Adventures In Wildcatting

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by Rick W.

Thinking back, I believe I remember two versions of the 357 B&D. I think the basic difference was in the shoulder angle. One was much sharper than the other later one?

Those would be the two I posted in the last two days. Both are said in the articles as being developed in 1964 by Davis (the sharp shoulder) and Bain & Davis (the sloped shoulder).

I never experienced 'setback' with my loads, and I don't recall Jim saying anything about his hot loads binding. Looking at my reloading notebook, I see that I used 13.0grs of Blue Dot with a 158gr JSP bullet. That was the 'sweet spot' for that bullet & powder in that barrel. Speer's Reloading Manual #10 shows that to also be the recommended max for that bullet/powder for the .357 Magnum. My notes don't show any mention of flat primers and I don't recall any. I know Jim's hot loads did, but I don't remember what we loaded his to. His model 29 had the 6" barrel; mine had the 8 3/8" barrel.

They both shot very nicely, low recoil, minimal flash, seemingly flat shooting.

I do recall that Winchester used a harder alloy brass that sometimes cracked when forming. The articles mention that annealing may be required. I found that Remington brass was much more ductile and did not need annealing. Looking through my old boxes of fired brass (not re-used) I see 13 'Frontier' cases. I don't recall those or where I got them. They look good.

When I was forming the 357AMP cases, I found that 7.62mm military cartridges had a thicker case wall than .308" commercial cases. I've seen references that this is to minimize deformation when feeding in machine guns. For the Auto mag, I had to inside neck ream the military brass after forming because the wall was too thick. Then size it again. Too much work. I stuck to commercial brass.

That was not a problem with the 357/44 for the revolver, as that used .44 Magnum brass necked down. But I stuck with Remington (or anything other than Winchester) for my 357/44 wildcat revolver cartridges.