Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 350 Legend

I am surprised Ruger never offered it

The 350 Legend was built with two markets in mind - the AR crowd and the hunters dealing with straight-wall cartridge laws.

I'm neither, although I own 3 ARs (.223/5.56, .300BLK and .308 Win). I'd like to see the 375 Win revived for the straight-wall hunters. With bullets like Hornady's FTX, they would be a 300 yard option.

Full disclosure: A Marlin 375 (.375 Win) was my first Marlin. I'd have given to to a SIL in a straight-wall state but he doesn't reload. And I like it too much to give away.

Nice having an adequate deer cartridge that kicks like a .410

But not my cup of tea.

I could see a special run in 357 Max being quite popular.

They might sell at least one of them

yeah, I know of one guy who would buy one.

The .357 Maximum, originally the wildcat .357 SuperMag was developed by Elgin Gates of IHMSA back in 1983. I remember the first experimental cases were made by cutting and welding additional case length sections on to .357 Magnum brass. The cartridge was then assigned to Ruger for development in a Blackhawk revolver, with the ammunition produced by Remington. Because Smith & Wesson had copyrighted the appellation "Magnum", Remington changed the name to Maximum. Bill Ruger ignored the advice of Bill Gates and others to make the cylinder 0.125" longer, so that the top strap was eroded by high pressure gas at the cylinder gap. This caused certain individuals to interpret this as a safety flaw in the revolver design, however erosion stopped at approximately 0.050" depth, and was significantly lessened by use of 180 - 220 grain bullets. My .357 Maximum Blackhawk is superbly accurate, and would deliver 0.375" ten shot groups at 50 yards with a Sierra Silhouette bullet over W-680 powder (now Accurate1680). Top strap erosion was minimal and never a safety problem. Both Federal and Remington offered brass, and Remington loaded ammo, with the Federal headstamped IHMSA .357 Max including the ram logo. As stated in my last post, Starline Brass now offers .357 Maximum brass, www.starlinebrass.com/357-maximum which I also picked up a 250 lot immediately. Starline also is offering .350 Legend brass www.starlinebrass.com/350-legend/ for those who want to roll their own.

If I could find a lever action conversion for the .357 Maximum, I'd jump on it, but then all my safes are full. Maybe I could squeak one more in.

The 350 legend is akin to getting an all night date with a supermodel, then drinking so much that you pass out at dinner.

When you can safely run 180s to 2400+ in a 357 max (non-revolver), and you have 357 AR rimless wildcats doing it (with plentiful 223 brass) and then you decide to commercialize some unrelated/proprietary/non-interchangeable 9mm/357 case hybrid that has more capacity, but load it down so that 150s barely beat an anemic 300BLK, you’re a special kind of stupid.

The wright brothers didn’t come up with the idea to build an airplane, then chisel it from stone. Winchester seems to have.

I do not see any recall on ammo as osusig said...anyone have a link?

mjbgalt,
I was told by the ammo manager at Reed's when I was there during their annual sale that all the ammo in inventory there had been recalled by Winchester. I had asked to see some to get some sense of what they were doing and wanted to see if it was a 223 sized case head or something else. I still don't know as I read articles that say both, yes and no.

The SAMMI specs show different case dimensions

https://thereloadersnetwork.com/2019/01/31/350-legend-specifications/

Thanks for that post. I believe that should settle the question.

There is a rifle in the classifieds.