.357 - Then and Now

J

Jeffm004

New member
This was a timely "pop-up" on my face book feed. I'm back loading .357 now.

The entire powder range for several common powders in my 1988 Speer book is higher than the entire range in my 2014 Speer book, knocking just under 200 fps off the .357. I started quite a fight on the forums asking why. I got dozens of guesses. Best guess, Some light .357s (S&W for police) were built for light .38 most of the time and the loads were destroying the guns over time when police went to .357 practice all the time, so they backed off because of those guns. I do not know the real reason, but I have 1000s of rounds fired under the old powder ranges with no ill effects. .357 was once a 1300 fps round, it now is loaded to 1000 fps, rarely touching 1200 in the book, if ever at home.

Alliant has the same 7.7 grn max under a 158 as the new books, NONE for true jacketed bullets.

I know Unique has changed to be cleaner burning. That "might" account for the change but H110, Blue Dot, 296 have all suffered the same fate.

I'm loading for a .357 lever and I am looking at a pile of books telling me not to load what I loaded in the mid-1990s and still shoot out of my SA.

I'm going to load a dozenish Unique and H110 at the old book and new book and crono, look at the brass and further ponder, but if they show nothing abnormal, I'm going retro back to a midrange 1988 load.

I've long believed that if the brass starts talking, you're way past right but
I'll look.

I have long thought reloaders accept far to little published data. Test methods, Pressure & velocity graphs with increased powder, primer variation impacts, origin of the specifications (expected failure modes/wear risks), specific gun considerations could all be linked from the bullet and powder manufactures. They should have the data. It will take a new powder manufacturer breaking in to change the culture though.

Like the .45-70, several calibers could have era/firearm dependent loads. Currently, we all load to the lowest common denominator, or work in the dark, reading the tea leaves (brass & recoil) or interpolating the single data point of velocity.

That might still be fine, if I didn't think my load data is being driven more by the lawyers than "modern firearms in good working order".

Rant ended.
 
I believe that the changes in load data might be do to formula changes by the powder mfg's more so than the advent of more lawyers. Also with the demand of lighter guns for concealed carry the frames might be a bit different than in the past (machined steel vs MIM parts).

You can always start low and work your way up. I am not sure they are still using Grandma's secret recipes anymore when cooking up a batch of powder, so be careful.


Stay safe.
Jim
 
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There could be several reasons.

Every time a powder manufacturer makes up a batch of powder it is slightly different than the previous batch. Over time small changes can add up. The powder you were buying in 1988 isn't the same powder you buy in 2015 even if it has the same name on the container.

Better testing methods. The loads listed in 1988 might not have been actually giving published speeds. I'd say todays data is much more accurate.

Manufacturing tolerances. Barrels and chambers are being built to closer tolerances than ever. A load shot in a gun with looser tolerances will generate less pressure than the same load in a gun with close tolerances. The loads listed in 1988 may have been fine in a gun of that era, but not one made today. You can probably use less powder today to get the same pressure and speed you were getting in 1988.

And on a related note, test barrels. Most magnum revolver data is published using 8" test barrels. They are not tested in actual revolvers with a cylinder gap and almost no one uses an 8" barrel. Speeds will always be slower in real guns. I strongly suspect very few people actually got advertised speeds from 357 mag revolvers even 30-40 years ago. They just took the manufacturers word on published numbers.
 
Its been one of my gripes for decades, downloading the .357 and jacking up the 9mm Luger.

Original 357 loads were a 158 at (approx.) 1500 from an 8" revolver. I know people, some on this forum, who have tested some of that ammo, in the period gun and that is what they got, allowing for individual gun variation.

The problem (for us, and ammo makers) is outside of a few die hard N frame fans, almost nobody has or buys guns suitable for this load level.

N frames, and the big Ruger SA and DA guns can handle it, lesser guns simply cannot.

Have shot stuff at those levels, and even tried to in a K frame (M19). In the lighter gun, fired cases cannot be extracted, but must be driven out of the chambers with a rod & small hammer.

I wouldn't even THINK of putting that stuff in a J frame!!!! :eek:

But the ammo makers can't control what people do, and eager lawyers await, desperate to make "big business" pay for some individuals foolishness.

Another factor is that we have "standards" that were created before modern accuracy in pressure measurement.

