original load for .380 ACP?

H

HisSoldier

New member
When I started to look this up I thought it would be easy to find, but the powder and ballistics information of the original JMB .380 are not as comon as I had assumed.
Do any of you know what they used for powder, is it available today? Were the bullets FMJ or were they cast? And I had assumed the original load produced 850 FPS but have been told it was closer to 950.

Do any of you know?

Thanks in advance,
 
The 1945-1946 Gun Digest list's Winchester 380 Automatic Colt with a 95 grain bullet at
970FPS. The bullet is listed as full patch.
 
"full patch" is an old slang for FMJ

until Super Vel proved there was a market, the major ammo makers made two kinds of bullets in factory ammo. Lead bullets in revolver rounds and FMJ bullets in semi auto pistol rounds.

There were few exceptions, and handloaders could get JHP and JSP bullets long before the big makers offered them as loaded ammo.

1970 Lyman manual list .380 factory duplication load as 2.9gr Bullseye, 95gr jacketed bullet, velocity 982fps. This is also the max load listed.

The test firearm was a Husqvarna 5" barrel.

You probably won't get that much velocity from a shorter barrel gun.
 
Thanks 44 AMP,
I spent the 30 minutes buying up old books on the subject. Every book is a separate nasty comment by my wife, "More books!", heh heh.
 
The 1925 Winchester catalog lists the 380 with a 95 grain (SP or FMP) bullet at 855 fps from a 3.5" barrel.
 
Bullseye powder and Unique were both available from Laflin and Rand when Browning introduce the 380 in 1908. Back then, the Bullseye produced (starting in 1898) was scrap from grain screening other powders and nothing like the purpose-made version today and probably much less consistent from lot-to-lot. Unique was introduced in 1900. In your shoes, I would probably look to Bullseye as the closest thing likely to have been used then. I know it was used in the 45 Auto by the military in the 1920s from having seen ammunition boxes so labeled, so it seems the odds are good Browning used when he introduced the round in 1904, and if so, it would mean he was familiar with the powder and liked it well enough.
 
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