems once the barrel was broken in. I think the pressure on this is going to be 8-10k higher than that. I was thinking of going with a gas checked .356 bullet. I still have to slug the Lone Wolf Barrel yet.

I'm thinking if I go with Plain Base I should heat treat to get a consistent BHN of maybe 18-22?

[shotman]

You are in for a disapointment. the 357 sig is NOT a cast shooter. I have a 226 and you cant use a Gas check as its inside the case and will not stay with the boolit. If you use a plain base they dont cycle and what good is a single shot auto. I got fair groups with the 158 tl lee it would cycle but that is a very heavy boolt and at 25yds had to hold high. About 3 reloads and case was trashed. I changed barrels to a 40 and use the 357 for jackets
One other thing you cant use a rem Gold dot jacket as the off set in bullet is below the mouth and bullet will fall inside the case . Try to get them out . I dug a hole for about 50

[Zbench]

I have a different view. The .357 Sig is tricky to load for, but if you have the correct barrel and set up your rounds properly, you can get great groups with it.

The reality is that any cast boolit that you can seat to the proper depth will work, but the real secret is that you absolutely need to cannelure the boolit and crimp it hard.

I bought one of the hand cannelure tools that CH4D sells to cannelure lead boolits and then crimp them with a Lee factory crimp die in .357 Sig. I found that normal dies don't provide the best crimp which is the biggest problem with loading for the .357 Sig in my opinion.

The case neck is less than 1/8", and you need to grip the boolit very tight or it will just get pushed back in the case when it chambers which will always result in a misfire. I've loaded 10s of thousands of rounds for the .357, and have 5 pistols chambered for it. My favorite shooters with cast are my G33 with a Lone Wolf Barrel and my stock P26.

As far as alloy, Lyman #2 works great. It gives you a boolit about 15 and works great without a gascheck. Unless you are using an 85 grain boolit and push it 1500 fps or more, you don't need a gas check.

Keep after it, there is no reason you can't shoot cast out of your .357 Sig, but there are many more variables to worry about with it as opposed to something easy like a .38 special. I think the best boolits for cast are in the 125 grain range. Really looking to getting Miha's latest which should be perfect!

Pete

[Daryl]

Pete,

Thank you very much. This is encouraging. I have been working on it slowly and have all the equipment necessary including the FCD. Yesterday I was working on dummys (there are plenty of those) to get the seating and crimp figured out. I'm going to start with the Lee 356-120-TC. I find that seating it to the shoulder gets about 1.135" COL and chambers and works in the mag fine. It seems that the lube groove is just starting beyond the neck. For longer term rounds after I get the load figured out, maybe I can use the LBT Commercial lube that is hard and does not get soft in normal temperatures. I did try seating the bullet out to keep the lube groove completely in the neck and it came out to 1.175" but jammed up in the mag.

I will keep the cannelure issue in mind. I should have picked up a used unit that was in our forum a little bit ago. For now, I'll get things figured out without it and make sure to get a heavy crimp with the FCD.

Per Veral Smith's book, I'm going to firelap this bore first and have the rounds about ready to do that.

[RKJ]

Guy's I'm not trying to hijack the thread but I have a question. I go pretty regularly to our local conservation range and scrounge the brass left lying (I also shoot ) :) I have been seeing a lot of .357 Sig with split necks. I assuming these are once fired brass as I hate to leave any of my brass on the ground but it may be cast offs too. Are you guys seeing this? It seemed odd to me to have that many. Of course it could be the gun that's shooting these also. Again, it seems odd to me, and I was curious. Sorry for the hijack. Thanks.

[Zbench]

RKJ,

As a bottleneck round at high pressure, Sig brass does split. In my experience, you can still get 6-8 shots out of each case. I suspect that the brass you are seeing is from someone who had a batch at the end of it's life and just decided to let them hit the ground and stay there. I use almost exclusively AA7 for my .357 Sig loading, and the cases do seem to go in a pretty narrow range...assuming they all had the same number of reloads of course.