(for example) When modern measurement shows granddaddy's load is not 35K (the industry standard today but is actually 37.2K well, that's too hot, above allowable limits! SO the load gets adjusted.

Matters not the old load has been in constant use for half a century or more with NO issues from the shooting public, its "too hot" today, so we can't load it!
ETC.

For a commercial enterprise loading ammo, SAAMI limits are hard boundaries. Going past them risks getting you put out of business via legal costs (even if you win).

For the handloader, in modern guns, in proper working order, slightly passing SAAMI specs is NOT the kiss of death, its the "edge of the map", beyond which, "there be dragons here.." and you are entirely on your own sailing in those waters.

You may, or may not find something useful there, just be aware YOU are solely responsible for everything that happens.

Today we have .357Mag ammo so watered down that it makes the Registered Magnum say "oh, are we shooting .38s..again??" and 9mm ammo so hot that it has the Luger yelling "ach Leiber Gott ! get that stuff AWAY from ME!!!"

Just don't seem right, somehow.....
:rolleyes:
 
When the .357 first came out, there was nuttin' bigger in handguns readily available. There was a need to load it hot. Not so much anymore. With the options we now have, there's no reason to load .44 mag hot anymore....just get a bigger gun.

The reason I have heard the most and sounds the most legitimate for the castration of .357 mag is that newer and better testing equipment has shown some of the old loads exceeded the pressures originally published. Thus, the only sane thing to do was to reduce powder charges to correct the errors.
 
I believe the biggest reason that data has been tamed down over the years is that their ability to accurately measure actual pressures has gotten FAR better.

Here is something I believe above & beyond all the rest: we are adult and we own these revolvers. We are allowed to do what we want to do.

It's not a good idea to push some careless or reckless ideas on to new handloaders or to build nutty ammo for OTHER people to use. But in the end, if it's your revolver then you should seriously feel free to do what you truly want to do.

If you post about it, you WILL BE JUDGED. If you can't handle that, don't post about it.
 
I reloaded a bunch or .357 for my brotherinlaw twenty some years ago. I used the recipe that my Great Uncle had used for years. My brotherinlaw complained about his cartridges sticking in the cylinder on the first time he tried shooting them. I asked my brotherinlaw to show me his .357......it was a Hawes piece of junk with cylinder bores that looked like they had been drilled with an undersize drill bit and then someone wobbled the bit to get the holes large enough.....
 
Lawyers. That's my guess. I could be right. Or I could be wrong. Doesn't matter, because . . .

"All data contained herein replaces, supersedes and obsoletes all data previously published by Speer, Omark Industries, and Blount International Inc."

That from Speer #14. The specific manual doesn't matter. The point remains. I have no need or desire to hotrod rounds, so the new data suits me just fine.

I just finished a # of W296 from 1987. With that powder, I used Speer #10 data - because they were contemporaries (and that's when I did the work-ups on them). But now that I started a "new" #, I'm going to re-work up all my loadings. And by "all my loadings," I mean three :p

(What can I say, I don't use W296 much. In fact, this "new" # I just opened was purchased in November 2012 - just before the shortage.)

I use W296 for three loadings: 158/357M; 210/44M; & 240/44M. Of those three, only the 357 Mag loading exceeds the Speer #14 max (by a good margin, actually) But all three are getting new workups - given the difference in age between the "old" and "new" #'s of powder. I'm going to treat them just like I'm starting fresh - because I am.
 
We see published in one place; 3 levels of 45/70, 2 levels of 45 Colt in Speer 12, and 3 levels of 32-20 May 1989 Handloader Magazine.

Some cartridges I have to make up my own max pressure levels for different firearms.
I have 3 for 30-30.
I have 2 for 6mmBR
I have 2 for 38 S&W
I have 3 for 380.
And a wide range for the 410

When it comes to 357 mag, the max pressure is the threshold of sticky cases minus a safety margin per Berkowitz in 1991
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!msg/rec.guns/S_dalM1NJe0/cBSU4bR2jz8J

That may be somewhere around 35kpsi or 40 kpsi.

But if someone chambered a Ruger #1 in 357 mag with it's Herculean extractor, thick chamber walls, strong and featureless breech face, then we would be thinking a pierced primers or case head strength would be the limiting factor. That would get us up to 80 ksi, like a 6mmBR with a bushed firing pin hole.

