Wednesday, November 05, 2008

New Bullet

Some time ago, I ordered a bullet mold from a group order at the Cast Boolits forum. Those guys decide on a bullet design, take orders and have custom molds made by Lee Precision.

The mold in question is a .35 caliber, tumble lubed, gas checked, 180 grain, round-flat tip. It's a hoss, a big ole bullet for either the .35 Remington or the .357 magnum.

When the mold came in, I put it on the shelf and forgot about it. Yesterday I took it down and cast some bullets. I tumble lubed them in Lee Liquid Alox and today I installed the gas checks by running them through a .358 sizer.

The picture below is four of them, with a standard 158 semi-wadcutter for scale.



Another shot, from the top, shows the big meplat of this bullet.



This ought to be one great bullet for the .357 magnum, especially when shot through a carbine. We learned a long time ago that part of the killing power of a cast bullet is the shock effect from the tip (meplat) of the bullet and that basically, a wide, flat meplat worked to make a cast bullet more effective. Junior talks about meplat effect in this article.

I'm really looking forward to wringing out this bullet.

4 comments:

be603 said...

Those just cry out "Hear piggy, piggy."

Anonymous said...

Oooooooo.......

I'd like to buy some from ya to load up for for my new Marlin 1894C carbine. And if you want to do a group order on some Hodgedon Lil' Gun powder, let me know. We could split the cost of the Hazmat fee and shipping.

Termite
louisiana_termite@hotmail.com

JPG said...

Good lookin' projectile there. I think I'll look around for some ready-cast ones at the next Dallas Market Hall Gun Show.

I think they'd be fun to try in my .35 Whelen. What do you think? Around 1900 to 2000 fps? Also, they might do well for some medium-velocity .357 loads. I recently discovered how well an old S&W 19-4 shoots at 100 yards, using some 167 gr. SWCs at around 1100 fps.
JPG

Matt G said...

I was thinking the exact same thing for my .35 Whelen, Dad.