Hello members: I have been a fan of the 358 Winchester for 25 years now and took up reloading a couple of years ago in part because I wanted to produce a mild 358 load for recreational shooting with my BLRs. Yesterday I tried IMR's SR4759 and got excellent accuracy and mild recoil with this load:

200 grain Hornady Round Nose

26.5 grains of SR4759

C.O.L. = 2.60 inches

I am planning on trying this powder with Speer's 180 grain flat point and, perhaps, 140 grain hollow point (.357") and will report if successful.

That sounds like a good load to me.

Note that that COL suggested in the Speer book for the 180 is 2.680" Thats way out there but it's very close to what I find works best with that bullet and full power loads.

quote:

Originally posted by Savage99:
That sounds like a good load to me.

Note that that COL suggested in the Speer book for the 180 is 2.680" Thats way out there but it's very close to what I find works best with that bullet and full power loads.

Savage99: I actually had some 180 grain Speers loaded with SR4759 and ready to fire yesterday, but when I went to chamber them, I noticed some heavy resistance as I closed the action. It turned out that this particular BLR I was using didn't like the 2.68" COL they were loaded at and I was actually seating the bullets deeper by chambering them - I could visually see the diffence. I went ahead and chambered all 5 cartridges that I had and took them home to measure their "forced" COL - if memory serves me correctly, they were running around 2.64" after being chambered. I have shot this bullet with full loads of IMR3031 out of another BLR at 2.68" without problems (in fact, this is my hunting load for this rifle), but this was an eye-opening experience. At least now I have some data to work from, as unintended as its discovery was.