Pete

[Zbench]

Daryl,

Always happy to help out a fellow NEOH shooter.

I played around endlessly with different moulds before I finally got two made. I had a couple made at different times by Moutain moulds. One was a standard one groove 125 Grain boolit with a crimp groove and 50% meplat.

My thought was that since the .357 Sig head spaces on the shoulder that I could really crimp the brass hard in the groove like a rifle boolit. It works and shoots well, but the groove is too deep to really roll the brass in.

That experience led me to a duplicate boolit that I apply the cannelure to and it works perfect. I ordered the two at different times, but a custom mould is really the only way to get what you want and need for the .357 Sig. Other designs may work, and I'm hopeful that Miha's will, but that is a road you can go down.

As for the other mould...it works great for a light .38 round. No harm in having a spare mould around. Get one of those cannelure tools and a factory crimp die....those two things really solved my problems. I use the lee factory crimp die set all the way to max. The way I test it is to rack and lock the slide back, put a round in a magazine that I measured the OAL on and then let the slide move to battery. With my setup, the boolit does not move at all. Interestingly, if you rack the same boolit a second time, it does get pushed back about .005"

Just some random ideas to give you more info.

Pete

[Daryl]

Thanks for all the input. Going well so far.

I'm using the Lee 356-120-TC for now with LBT lube and about 12BHN. I seat it in the case so the base of the cone just enters the case mouth. This is about 1.135 COL. If I try even just a tad more than 1.14 it will jam in the magazine.

I did cut a round up to see how the lube groove set into the neck. It looks to be just fully contained in the neck and not into the case.

I do use the Lee FCD on it just so it crimps. I did not set it to full crimp yet - I still need to try the trick with chambering. I'll use a fired case and a dummy round in the mag to test my crimp.

I'm using 7.5 of HS-6. I fire lapped the Lone Wolf barrel first. I've just run about 60 rounds through it an I am getting leading. I'm not going to pass judgment on that until I put through at least 500 rounds. My 9MM seemed to get less and less leading.

If the leading remains an issue, I have some gas checked RN 9MM that I'll try. That should surely elminate the leading. If it does, I'll probably have a mold made at that point.

[lead slead]

I also have a 357 sig barrel for my M&P 40. I was wondering how a 147gr mold would work? Has anybody tried one of them yet? I too have been thinking about lead through the sig but decided I would just shoot plated 124grainers through it and continue to shoot lead through the 40.

[chucky64]

I have two guns with the 357 sig barrel. I tried the lee mold route and never could get my col below 1.140. That was until I bought the perfect mold for me. The Saeco
mold #377, its is pricey but on the plus side You can use it for 9mm, 357 sig and for
38 special. It has a wide lube groove and once I had my Lee factory crimp die set up correctly, I have not had any bullet set back issues. Saeco molds are set up more logically for me and easier to use than lyman molds. I wish I could afford more Saeco molds but this is the only one I own and It really works for me. The 357 Sig is the
caliber I choose to carry on the road, this mold and AA#7 helps me learn/practice to be more proficient in its use .

[lead slead]

I said earlier I wasn't going to shoot lead out of the sig...well I just had to try it. I am using the same 120gr TC mold from Lee as posted above. I found I can get it to work quite well in my M&P (with conversion barrel to 357 sig). I am using AA #9 to fill up the case. This greatly helps setback problems becaues it it is a somewhat compressed load. The only Issue I have ran into thus far is the OAL. If you get it a little off sometimes the bullet will jam into the feed ramp and will not feed. I had this happen twice in the first 200 rounds. But it is a new barrel and all. I have not had any issues since then.

[Daryl]

Do you mean that if it is off a little too long? For my Lone Wolf conversion, I found that I had to have the base of the cone even with the case mouth. If any of the shoulder is exposed, it does not seat fully into the chamber because it engages the rifling before being fully seated.