Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters JB's .338 Fed and .358 Win article in Handloader

Hell, I can't find most powders within 1000 miles of me, but I can order them all.

Order up some RL7 then. With 200's and under, I betcha you'll be pretty happy.

If nothing else RL7 is the powder of choice for making light pistol bullets haul ASS in a .358. 140-gn hollowpoints at 3000 fps are big fun. They shoot "good enough" to be interesting in my rifle, too.

I just think it's nice that you two are getting along.

Life is strange.

I did order TAC after not being able to find any after a long time looking it. My email is toast currently so I can't re subscribe to the online edition.... a PM with the loads using TAC in .358 would be greatly appreciated.

Now that everybody has had a say, here are some comments:

The reason only "weird" powders were mentioned in the article is that they were the ones that got the velocities desired without extreme compression. I have been loading the .358 since the 1970's and tried all the usual suspects, including 3031 and 4895. There is is plenty of data for those powders already out there, if that's what you want to use.

Instead, I was looking for powders that would match factory data in the .338 Federal, and beat the .338 Federal in the .358. The powders mentioned were those that worked best.

This is an ongoing problem with any handloading article. Some people basically want the same old stuff, because they use the same old powders. They could easily find this data either in loading manual or older articles. But repeating the same old data was NOT what this article was about.

In fact, I try not to repeat the same old s--t in any article I write. If you want the SOS, there are any number of other sources for it.

I did not include 250-275 grain load for the .338 Federal because they are too slow. With bullets up to 225 grains, the .338 is indeed about 3% slower than the .358--but once bullets above 225 grains are loaded too much powder space gets taken up, and the loss in velocity is greater.

Plus, as I pointed out in the article, the entire concept of the .338 Federal (especially vs. the .358) is a flater-shooting, higher-pressure round capable of longer range shooting, especially with lighter premium bullets.

Given this, what would be the point of loading it with 250's at 2200 or 275's at 2100? If spitzers, neither would expand reliably much beyond 100 yards. If round-noses (to save powder space) they might expand a little farther, but so what? Would they penetrate deeper than a 225 Partition at 2400, or a 210 TSX at 2600? Woukd they shoot as flat?

The entire history of rifles has been a trend of lighter bullets at faster speeds. This is because bullets keep getting better, in terms of both exterior and interior ballistics. Yet every time another increment in this progress takes place, somebody is determined to take a step backward, and load a cartidge DESIGNED for lighter, faster, deeper-penetrating bullet with heavyweights that will compromise the new cartridge's virtues.

If anybody wants to load the .338 Federal with 250 or 275-grain bullets, they should. It's a free country. An approximatel;y correct powder charge can be arrived at easily with a little figuring. But WHY? If you really want to use a 250, buy a .358--or .35 Whelen or .338 Winchester or any other round designed for that use.

Now I'm pissed, where is my magazine!

After reading all the posts here I had to sign up for the online version could not wait any longer...great info..I was ready to load up some .358 win using TSX 200 gr..I will definitely pickup some TAC first.

Just got done loading up some 160gr Barnes TTSXs in my 338 Federal using R7 (recommended by Barnes) and the Benchmark load that John mentioned. I will hopefully have results soon enough...

-Dan

I hope Kimber notices how hot .358 has gotten these days, and chambers the Montana in it.

Yer tellin' me? I have to wait until it's out on the news stands

So JB is going to make us wait to read that article, he never did get back to us over on the reloading thread on the 338 Fed. Then we found out that hunting in Africa was more important than us

Maybe I got a slow lot of TAC, I never did get that good of velocities with it compared to Benchmark.

I do like the 338 Federal though, and any and all input (even from JB) is appreciated. I'll just wait patiently to spend my 5 bucks...

Hey, I resemble that remark!

SOS

Good idea Jeff! I just hope they make it in a long action. That way when owners realize what's really hot, they can just rechamber to the Whelen!

Steelhead, does this rifle have the standard 22 inch barrel on it? The 7.5 pounds all up is interesting, I was thinking the rifles would be in the 8.5 pound area with a scope, maybe bigger hole, less steel or...shorter barrel??

I have been waiting for the article since John mentioned that he was writing about the .358. Has anyone received a hard copy in the mail? I didn't get mine yet. I have been holding off loading for my .358 until that article came out. Been using 3031 with very good accuracy under a 200 GR Hornady Interlock.

Can someone post the loads for the .358?

BTW, there is a lot of(old) data out there. Ken Waters Pet Loads is a good source. I too was looking for "new powder" loads.

I just get pi$$ed off reading these threads, my mag won't be here for at least three weeks. By the time it gets here, it's almost not worth reading the article after reading pages of posts on it.

You see it as it came from the factory (22" barrel and all), except for the 1.75-6x Leupold of course.

The scope IS included in the 7.5 pound number given.