The 357 mag case head is way stronger than the 270 case head that is registered at 65kpsi.

There would be a safety consideration in how would you insure after your death that no one puts the 357 mag rifle ammo in a thin walled revolver.
I would wrap the ammo box with duct tape.
 
Lawyers. That's my guess. I could be right. Or I could be wrong. Doesn't matter, because . . .
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Off course it's lawyers, and again, the reason the only legitimate thing to do was to lower powder charges when new equipment showed them pressures from previous recipes were too high. Otherwise it would amount to the number one reason folks loose lawsuits......negligence.

Here is something I believe above & beyond all the rest: we are adult and we own these revolvers. We are allowed to do what we want to do.

It's not a good idea to push some careless or reckless ideas on to new handloaders or to build nutty ammo for OTHER people to use. But in the end, if it's your revolver then you should seriously feel free to do what you truly want to do.
Click to expand...

While I agree, as an individual, if we choose to not follow recommendations from those that know more than we do, we should be able to. Kinda what has been thinning out the gene pool for hundreds of thousand of years. But as a manufacturer and a publisher of recipes for making ammo, one should be discretionary and only give safe and accurate information.
 
I can't really agree with the casual reference to "thinning the gene pool." While we certainly don't know exactly what handloader X is doing, I don't see the utility in making mountains out of molehills.

Yes, there have been & will be careless, reckless and haphazard handloaders. We'll find that in every aspect of... anything.

However, slowly developing loads beyond what is currently published isn't necessarily akin to sniffing glue or dragging a running microwave in to the bathtub with you. And some of the things that long time poster Clark has detailed is very good evidence of this.

There absolutely is a middle ground between "current published max" and "this guy is a lunatic" and to ignore that real place is a disservice to anyone who wants to read and learn about handloading exploits.

And while I am loathe to bring up legendary figures because the average tinkerer in NOT a legendary figure... none of what we do would have gotten anywhere without the folks who refused to accept what the "authority figures" offered as limit for what the hobbyist should do.
 
I can't say why they have cut back on charges but I loaded some 180 grain hard cast gas check over 13.5 grains of 2400 for a deer load and my chrono clocked them at high 12's low 13's I went up to 14 grains and I didn't have to pound them out of the Blackhawk but it did take effort to remove them from cylinder. As was said start low work your way up, I started at 10 grains ...
 
Sticky case extraction means the steel in the cylinder wall and the brass under it have stretched beyond the brass yield point. When the steel, which is more elastic than brass, snaps back to original size, the brass, having exceeded its elastic limit in following the steel walls outward, becomes trapped in the chamber like an unlubed case stuck in a sizing die.

Basically, that's telling you that you are likely fatiguing both brass and steel more than you really want to be.

Pressure measuring improvement is one factor. SAAMI's rifle standard showed copper crusher data for a particular lot of .30 Carbine reference loads that they sent out to be tested by 9 different copper crushers operated by 9 different ballistic technicians. Even though the velocity stayed within about 3.5% from the 20" standard length test barrels, the average peak pressures measured varied about 23% among the different crushers. That's very poor precision, and that the crusher was ever a standard at all is almost amazing. It was just what they had, starting from about 1860 when it was first invented. You can easily see from such numbers that what one independent loader thought was inside SAAMI limits could actually be higher or lower depending on which copper crusher and ballistic technician he had.

The conformal piezo transducer now used is not perfectly immune to how the ballistic techs normalize conditions and handle the ammo, but a similar test done with 357 ammo in the SAAMI pistol standard, but using the piezo transducer came up with about 11% variation in results. More than twice as tight.

I talked to former SAAMI technical director Ken Greene about this a number of years ago, and he was adamant that the standard for .357 Magnum absolutely has not changed. The differences in loads published now verses loads published then come either from the inconsistent nature of copper crushers or, more often, from the fact a lot of old load manual data was never pressure tested in the first place. It was simply worked up in a particular gun and published without knowing how it might behave in another, particularly not in a lighter one. The lawyers have likely inspired the manual authors to at least get their maximum loads pressure tested, and I believe they all do that now. This would explain a lot of the reductions, as in the modern Speer Manual. Speer used to be well known among shooters for having some very warm loads in its book.

