WB
I can help coloring outside the lines, it’s who I am.
Monday, August 10, 2026, 08:13

It’s been too busy, too hot to do much other than maintain things and cut grass. Looking around all I found I had on hand was a container of self-cast 148 gr. Alloy WC .358”. Would have been great with traditional shotgun fast burning powder for low velocity loads. But I wanted to goof around. A magnum primer and 16 gr. H110 (OK in my old manual, by my figuring) I got 970 fps from my snubby S&W and 1030 fps from the MUCH more pleasant to shoot Ruger. I seated a little out as the case was pretty full and I needed to identify them as special. Immediately I found the Ruger to have cylinder throats 0.0015” or so tighter (!) than the .358-.3585” S&W throats. Best I could tell, my pin gauses were not handy. Usually it’s the other way around with generous Ruger throats. They would not fully seat in the chambers of the Ruger. Using the front of the cylinder as a hasty “sizer” I managed to wallow a couple rounds to fit/test. I think this find might be attended to for helping the little Ruger really come into its own. Maybe it’s not all me with my eyes and poor shooting after all. The S&W just hurts to shoot, period. But it’s such a joy to carry I can overlook it. I love it.

Looking at “new” powders, reluctantly. I have “Titegroup” available locally. The Winchester powders show very good velocity with lower pressures listed in PSI, not CUP. Dick Lee once told me if you can keep plain base alloy bullets below 25,000 psi you can generally stay out of issues. Most old manuals list only CUP that does not really compare. I’ll keep some feelers out for the high-efficiency Winchester stuff to try.