Round balls in .38 SPL?

[Michael J. Spangler]

Nice work man! I need one of the 18 cavity mold. Add it to my long list.
If you're going to try a single ball load try seating the ball all the way down on the powder. I tried dacron and a heavy crimp with no luck with a single ball load. I bet you could get it to work with 1 grain of powder if you pushed the ball all the way in the case.
Some guys on the forum had luck with that method in 45/70 round ball loads.
They said it worked great, consistent velocities great accuracy and no more noise than when it was crimped into the mouth of the case.

[bangerjim]

Tried 12 of the 3-ball ones with HF red DT. Coated beautifully (one coat) but when sizing, the 3rd ball tends to get catty-whompus and the powder is scraped off the sides! Just where we WANT the PC to be.

So, 2-balls is the max to push thru at a time. Single balls go thru no problem.

Now to load some and make 'em fly.

banger

[happie2shoot]

Anyone find this? Attempted to find it and couldn't?

http://www.castpics.net/LoadData/Rou...ll%20Loads.pdf

[Michael J. Spangler]

Loaded about 50 tonight.
Double balls coated in hi tek over 2.5 grains of clays. I'll update you all when I shoot them.

[retread]

This has got me intrigued. I have a two cavity 36 cal mold for my Colt Navy C&B. One cavity is round ball and the other is sabot. Gotta try both. PC sounds like the lube answer to me.

[Old Dawg]

I use a .360 diameter HTWW ball seated directly on top of a charge of 3 grains Red Dot. I tumble lube them with JPW as much to keep them from oxidizing in storage as anything.

[tacotime]

Good fun, thanks for the info...

What about loading a single 000 Buckshot pellet being about 70 grains? Any ideas on the charge of Bullseye, 231 or Unique?

And what pros and cons of the various possible one ball seating depths? Seems like the ball would be more stable if loaded at the mouth with the crimp right ahead of it. Seems like a ball sitting further in the case body with no crimp right ahead of it would be more likely to creep forward. I think I will avoid using any fillers.

What about a little bore butter over the ball?

[SSGOldfart]

Loaded about 50 tonight.
Double balls coated in hi tek over 2.5 grains of clays. I'll update you all when I shoot them.

Well how did it go????

[beagle]

http://www.castpics.net/LoadData/Rou...ll%20Loads.pdf

Here's the address for the castpics article./beagle

[Michael J. Spangler]

haven't shot them yet.
flu had me down for a few days. might be a week or two before i hit the range. that makes me sad to say it

[beagle]

Chambers easier with the radius of the round ball out of the case./beagle

Got my 000 shot mold (.360) today. Am going to try casting some, PC as cast, and then size to 358. Probably leave the 2 balls connected.....if they will squeeze thru the die that way?!?!?!?

Will have to do some measuring down in the case to see where the 1st ball is at and may use a bit of Dacron wadding. Planning on using about 2.5gn of TightGroup for starters.

Just playing around! After reading several threads on here both new and old (2010), there are a lot of combos of balls and powders people play with. Looks I may be the 1st to try PC and no grease on the end?

bangerjim

[bangerjim]

Shot about 50 of them this last weekend in my 38 snub nose and the Rossi 38/357 lever rifle.

Amazing little round. used 2g of Tightgroup with paper disk rammed down to the powder and loaded 2 balls and lightly crimped at the middle of the 2nd one. Relatively quiet and fairly accurate. 3-4" group at ~15' with revolver and same at 35+ ft with the lever.

Loaded just one with only 1.2g and it was almost as quite as a 22lr rifle. Will have to load some more at that lite load and try accuracies.

Nose of 2nd ball HAS to be out of the case 50% for lever gun or it will not cycle!

PC'd with one coat of DT HF red.

banger

[Michael J. Spangler]

hi-tek coating worked fabulous.
double round balls over a light change of clays shot to point of aim at 10 yards and grouped beautifully.
some shots would create one ragged hole but most would be separated by about 3/4" or so.
no leading at all as compared to the tumble lubed rounds. woohoo. time to load up a whole lot

[jjsharpshooter]

Gonna have to try this, been using speer shot shell capsules with 3 #1 buckshot in them, cast balls will be much cheaper.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Yeah a member here let me borrow a single cavity round ball mold.
Now that I've got it working well I need to cast some and ship his mold back.
Then I can order a lee buckshot mold and mass produce some.

Woohoo!

[Bored1]

Glad you guys are getting it to work!!! Now gotta track down a bunch of round balls to give this a go. Was just talking about this yesterday afternoon on the way home from the range!

[bangerjim]

Yeah a member here let me borrow a single cavity round ball mold.
Now that I've got it working well I need to cast some and ship his mold back.
Then I can order a lee buckshot mold and mass produce some.

Woohoo!

The Lee 18 banger shot mold is the only way to go! I leave 2 balls connected and DT powder coat/load them. The extra balls I keep for 410 loads in the future.

You could load individuals, but you need to juggle them around to align the reduced .358 size in the case or you will scrape off the coating. And the double ball connected load keeps the 38 cal sizing in line going down the barrel!

banger