Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Plated wadcutter loads

I never know whether to post pistol handloading stuff here or in the rifle handloading section so here goes a simple question. Have any here made a habit of loading .38 Special 148 gr plated wadcutters, Berrys in my case. I'm due a couple of days in the loading room and this is one project. Have loaded some in the past based on ciphering between lead and similar jacketed weights. Not really comfortable with the loads and haven't chronoed them but none went IED on me.

I bought a box of them when I had a S&W 52 but never ended up loading any..so the box still sits there. As to worrying about a load, I have shot tens of thousands of Berry's plated bullets and find little difference between lead and the plated.

My 210 .41 Magnum loads with lead, jacketed and plated bullets with 8.0 grains of Unique all go within 30 fps of each other...

Bob

So you're good with lead wadcutter data. You ever load any seated out but short of the throat?

I've loaded many hundreds (thousands?) in both .38 & .357 brass, probably more with Titegroup than any other powder. Great for practice in the wife's J-Frame. Just use cast data with the usual precautions.

Probably have seated some out also, too many experiments to remember them all...

Shootem:

I know exactly one guy who used to load plated 148 gr. wadcutters.

At the range one day, I watched him stack 5 of them, one after the other, half-way down the 6-inch barrel of a really nice K-frame S&W.

He said he used loading data for lead HBWCs. Low end of the recommended charge weights for B'eye.

FWIW.

Just checked my data. Loaded these with 4.0 gr Bullseye and 5.2 gr Power Pistol so not hot but not limp wrist either. COL was 1.350. With the wife's Airweight they're still easier on the hand than the 125 gr HP from DoubleTap. Idea going in was to get a clean shooting load for her revolver that would be mild enough to shoot regularly but deadly enough to carry. Looks like these bullets may need a little more powder behind them to be safe than I initially thought. Think I'll stick with the powder charge for now and seat a little closer to the case mouth. Do some speed checks. Thinking 800 fps or so should be safe out of a 2"??? Feedback?

Don't think 5 of them would fit in an Airweight barrel.

I wouldn't try the bottom end loads, but would expect the top end loads to reliably get them to exit the barrel.

Just realized you wrote HBWC. Hollow base loads run light even compared to the double end lead. If your friend was runnin on the short end of lead HBWC loads for the plated HBWC bullets I can see how the problem arose. He really was going for low velocity.

No, I have not used any WC loads with the bullets seated out of the case...they usually are right about the neckline...

I can see where a REAL low load could cause a plated bullet to stick in the barrel...