.357 Heavy Loads

I wish someone would bring in the hard cast buffalo bore 180grain or equivalent.

There's a real lack of anything beyond generic 158grain around here.

I know I know...I should load my own, unfortunately time, family, space etc etc blah blah blah considerations.

The numbers on this load, especially out of a carbine is amazing.
 
I'm, curious. Why are you interested in heavy loads? Factory 357 pack a whallop and really kills paper and steel. I load down from factory for 357, I guess I'm a light weight!
 
I personally like the 158s the best .
I find them vry powerfull .and in a rifle , there down right deadly to just about anything in north America.
sry I cant help you with 180 s with anything else
 
I too am curious of 1) what is a hot load? The standard full power load they developed when the 357 was designed in the mid 1930s is a hot load and is as heavy a load as should be shot, in any 357 revolver. Old Lyman manuals will show you how to get top loading and load carefully, never going over the heavy loads designed for the best of 357 revolvers.
I am going to throw in a word of caution here. There is no reliable way to judge pressure, to "build up" a revolver load to get maximum load in "your" revolver. You could load twenty identical loads, shoot eighteen of them without incidence and number nineteen, same load, could blow your cylinder wide open.
My next curiosity, why are you worrying about hard cast, or jacket bullets. With about 160 grain bullet weight your top speed may be at the best, 1,400 fps. For this you do not need hard cast bullets, as a bullet made from old fashioned wheel weights, without even a gas check, will work just fine for that load and of course for any heavier bullet.
 
Re. Shooting your own cast bullets(wheel weights) at 1400fps. I believe leading would be a big problem at those velocities. I buy hard cast 158s and can drive them to 1200fps but not often and usually follow up with a few jacketed to make cleaning easier.
 
I've loaded the Sierra 180 JHC in the past but confine the vast majority of my revolver shooting these days to calst. I have a bunch left of 2000 215 SWC that I got back in the mid-90's from a place in the States (not sure where now) that work well over a stiff charge of AA#9 for about 1150 and penetrate like crazy. I also have a brand new mold that I just got from Rick at R&R Bullets for a 195 gr RN that I'm going to have flat-pointed if possible by a mold customizer down south, I'll post on how it turns out...
 
SUPER TENERE said:
Re. Shooting your own cast bullets(wheel weights) at 1400fps. I believe leading would be a big problem at those velocities. I buy hard cast 158s and can drive them to 1200fps but not often and usually follow up with a few jacketed to make cleaning easier.
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How rough, or how polished smooth the bore is has more to do with whether the barrel leads up, than any other one factor.
I have had both 357 magnum and 44 Rem. magnum that shot normal lead alloy bullets at 1400 feet per second with virtually no lead accumulation.
 
I have a Marlin 1895 that I shoot 460-540gr hardcast and it's alot of fun,Also have a winchester 1894 trapper in 44 that I shoot 305gr hardcast.
Going to get a lever in .357 to go along with my GP100 (I like big bangs).
 
SUPER TENERE said:
Re. Shooting your own cast bullets(wheel weights) at 1400fps. I believe leading would be a big problem at those velocities. I buy hard cast 158s and can drive them to 1200fps but not often and usually follow up with a few jacketed to make cleaning easier.
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leading is not solely based on speed, it's also what fit they have to your barrel and bullet lube, etc.

i use lead softer then wheel weights (usually a 50/50 mix pure lead to WW) with ben's red lube sized to .358 using 15gr of h110, haven't had any leading from that ever.
 
dan belisle said:
There used to be 180 gr full jacketed 357 bullets for silhouette shooting. We loaded some heavy loads with that bullet for bear loads in the NWT about 30 years ago. They worked well as I recall, though I wouldn't feed them as a steady diet to any 357 revolver I was fond of. - dan
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My handloading career began with a Lee Loader and Keith's 173 gr SWC over 14.0 grs of Herc 2400. I've used both the Hornady and the Sierra versions of the .357/180 truncated cone, they both penetrate like crazy. Prior to that I tried the Sierra 170 gr JRN. My heavy .357 bullets now are Ben Hunchak's hard cast 195 gr SWCs with gas checks. These if anything out penetrate the jacketed 180s. I think a 200 gr WFN like the ones loaded by Corbin are the ultimate game bullet for the .357.

Mr. H-4831, Bruce its been my experience that if you work up loads by half grain increments, until you get sticky extraction, then back off a half grain, you'll have a safe working load, providing none of your bullets weigh heavy, and provided you don't encounter a piece of brass that has a bit less volume. With cast bullets, it might be a good policy to segregate your bullets by weight if you're loading maximum loads. The heavy ones need a bit less powder. If you still occasionally have sticky extraction, your brass volume might be inconsistent, so back off another half grain. Your ejector rod is the best indicator you have of unsafe pressure.
 
