Mold Suggestions for .357 Maximum

[MT Gianni]

Bob Milek was the gun writer that first brought out the big stink about Ruger's flame cutting. He was vested hard in the TC 357 and 30 Herrett cartridges and several felt he had an ax to grind in not wanting the max to succeed.

[contender1]

I remember that. Bob (as well as many other "writers") had special interests,, and if someone did something to threaten their pet projects,, they'd trash them. Some of them still do.

A good point about the Maxi & using 158 grn bullets above. I too know they were built around the idea of 180's & heavier. But some of the factory ammo of that era used 158 grn bullets,, (Remington was big there,) and so it can be used. But again,, the lower the powders the better.

Problems really came about when folks tried to use 125's and really hot & fast powders, then complained to Ruger wanting their gun replaced or repaired.

David Bradshaw pushed for the heavier bullets from the beginning. And he tested several barrel lengths & rifling twists in the prototypes. The concept was to hopefully build a gun to be a serious handgun silhouette competitor, as well as a good hunting handgun.
The concept was right,, but the public application didn't follow what it was designed for. Those of us who have, shoot & enjoy the Maxi know what a good heavier bullet can & will do in that gun.

[megasupermagnum]

These were all IHMSA applications. I was able to close to my desired 2 MOA with the Contender barrels, but was willing to settle with just over 3 MOA for the revolvers. Part of this was my old eyes and open sights vs. scope.

Again, I compared against J Words (I still have a stash of Speer 200s) and was able to get comparable results for each gun.

I found one old photo of a 2.35 MOA open sight group with the 10" Contender:

Attachment 294451

That's really good. I stand by my original comments, but clearly a plain base can be a great shooter at these high velocities.