Will I see a difference in lead build up in the forcing cone and barrel with a bullet that has a Brinell rating of 16 verses 18 ?
I am loading 357 magnum 158 grain LSWC with 6.0 to 6.5 grains of Bullseye powder. I am shooting them from a 686, 6 inch barrel and a 686, 4 inch barrel handgun.
Thanks

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Proud NRA Life Member

18 may or may not lead your forcing cone, depending on the precise diameter of the barrel, cylinder throats, etc. If you are loading for a load of around 1200 fps I would use either jacketed, copper coated, or powder coated bullets. You might also try a slower powder, the bullseye is fast and burns hot which induces leading.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

I would love to try different powders. Do you have any for sale?
I have a lot of Dardas 158 LSWC (Brinell 16) I am going to buy 500 LSWC from Missouri that have a Brinell of 18 and see if I notice a difference.
I have a good supply of Bullseye, Power Pistol and WST powder. I was stocking up for 9mm and 45ACP shooting 1911's.
Recently I found out how much fun shooting 357 mag and 45 ACP revolvers are. I never stocked up on powders for 357 mag. loads.
I cannot find data for using Power Pistol or WST in a 357 Mag load.
Thanks for the input.

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Proud NRA Life Member

2400 is a great magnum handgun powder for 357. I cast a lee 158 grain tl bullet I load with 5.8 grains of universal no leading very accurate. No where near real magnum but fun to shoot.

I doubt you will notice a difference between 16 and 18. As you mentioned you have Power Pistol try using that instead of DE for the 357. It's a slower powder.
Save the BE for the 45 ACP

There is no way to tell other than actually shooting them and seeing.

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Still Running Against the Wind

Fit with lead bullets is king. At lower vel, a softer bullet will usually be the better choice. I run bullets as soft as 10bhn at 1200fps+ with little to no leading.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

Here are some Power Pistol 357 loads:
Alliant Powder - Reloader's Guide
This includes the Speer 158 GDHP.
You can just reduce a grain or 2 and work up from there.
They list a velocity of 1078 with 8.5 grains.
(Out of a 10" barrel!).

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Nemo

15 Brinell is as hard as you will ever need, even for magnum handgun calibers. What is most important is bullet fit and lubricant. Going harder will often result in worse leading, rather than less, if the fit and lubricant are not optimum.

You will NEVER buy commercial cast bullets with a proper lubricant as what they all use, regardless of what their advertising says, is intended to be both pretty and have good shipping characteristics rather than good lubricating qualities!

If you have a choice, for 38/357 buy bullets sized .359 and you will have the best you will get from a commercial caster.

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Gunsmithing since 1961

I agree... I would wager there is more leading caused by bullets that are too hard than too soft.

I use 12 BHN 158gr LSWC bullets in a .357 Magnum with little to no leading at all.

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Freedom is never free!!
SWCA #3437

Great informative input. I will stick with the Dardas bullets. I slugged all of my 1911's but have not done it with the two 686-6 and 625JM. I have some soft 148 grain lead hollow base wad cutters to make slugs with. After I do this I will order more 158 grain bullet in the correct diameter.
For noncompetitive shooting what are better to shoot, round nose bevel based or LSWC?
Do all modern 686-6, 4 inch and 6 inch barrels run the same size diameter bore?
If they do has anyone slugged their barrel to find out what the size it is?
Thanks for the Power Pistol data. I will start to use that.
I have some Hornady 125 grain HP-XTP bullets. I have H110, What would be close to a real magnum load with the H110. Hornady reload manual 7th edition says that the high end is 19.4 grains. If I do use the H110 at 19.4 grains should I use magnum primers or regular primers?
Thanks again for the great help.

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Proud NRA Life Member

With the magnum ball powders (like 110) it is recommended to use magnum primers.
Or the Winchester for both primers.
Also it is not recommended to go below the starting loads with this kind of powder.
They used to say 3% below max but that range has been slowly increasing over the years (but not by much).
It is certainly the best performing magnum revolver powder if used properly.

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Nemo

I wonder how the owners of MBC, Dardas, PENN and the many, many others out there would respond to this.

Yes size matters, and bullets can be too hard but the word never, well that is very bold.

Surprised you would even reply to this thread as after all it has been discussed before

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Still Running Against the Wind

I did a search before starting the post and did not find anything. Sorry I started a new thread when there is another one already out there.