I went as far as 10.5gr Alliant 2400 under a 200gr hard cast bullet (gas checked too)
Velocity from a 6" barrel was between 1100 and 1200 fps but can't remember the exact number.
Slightly sticky extraction so I would recommend 10gr max

this cartridge is long and will only fit a few guns, GP100 being one of them
 
Boomer said:
Mr. H-4831, Bruce its been my experience that if you work up loads by half grain increments, until you get sticky extraction, then back off a half grain, you'll have a safe working load, providing none of your bullets weigh heavy, and provided you don't encounter a piece of brass that has a bit less volume. With cast bullets, it might be a good policy to segregate your bullets by weight if you're loading maximum loads. The heavy ones need a bit less powder. If you still occasionally have sticky extraction, your brass volume might be inconsistent, so back off another half grain. Your ejector rod is the best indicator you have of unsafe pressure.[/QUOTE)

I never did have sticky cases in a magnum revolver and I have had two 357 revolvers and five 44 magnum revolvers. I do note that I have it written in my notes that one time 14 grains of Hercules 2400 and 14.5 grains of H110 was too heavy with the Keith bullet, as the primers leaked. However, that is a better indication of soft primers than an overload. You will note that I used the caveat of no, "Reliable way," of judging pressure--.
As far as all going fine until one round suddenly blows the cylinder up, I can vouch for. I won't list every detail, but when we were young and foolish we were shooting factory cartridges in a quality revolver which was not designed for the heavier loads we were using. We must have shot over a hundred such rounds when one day I was shooting my usual one handed and K BOOM. And I mean B O O M, accompanied by a ball of fire surrounding the gun and my hand.
I have always treated them dang revolvers with a bit of extra caution ever since. We know we have a great amount of built in safety when building up a heavy load with a good bolt action rifle, but revolvers do not have that extra layer of built in safety, whatsoever.
If anyone should have had a good idea of judging pressure in a revolver, it would have been Elmer Keith. But he unintensionly blew up the cylinders on quite a few 44 Special revolvers in the course of developing the 44 magnum.
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H4831 said:
Boomer said:
Mr. H-4831, Bruce its been my experience that if you work up loads by half grain increments, until you get sticky extraction, then back off a half grain, you'll have a safe working load, providing none of your bullets weigh heavy, and provided you don't encounter a piece of brass that has a bit less volume. With cast bullets, it might be a good policy to segregate your bullets by weight if you're loading maximum loads. The heavy ones need a bit less powder. If you still occasionally have sticky extraction, your brass volume might be inconsistent, so back off another half grain. Your ejector rod is the best indicator you have of unsafe pressure.[/QUOTE)

I never did have sticky cases in a magnum revolver and I have had two 357 revolvers and five 44 magnum revolvers. I do note that I have it written in my notes that one time 14 grains of Hercules 2400 and 14.5 grains of H110 was too heavy with the Keith bullet, as the primers leaked. However, that is a better indication of soft primers than an overload. You will note that I used the caveat of no, "Reliable way," of judging pressure--.
As far as all going fine until one round suddenly blows the cylinder up, I can vouch for. I won't list every detail, but when we were young and foolish we were shooting factory cartridges in a quality revolver which was not designed for the heavier loads we were using. We must have shot over a hundred such rounds when one day I was shooting my usual one handed and K BOOM. And I mean B O O M, accompanied by a ball of fire surrounding the gun and my hand.
I have always treated them dang revolvers with a bit of extra caution ever since. We know we have a great amount of built in safety when building up a heavy load with a good bolt action rifle, but revolvers do not have that extra layer of built in safety, whatsoever.
If anyone should have had a good idea of judging pressure in a revolver, it would have been Elmer Keith. But he unintensionly blew up the cylinders on quite a few 44 Special revolvers in the course of developing the 44 magnum.
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Its funny how those little incidents stay with us. I've developed a pretty low opinion of compressed loads thanks to the combination of a case full of Retumbo topped with a heavy bullet, which went from safe, with no signs of pressure to a wrecked rifle, having chucks of steel and brass plucked out of my eye with tweezers, and several weeks of being extremely light sensitive, with the increment of a single grain of powder! I don't think much of Quickload either, once the parameters of a load exceed the standard for that cartridge. For example if a 150 gr bullet is considered standard for the .30/06, approaching the Quickload prediction for a 240 gr bullet should be approached with great caution; no I didn't blow up my ZG-47. I now firmly believe that once a powder charge is compressed, the pressure resulting from any further incremental increase in powder, is no longer a representative percentage of the total volume of that cartridge.

In your case though I believe a chamber in you cylinder had a microscopic crack or perhaps the entire cylinder was improperly heat treated, as the incident is so far outside of my own observations. I did lots of stupid #### too, like loading .357 magnum loads in thin webbed .38 Special brass, but other than sticky extraction I never so much as suffered a cracked case, never mind a wrecked gun. Once the pressure is excessive, the web of the case expands, even with thick webbed magnum brass, and sticky extraction is assured. Thus I consider sticky extraction the signal to retreat, and a half grain of powder in a small pistol case makes for a significant change in pressure.

Back in the day when Elmer was experimenting with heavy .44 and .45 loads, he blew up some .45 Colt SAs, coming to the conclusion that the cylinder walls were too thin over the bolt cuts, so a .44 would be a better option than a .45. I don't think he ever managed to blow up a .44 Outdoorsman when working up heavy .44 Special loads, but I might be mistaken. I must say, that I was first a bit distrustful of the fluted cylinder of my .44 Ruger Vaquero, after my earlier Super Blackhawk, but I've fired a couple of thousand full powered loads though it now, without so much as a hiccup, however, I did load one batch of cast bullets without checking the weight, and I did have some sticky extraction due to variations of bullet weight and case capacity, but no gun issue.
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