That post last week about my old Model 66 that is starting a new life, led me to remanence a bit. Back in 2010, I was a member of the High Road forum, where we talked a lot about firearms related stuff. A bunch of us started playing with heavy bullet loads in the .357 magnum, and one of the members, who called himself Ranch Dog designed a bullet for the group. It was a 180 grain wide-flat-nose bullet with Leen tumble lube grooves. I talk about it here, and you can click over to read the post.
That load featured Hodgdon's L'il Gun powder. I won't give you the recipe, because you need to do your own load work-up, but it was stiff. And, L'il Gun has probably changed a bit over the years, so if I decided to use it, I'd have to do my own work-up.
I recall that when I did the initial load work, I had to seat that bullet a little deeper than the SAAMI specs, and the gun I used to finalize the seating depth was that Model 66. That load would just barely fit into the cylinder of the 66 and required a heavy crimp to keep the bullets in the cylinder from backing out under recoil. That load gave me 1200 fps from the 66 and was flirting with 1600 fps from my Marlin 1894C.
On a subsequent range trip, I took my Model 28-2 to see how they would chrony from the 6" barrel. To my complete surprise, that cartridge would extend past the end of the cylinder and tie the gun up with the bullet hitting the forcing cone. I was a bit surprised as the Model 66 is built on a medium frame and the 28 is built on the larger N frame, but the evidence was clear. The Model 66 would feed and fire a longer OAL than the Model 28
I always thought that was odd.
It's Labor Day. Y'all go have some fun.
3 comments:
I have done the same kind of load workup in my .357s using WW296, H110, and VV-N110. My advantage is that my Ruger GP100 has a longer than average cylinder so long OAL rounds aren’t a problem. Lil Gun is a similar burn rate powder, so your results seem typical to me. They are quite slow pistol powders and like a longer barrel. In a 24” lever gun you might see another 100 or so fps, and you will see much less muzzle flash.
Do you know the hardness of those RanchDog bullets? Wheel weight lead isn’t super hard, the gas check helps with blow by, so the bullet might actually mushroom, unlike those often brittle very hard cast ones.
Drew458
How much flame cutting did your M-66 have above its forcing cone when you handed it off to your youngest?
Some of Ranch Dog's recipes with that bullet were flirting with 1800 fps from a .357 lever gun.
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