38/55 for Silhouette competition.

Good afternoon gents, I hope you are all fine. I have been offered a Winchester in 38/55 calibre and have plans of joining the Lever Action Silhouette club here. Looking towards purchasing a mould, I was looking at the Accurate 38-285B. I have been unable to locate published load data for this weight bullet. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge with this cartridge combination?
Any information regarding this or any other bullet that may be suited would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer to use black powder.
Regards
Bob.

Can't really help much except to say it's a real fun caliber to shoot cast in. I shoot mine a lot with pretty wimpy loads at 100 yards and always have fun.

I lucked into a large stash of commercially cast bullets for mine I've been using, but did cast and shoot a couple of pots of bullets from the Lee 250 grainer and it showed itself to be a good bullet.

I recommend you get a set of the RCBS Cowboy dies if you plan to shoot cast in it, made a big difference in my rifle.

If you're shooting black fill untill your bullet will compress the powder about 1/8". Use a good lube like SPG

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Originally Posted by BobInAus

Good afternoon gents, I hope you are all fine. I have been offered a Winchester in 38/55 calibre and have plans of joining the Lever Action Silhouette club here. Looking towards purchasing a mould, I was looking at the Accurate 38-285B. I have been unable to locate published load data for this weight bullet. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge with this cartridge combination?
Any information regarding this or any other bullet that may be suited would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer to use black powder.
Regards
Bob.

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Bob
I have a winchester 94 comemorative in 38/55 ------with blackpowder, a juice box wad, and the LEE 250 grain boolit it is scary accurate.

I would start out with 22 or 23 grains of imr 4198 and work up from there

Joe, I sent you a PM in reply to your PM you sent me.

Bob.

Really all depends on a couple things.

1- what caliber is your barrel ... could be .380+ or .375. Makes a bit of difference on which boolits to use
2- which length of brass is going to be needed ... the old is longer then the new.
3- what twist is the rifling ... my Moruko 1885 custom is 1-12 twist but my old '93' Marlin is the original 1-18.
4- how fast do you desire to push your 38

All these things plus a few more will dictate which boolit will serve you best. Which boolit will work for what range and use.

You are going to have a blast (pun intended) with your 38-55. This is my first low punisher cartridge and I have had tons o fun with it already.

The old original 38's were .380+ and had a 18 inch twist barrel. The chambers were cut long to use the longer case length and the rifling(if I recall) were a bit deeper.

The more modern 38's are a .375 inch bore. The chambers are cut for the shorter brass and the rifling (while built for jacketed bullets) is shallow rifling.

The new modern .375 inch barrels offer a wider selection of boolit moulds and the shorter brass is cut for using smokeless powder ... however both cast AND black powder can successfully be shot in any of them when the correct lube and boolit mix is used.

Simple answer is to use a good Lee 250 grain tumble lube boolit lubed with Lee's Allox tumble lube and a dose of Unique powder for a begining load. Mine is 10 grains Unique under the Lee boolit with the Lee Allox lube sparked with a Remington number 9.1/2 primer. This is a load that provides many hours of fun for this Pilgrim.

In my Marlin Cowboy 38-55, 1/18 twist. Ballard deep groove rifling. For years I have been using my home cast 250 & 260 gr bullets. One PB, the other GC. Up to 1600 fps , excellent accuracy with a max of 23grs of IMR-4198 in ""MY"" rifle. Above this, accuracy dropped off. After looking at bullets of around 300gr with about 1400 fps , I have seen a marked improvement in accuracy & a great level of flight over 200yds. I see 200yds as a max range for hunting with this bullet. My suggestion is a 300gr bullet at or about the 1400 fps level. Also when using IMR or H 4198 ( a great powder ) I have found for good accuracy that enough Dacron or tissue to firmly hold the powder in place is essential. Without the filler you can get large velocity swings with this powder. Velocity swings will absolutely affect accuracy..

The rifle is a 94 comemorative Chief crazy horse in 38/55. I have no idea what the bore is 380 or .375. I was looking at using the Accurate 38-285B at between 1400 and 1600fps. In consideration of using BP do the comemoratives have the 1-18 twist? Does anyone have an idea of the difference in length of the old 38/55 cases and the new?
Regards

Bob

The bore will be close to .379”-.380” in your Winchester,modern barrels anyway.

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...=1#post5245985

https://www.starlinebrass.com/articles?id=2540

Bob here is an article that might prove of great interest to you, written by M.L. McPherson about 38/55 brass, chambers and accuracy.

I shoot that bullet for the 200 meter rams in Lever Action Silhouette. I cast it from wheel weights with 1% tin added. I will admit that the bullet and load I am going to reference is unnecessary for chickens, pigs or turkeys. For those targets I am using the 380-245D. It is the same bullet with one less lube groove, cast from 20-1 alloy (shorter and lighter) with 7.5gr of Trailboss. My ram load is the 38-285B and 26gr of H4895. It is easy on the shoulder and very effective on those pesky rams. At the Nationals on practice/sight in day the rams were "hard set" on purpose. That is they were sitting all the way to the front of the rail. This way, if your load knocked them over or pushed them off of the rail then the chance of dinging one during the match was very low. During the match and practice day that load knocked over every ram no matter where the bullet impacted.

Hey Gents, thanks for all that, there is something wrong if I cant get something worked out with all that info.

Regards
Bob.

A friend here shoots a cast bullet around 290 grains in a 375 win. Even under 1200 fps muzzle velocity is enough to knock rams over IF there is enough elevation available on the rear sight to get it on target at 200m

The most accurate bullet out to 500 meters is the 320gr Ideal 375166 in smokeless and black powder. Shoots MOA out to 300 yds
The clone of this bullet is in the Accurate Molds inventory