Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 358 Win Pre-64 Fwt

Which ones have you tried and what's terminal performance like?

DF

The 181’s in the 300 RUM, 220’s in my 35 Newton so far. No animal kills just easy easy load work ups. They don’t seem to care where they are placed in regards to the lands, and back and forth doesn’t make much difference on them.

I’ve got some 177’s for the Mashburn as well that I haven’t ran yet DF. Id suspect they’ll work similar to the CE bullets from the water jug tests I’ve done. They’ll lose petals pretty much upclose and fast but the widened front end seems to act like it’ll still tear jugs apart.

Hope to use more of them. I wanna grab some for the 22-250 and see what they do on coyotes myself. Then maybe a deer.

I just loaded 178 gr. Hammers in my JES bored .358 Win over 45 gr. RL-7. Haven't clocked it yet, but Speer shows 45 gr. RL-7 at over 2,750 fps with their 180's. The Hammer has scolloped driving rings, reportedly less resistance, potentially faster speeds compared to conventional bullets. So it could be moving even faster, may be able to bump that load. Will wait on that until I can set up my Chrono. This load is near MOA.

DF

The 181’s were deceptively fast in my RUM. Never saw pressure but they were a good 50-100 FPS faster than any other 180 I’ve used in that rifle. Wrong or not, I couldn’t tell but man, they shot.

To me, and most of us here, it certainly is. Interesting, that is.
But apparently it is no longer interesting to Nosler as they dropped it from the #9 manual. This despite them making one of the best bullets for it, the 225 Partition.
I'll have to keep on venting over that until I'm over it...;o)

Unrelated - check out Hornady's load for the 200 grain bullet with TAC - essentially exactly the same as the load in Mule Deer's famous .338 Fed/.358 Win comparison article. I killed a nice cow elk with it in my 99 Savage this fall. A 200 TTSX at 2700 FPS is not to be trifled with! (that's a 22" barrel - expect 2650' at least in that nice 20".

Cheers,
Rex

Whoops....

Now, they say they can't ship ammunition, order cancelled.

Wonder why no one knew until time to ship....

And, I'm not going to MO to pick it up.

Any of you guys near there, help yourselves...

Guess I'll lean more on X-Terminator, H-4198, Benchmark, stuff I actually have in stock..

DF

I ordered some Vollmer Precision Bullets, 180 gr. with heavy jackets for .358 Win velocities, semi spire points.

These are hand made, custom bullets, could be interesting.

Another thing about Vollmer, they'll make bullets for odd calibers, have a kit for slugging a bore.

I went with .358". I looked at which bullets shot best in this gun. Pistol bullets, like the 170 Gold Dot and 180 XTP measured .357", 225 NPT was .3575", the Speer 180 FN was .358+. 175 and 200 FTX's were .358, as was the 180 TTSX. So, there was no pattern there, other than it likes light bullets and fast powder. The .357 pistol bullets were about as accuate as any, the slightly larger Speer 180 FN was also pretty accurate.

https://vollmerbullets.com/

DF

Great thread! DF, I thought I had tried a bunch of bullets over the last 5 or 6 years in my Ruger Hawkeye 358 Win, but you've tried bullets I've not even heard of. I finally settled on Sierra 225gr. GK's over 48gr. of TAC using Win WLRM primers. I'm still in the process of working up a couple of loads using Speer 250gr. bullets. I really don't have a need for that heavy of bullet for my rifle, but it seems that so many are finding that they are really accurate and can be reliably used for most all large game in NA. I pretty much just hunt deer and hogs now as I've gotten too old to chase elk up and down mountains.

Biggs, that round is a hoot. I think I've spent more Loony time messing with it than about any round I can remember. And enjoying every minute.

I'm probably gonna end up with three dedicated scopes for different categories of loads. The 150 and 160 CEB Raptors have a POI at least 10" higher than the 200's. So, may have one scope sighted for them. Swapping out scopes is easier than sighting in for each category.

Then there is the 178 Hammer, POI closer to the others, but I'm gonna be pushing it, so who knows. The 203 Hammer is interesting, but I think the 178 is the only Hammer I'll need.

I have 200 gr. NAB's, 225 gr. SGK's, 225 gr. NPT's that I'm working with. Those are serious hunting bullets, but don't count out those fancy new monos.

The 180 TTSX shoots well, POI not that far from the 200's.

Then there are the pistol bullets. The 170 Gold Dots and 180 XTP's both shoot very well with fast powder. They measure .357, not .358. Slightly undersize doesn't seem to hurt a thing at the range..

