Uberti 1866 in 38 Special

[PAndy]

I did a bunch of cold barrel chronograph testing years ago. It would be nearly impossible to test if I didn't have the ability to shoot in my yard. I was careful to keep powder position in the case consistent. (That's another can of worms) I used 30-30, 32-20, and 357.

I found that I almost always had a slow first shot with jacketed bullets, and I almost never saw that with cast.
I repeated many of the comparisons because I was skeptical of my own results.

[lmohar]

PAndy,
Very interesting. Can you tell us some basics of the loads tested? Powders, approximate pressure range.

Ill have to review my notes to see if I missed seeing that same phenomenon. I was in the low pressure range. Powder can move. Moderate crimp. N340 and N350. .44 Mag. 240 Jacket and 240 powder coat.

Any thought as to the cause of first shot low velocity?

Laine

[375Short]

Carful waxing. This is a conservative bunch and from what I have heard, it hurts, but only briefly.

[edgehit]

You lost them Wayne!

[375Short]

Tested some .38 special loads on Pigs and Rams at Whittington on the CLA range. I had a 158g load at 840 fps and a 125g load at 1100 fps. Both loads toppled the full scale Pigs and neither budged a Ram. Just information for the what it’s worth department. It did demonstrate that I could throttle back my .357 loads I use on CLA pigs in the future. It takes much less to topple a pig than I had assumed.