Hi,
Well I finally managed to get my press set up and running. It has been sitting around in a couple of cardboard boxes waiting for me to get the time to get it together.
I set up and reloaded 1500 rounds of .357 with 125 grain FMJ Montana Gold bullets and starting with 7.3 and worked up to 7.7 grains of Hodgdon's Titegroup powder at 0.1 grains increments. There is no sign of overpressure. The Hodgdon on-line manual recommends 7.6 grains as a maximum with a standard primer. I am using standard CCI (non-magnum) primers. Rounds fire clean with a little bit of a snap to them but nothing spectacular. In particular there doesn't seem to be any noticeable difference between the 7.3 and the 7.7 grain loads. They feel pretty moderate compared to factory 125 grain rounds.
I am a little disappointed in that I thought the 7.3's would be a nice solid target round and the 7.7 would give me a bit of the solid recoil I prefer most of the time. The reason I chose Titegroup was that it is supposed to be clean burning (seems to be), is cheap to use since the amount used per charge is small for the bang you do get (right again), and is supposedly has good performance - hmmm, well maybe. They do seem to be accurate but it just seems like something is missing. Anybody else have any ideas on where to go from here? I would like a bit more bang. Anyone have any favourite loads to think about? I have some 296 and H-110 but I was saving that for some 44Mag and 454 Casull.
Well I finally managed to get my press set up and running. It has been sitting around in a couple of cardboard boxes waiting for me to get the time to get it together.
I set up and reloaded 1500 rounds of .357 with 125 grain FMJ Montana Gold bullets and starting with 7.3 and worked up to 7.7 grains of Hodgdon's Titegroup powder at 0.1 grains increments. There is no sign of overpressure. The Hodgdon on-line manual recommends 7.6 grains as a maximum with a standard primer. I am using standard CCI (non-magnum) primers. Rounds fire clean with a little bit of a snap to them but nothing spectacular. In particular there doesn't seem to be any noticeable difference between the 7.3 and the 7.7 grain loads. They feel pretty moderate compared to factory 125 grain rounds.
I am a little disappointed in that I thought the 7.3's would be a nice solid target round and the 7.7 would give me a bit of the solid recoil I prefer most of the time. The reason I chose Titegroup was that it is supposed to be clean burning (seems to be), is cheap to use since the amount used per charge is small for the bang you do get (right again), and is supposedly has good performance - hmmm, well maybe. They do seem to be accurate but it just seems like something is missing. Anybody else have any ideas on where to go from here? I would like a bit more bang. Anyone have any favourite loads to think about? I have some 296 and H-110 but I was saving that for some 44Mag and 454 Casull.