The 180 FN Speer is a good shooter and it measures .3585.

Now, if something in that line up doesn't suit, we have a problem....

Faster powders seem to group better. I'm going to be pushing X-Terminator with all of them, even the 225's. I'm able to get a full charge in a case without compression. TAC is a tad bulkier and I'm not a fan of compressed loads. I like the powder to touch the bullet and I've found that full house loads of X-Term does just that. I've been using BR-2 primers, but am staring to use CCI 250's, especially with ball powders.

The JES bore is starting to smooth out. Fouling isn't a problem as it was earlier. DBC helps for sure, but a lot of bullets down the tube seems to slick it up. And, it seems accuracy may be improving.

DF

Some more data from the 20" Jess Rebored Sako. Old stock Winchester 200gr Silvertip factory load. Avg velocity 2348 fps.
I only have about a box and a half of these so after 4 shots to chrono / zero the scope, a single 3 shot group at 50yds ; 1st 2 shots through the same hole, 3rd shot opened group to .57"

To this point all I have done is shoot the rifle and pull a bore snake through it when I'm done.

That’ll do.

DF

I just picked up a big jug of RL-7 from PV. They get in a shipment then it’s gone. Gotta be quick.

Some of my best .358 Win groups have been with RL-7 and lighter bullets. And, it’s good in the .45-70 and others.

Glad to find some. May not have needed a big jug, but won’t be worried about running out. Not for a long time.

DF

I'm researching powders that will fill the case without much if any compression, and give full power performance with optimal groups.

So far the best are RL-7 with lighter bullets, X-Term with 180's and 200's. TAC may edge X-term with 225's, but with some compression. I'm not shooting 250's, would if it was a Whelen.

DF

Shoot you some 250gr Speer Hot-Cor RN or SPT over Win 748. Post a picture of the big smile it puts on your face.

DF thanks for sharing all your data. Don't forget to show us photos of your game shot with the Nosler Partitions. Be Well, RZ.

Had a little help from a friend to even have those bullets.

I hate to “waste” them on WT’s. They’d be perfect for bigger critters.

We’ll see.

Thanks

DF

Just may have to try that. Those RN’s should be short enough to not take up excessive powder space. TAC should work well with them.

DF


Edited to add, will have to wait until they reappear. Ghost bullets like a lot of others.

Good luck in finding Speer RN but, the spitzer Hot-Cor works nicely.

I just got my VX-3 3.5-10x40 CDS back from Leupold. They say they fixed it.

I'm going to put it an another set of Warne Horizontal low rings. So, I'll have three scopes set up for the various categories of loads this gun can shoot.

Pistol bullets, light fast CEB's, 178 gr.-225 gr. bullets. We'll see how that all shakes out.

DF.

Old thread, new report.

I shot my .358 JES rebored Pre-64 FWT today in Iberville Parish at their new $2 mil Parish range. It's first class, state of the art facility with very helpful and knowledgeable staff. Wife and I were in Baton Rouge, visiting family. I went across the Sunshine Ferry to the range with my nephew who had shot there before. He had ridden the ferry a bunch with his engineering job at a petro chemical plant down river. Covid and Sleepy Joe really did a job on that industry.

I brought a number of loads, most shot pretty good. The standout was this 160 gr. Cutting Edge Bullet (CEB), Raptor. The gun usually shoots 1" to 3", depending on the load. It really liked this one.

I've had good luck with the 135 gr. ER Raptor in my .308 Win, great accuracy, deadly on hogs. They do frag as advertised, the core blowing on thru for a good exit. Check out my review on that bullet. I've written one for the 160 gr .358 Raptor, but it's not yet posted. https://cuttingedgebullets.com/308-135gr-er-extended-range-raptor Accuracy with the 135 gr. .308 similar to this one.

I haven't killed anything yet with my 358, but this 160 gr. Raptor load should whack'em pretty well.

The gun has a new Trijicon 3-9x40 Accupoint, duplex type reticle and green dot. It's a quality scope in every way. The Leupold I mentioned earlier ended up on a Ruger Mk-II '06 I put together. I like the Trijicon on this one.

Anyway, just three shots, but I was shooting three shot groups with a bunch of loads, looking for loads with promise. Well, this one has promise, was a stand out. I'll load and shoot more groups. I'm not sure how fast it's moving, could be pushing 3K. Will figure that out later. This range session was to sight in the scope and do a load survey. Shooting a number of loads, the barrel can get pretty hot with strings of shooting and I can get an idea of what a load can do with three. I always take at least a couple of rifles, shoot one while the other cools.

DF