Load help for Rossi ranch hand in 357

Ironman6067

Ironman6067

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First foray into reloading. I was given powder, bullets and have a tons of .38 .38 +P and .357 brass. So I decided I'd have a go at this. The powder is 2400 magnum pistol powder, the bullets are hornady 140gr "cowboy". And I picked up some winchester magnum primers. So after some research I think that for what I have a load of 10gr of the 2400 will work for the .38 and the .357 brass? I'm not looking for the most accurate load, it's just for plinking. Any help on the load measure would be great!!
 
Personally I never use special brass. For my 44 lever I load everything in 44 mag brass so I don't have to worry about dirt rings in the chamber or increased bullet jump. Some guns jam more when feeding the shorter special cases too. I can keep track easily as I only load jacketed bullets for magnum loads and cast, plated, or powder coated bullets for special loads. It will decrease pressure and velocity as you have a larger case volume but I can load up intermediate loads between special and magnum. Since all the brass is magnum length it can't be accidentally loaded into a special only firearm.

More on what Trinimon said... the 357 magnum came out in 1934 and magnum primers didn't come out until after WW2; sometime in the 1950's I believe. So all the 357 magnum ammo must have been loaded with non-magnum primers for 20ish years and it worked back then. There are a couple harder-to-ignite powders where the manufacturer recommends magnum primers such as H110 but it isn't a rule that all "magnum" cartridges need magnum primers all the time. If you already have a pile of them there is no harm in using them if you develop your load for them.

For a 140gr bullet and 2400 in a 357 magnum the Alliant site lists 15.1gr as the max so 10gr seems fairly light. If you're looking for light recoil it should work assuming it reaches a high enough pressure to burn properly. I have no experience with 2400 so I can't say.
 
I only use mag primers with h110 in my Rossi ( 20 inch barrel version ) but I don't think it is a problem , as long as you develop the load with them and don't switch primers without retesting the load , I would develop separate loads for each type of brass
 
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