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Proud NRA Life Member

Sir, My post was not directed at you at all.

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Still Running Against the Wind

Owning 5 different 357's and feeding them cast/lead bullets keeps me out of the poor house.

1 of my favorite powders for the 357 is power pistol, 7.8g to 8.0g with any 150g to 160g rn/swc/fn bullets. Any of those will put the smack on anything they get a hold of & run at 1200fps+ out of my 6" bbl's.

Penn's hard cast are 15 br. so I'm sure 16 would be just fine. I'm not sure why people use stuff 20 br and over.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Revolvers are a Little diff than autos with lead bullets. You not only ave to slug the bore, but each cyl throat as well. It does little good to size a bullet 0.358" for the bore only to have a cyl throat 0.357" size it smaller.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

rde
I have a 686 six inch and I had a gunsmith slug my bore and chamber throats
the bore measured 0.356(5)
and the throats all measured 0.357(2)

my gun likes 0.357 diameter cast bullets the best, a little bit better than .358" dia. both shoot very well 1" to 1 1/2" groups at 25 yards.
.359" doesn't do too bad either

for what its worth, after the gunsmith finished the measurements, he said I did not have to drive all the way up to his shop with my gun, he could have measured any one of his 686's and they would be the same. I'm still glad I had mine measured.

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I'd like to agree with you BUT

I would predict that you will see no difference between a 16 vs 18 BHN bullet. Your problem sounds like flame cutting. If you don't want to use a slower powder, try bullets sized at .358

I use a 8-10 BHN bullet, with the powder you have used, and get very minimal leading in forcing cone, when the bullets are sized at .358

Best Regards

Metalman60

I started playing with powder coated pure lead in a 44 magnum.
215 grain problem child Lee SWC over Power Pistol.
had it up near max with no leading to report.
Next brass liberation cycle, Ill bust out my 226 grain HP design and ask what powder coating and H110 can do for me.

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it just needs more voltage

That is interesting that only .001 of an inch would stop the gases from going around the bullet causing less leading.
I am going to slug my two 686-6 barrels and cylinders and the same on my 625JM before I buy my next batch of bullets.
I talked to Matt Dardas about what bullet would be most accurate at 30 to 70 yards in a 357 Mag, he said that the double ended wadcutters would be the best. That surprised me but I will give them a try.
Thanks for the useful information.

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Proud NRA Life Member

If you are leading your forcing cone with 16 18 will not fix it. The rule of thumb is leading in the first 1/3 of the barrel is fit, in the latter part it is running out of lube. Fix the fit to correct forcing cone leading. Only your gun and a good micrometer can tell you if 0.001" will fix it.

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Front sight and squeeze

Having run out of new (to me) cool gun books to read, I have started
thru my collection of Handloaders which I first subscribed to in 1985.
I had 1985-1994 bound in 2 year volumes when I could afford it.
Anyway I ran across an interesting short article by Mike Venturino about slugging barrels.
Revolver barrels in particular. <Handloader issue 123 pg.12>
He got tired of banging the slugs in from the muzzle and decided to fire a big slug with a squib load into a pile of newspaper.
He started with just a primer.
Stuck the bullet but it supposedly pushes back out more easily than the ramming method.
Then on to a .5 grain Bullseye load.
This worked for shorter barrels. He describes the bullet as falling into the newspaper.
But it stuck bullets in longer (like 7") barrels so on to a 1 grain load.
This worked in all barrels and still did not deform the bullet enough to destroy the bore dimension information engraved there upon.
He says you can actually see the bullet fly its so slow.

You obviously need to start with the softest bullet you can get/make and it has to be bigger than the actual bore diameter.
If the chamber throat is smaller than the bore it won't work but a gun like this will rarely if ever be real accurate.

The main problem us urban folks will have is devising a soft enough backstop that will also safely catch the bullet.
A tank of water should work as well as the big pile of newsprint Mike used.
He also said this is as quiet as a 22CB load but getting it past the wife in my case will still be a challenge.
Still... I am tempted.
This solves a lot of the mechanical problems of barrel slugging.

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Nemo

Nice thought, but unless they were all made the same year, I doubt hey are all the same.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

Tool wear is an inevitable fact of life. They may change their tools frequently to keep the tolerances very tight (good manufacturing) but there will still be some variation. I don't know exactly how long each tool lasts, but I would guess in mass production but it may be measured in days and not more than a few weeks.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"