Originally Posted by
brewer12345
OK, finally got around to fooling with the 350. I cast a bunch of Accurate 36-180L out of fairly soft alloy and tumble lubed, sized to 357. What I want is a lower powered, plain based load that is accurate to 50 yards for muskrat and beaver hunting after I found factory FMJ to be a bit over the top. I found that if I seated this bullet to a COAL of 2.13" it would feed reasonably well (loading is easy, unloading is a little sticky). I decided to call a max load of trail boss about 7.5 grains (it is probably a few tenths more, but I am being conservative). Loaded up test rounds of 6.5, 7.0 and 7.3 grains of Trail Boss as well as 7, 8, 9 and 10 grains of Unique. I accidentally powder coated a single 180L as I was coating a bunch of 45 bullets, so I made an extra 7.0 Trail Boss load. It fed ok, but was a little stiffer than the tumble lubed ones.
I will see how these shoot. If I get a good one, I may trial to dial in even closer to the magic load with both 357 and 356 sized bullets to see if I can get it to feed a little better.
BTW, I tried using the Lee FCD once and found that it is really designed for pointy, jacketed bullets, not cast.
I also have both checked and unchecked versions of RCBS 35-200 that I may try in this rifle, especially if I can't get the 180Ls to do what I want.