CUPvariancevpsivariance_zpse6af27f3.gif
 
It's because between the time of the 1988 Speer manual and the newest one Speer switched from the copper crusher test method to the far more accurate transducer test method. From the Speer #12 Manual first published in 1994:

"The transducer system favors some cartridges more than others. We were able to improve on the performance of the 44 Special and 9mm Luger compared to past manuals. However, loads for the 357 Magnum are definitely down. The transducer limit is 35,000 psi; the current crusher limit for the same cartridge is 45,000 cup. This difference means many of the 357 Magnum loads are less than shown before, although the slow burning propellants such as 296, H110 and VihtaVuori N110 gave very good velocities."

The entire article in the #12 manual goes into much more depth on the differences between the two measuring systems. Their newer manuals have slightly different data for 357 Magnum than the #12. It is still in many cases hotter than data published by other current sources.
 
It's because between the time of the 1988 Speer manual and the newest one Speer switched from the copper crusher test method to the far more accurate transducer test method.
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I'm going with this theory. Even though older, warmer loads were tested, passed, and showed no signs of problems, newer pressure measuring methods showed some of them to be beyond SAAMI, so they reduced them to stay within SAAMI pressure standards. This doesn't necessarily mean the older loads were unsafe, or would be today. It just means they are not going to publish loads that they know exceed SAAMI standards. Normally if some significant change, or new problem is discovered, it comes with published warnings, (Blue Dot) and not just a tweak in the latest verison of the manual.
 
Sticky case extraction means the steel in the cylinder wall and the brass under it have stretched beyond the brass yield point. When the steel, which is more elastic than brass, snaps back to original size, the brass, having exceeded its elastic limit in following the steel walls outward, becomes trapped in the chamber like an unlubed case stuck in a sizing die.
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!

I was well aware that sticky cases were a sign of too much pressure but I didn't know why and I never even thought to wonder why...(says Dale, humbled and now a little smarter---and trying to figure what else he's taken for granted all these years.)

Thanks Unclenick.
 
Too sticky with fingertip extraction on 6 thin wall chambers at once is very different load from too sticky with a lever action with one thick walled chamber, and leverage on the extractor.
 
The difference I see in .357 Magnum (and other revolvers) data is not the method of measuring the pressure, crusher vs piezo, but the barrel attached to the Universal Receiver.

The SAAMI reference standard for .357 Magnum 158 gr SWC is 1545 fps at either 45000 CUP or 35000 psi. The reference ammo for setting up the equipment is required to do that or close to it in a repeatable manner.
The thing is, it is doing that in a TEN INCH BARREL.

The SAME reference ammo will only give 1220 fps in a 4 inch barrel VENTED to simulate a revolver with .008" cylinder gap.

For a DIY comparison, look at Ballistics by the Inch.
They shot different ammo with a TC Encore and a hacksaw.
Federal 158 gr Hydrashok gave 1638 fps at 10". (SAAMI test barrel is 1600*)
(* Yes, the jacketed rates slightly faster than lead IN A LONG SOLID BARREL.)

In a real 4" revolver, it only gave 1248 fps. (SAAMI vented is 1220)

The ammo has not changed, the guns have.
So, don't blame the pressure gauge and don't blame the lawyer.
Blame the shooter who buys a service revolver or even a "pocket rocket."

If you want Magnum Power, get a Registered Magnum with the original maximum 8 3/4" barrel.
Or a new premium revolver with long barrel and minimum cylinder gap, or a single shot.
 
Jim,
I think they hot rodded the 38 special to punch through ganster armoured vests. They worked up to sticky cases and backed off a safety margin to prevent jams.

Later SAMMI registration of max average pressure tried to document this load as the "357 Magnum".

Then some thin wall chamber 357 mag revolvers were sold that got sticky cases.

So SAAMI registered max average pressure had to be revised.

This independent of load book insidious insanity.

Gotta read this John Bercovitz from 1991:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!msg/rec.guns/S_dalM1NJe0/cBSU4bR2jz8J

I recruited him and his JPL RC hardness tester in 2005 to help prove the load books wrong about Tokarevs vs CZ52s.
 
Clark,

That is at variance with what I have read by Sharpe, Keith, Shea, and Florich, who were alive and active when the Magnum came out.

To repeat, current ammo will make present and past velocity specs, IF YOU USE AS LONG A BARREL AS THEY DID.
 
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