Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Nosler .38 caliber 148 HBWC

Fellow some miles from me has a good sized batch of these for sale but they have to be very old, I didn't know that Nosler ever made any swaged lead bullets.

My question is, for anyone who has ever used these, how are they lubed? E.g., Speer uses some kind of stick'em lube while Hornady uses some kind of powder. The fellow is asking a good price in unopened boxes but if the lube is liable to have dried up or otherwise be in bad shape it's not worth the drive to go get them.

If the lube is bad you could always shake them in liquid alox like Lee tumble lube bullets. Or remelt and cast whatever you want.

I was thinking about the tumble lube as an option. Wouldn't want to melt and recast any, that would defeat the laziness of using store bought...

Drove over to Mountain Home, ID to pick these up and met a cool guy. He's 81 years old and builds custom hot rods - Batch's Custom Hot Rods; he had a 1967 Chevy Chevelle in his shop with a brand new 502 ci engine he'd just installed, also a 1934 Ford Coupe (with a Chevy engine) looking show room new. Driving there and back I was reminded how pretty this part of Idaho is in the spring, all new green grass everywhere.

Anyway, about the bullets - Nosler made some quality stuff whenever they made these. The metal inside and on the nose is still as shiny as a cast bullet right out of the mold. A small sample all measured dead on .3580" at both ends. They are just next to pure lead in content since they show a BHN of 6 on my LBT hardness tester (pure lead is 5), I did two tests each on two separate bullets to be sure of that. They have some kind of old lube on them but he also threw in two sticks of some unknown lube, he says he just rubs it on the bullets.

The other nice thing was the price, I got 2000 of them in two unopened boxes for 3 3/4 cents per bullet, I don't know how long it's been since I bought any at that price.












All in all a nice day, going out for a steak tonight to cap it off.

If I didn’t F up my math, that’s 42 lbs for $75. A good deal just for lead.

You did good in more ways than one…😊
That looks like SPG lube .

Nice!

Interesting advice. That brings me to the question how to deal with 22 rimfire lead ammo when the lube on them got bad over the years.

Squirt a little Lee’s liquid alox on a sheet of aluminum foil or waxed paper. Then just touch the bullet to the Alox and twirl it between the fingers of the other hand. If you have some 22 ammo with the plastic trays with holes for each cartridge, they make a good drying rack. You might also want try Imperial sizing wax.

These bullets still had some sparse waxy coating on them and since they will be used in classic light target loads I tried them right out of the box to see if they even needed any additional lube.

Here's the first try. This 10 shot group was from a Smith Model 67-5 with a Burris Fastfire III fired off a rest at 25 yards, that square is 2" outside to outside. Winchester brass fired 23 times, CCI-500, 3.3 grs. of 231 and the Nosler 148 HBWC.

The flyer at 4 o'clock opened the group to 1.8" but 9 shots went into 1.45", so not too shabby. I tried this load in a Colt Officer's Model Match which put 10 shots into 2.25" but I'll claim the old guy excuse for that - open sights and my 70 year old eyes vs. the red dot on the Model 67.



There was just a smidge of leading at the beginning of the bore in each revolver, not really enough to matter; that generally indicates driving a too soft bullet too fast which jives with these being 6 BHN. I'll drop that charge to 3.0 grs. of 231 and see what happens. Throats on both revolvers are a good match with these .358 bullets, the Smith's run .3575" and the Colt's are all right at .358".

Went ahead and coated 50 of them with some Lee liquid alox today, when dry will try those at 3.0 and 3.3 grs. of 231 to see if that helps clean up the leading.