Loading and Shooting Berry's 158gr Bullets for .38 & .357

[Music] [Music] thank you [Music] every shooter needs to practice bullets today let's take a look at Barry's 158 grain flat nose thick plated bullet for 38 and 357. [Music] guy Miner here from Ultimate reloader.com I really like shooting revolvers I like shooting lever action guns loading revolver type rounds 38 357s 44s all that stuff so I wanted some practice ammo and I turned to Barry's bullets for their plated bullets for some 38 and 357 loads we're going to take a look at those today we're going to get into a little bit about Barry's bullets where I talk about their plated bullets and the considerations for loading and shooting them the advantages of plated bullet we're going to talk about in specifically the 158 grain flat nose thick plated bullet and we're going to talk about my reloading setup which was the Lyman All-American eight turret press we'll get into the loads why I chose what I chose and then the chronograph data that we got from those today Barry's bullets was established in 1961. that's an over 60-year history of a family-owned American Business I like that it's very impressive they currently offer over 60 different types of plated bullets and a lot of other reloading related products as well some considerations if you're planning on loading with Barry's plated bullets they are an alternative to either lead or jacketed bullets they have some advantages which we'll get into in a bit they do have velocity limits but berries is very good about publishing those both online and actually on the box that you're going to find in the store they also have some thick plated bullets which are capable of handling more velocity you can use load data from any of the normal published sources Hornady Hodgdon the others that are out there that cover the cartridge you want make sure using good reliable load data and be careful with your crimping and we'll get into that a little bit too one of the things that's a really big Advantage for Barry's bullets is their cost and I took a look at this 158 crane bullet that we're going to talk about today and a very similar bullet but jacketed both of them flat nose both of them 158 grains both of them three five seven inch diameter and the berries came in at 15 cents each while the other bullet was 26 Cents each and you say well that's only you know a dime you know what the heck well when you're loading a hundred a thousand two thousand rounds it adds up and you want to go with the less expensive alternative another thing worth considering about these plated bullets is there's absolutely zero exposure to lead if that plating doesn't get damaged the entire Lead Core is completely surrounded by copper plating in comparison to some lead bullets maybe they're undersized maybe they're too soft whatever the fouling in your Barrel can be considerably reduced by using these copper plated bullets and if you go with the thick plate bullets if you go with that option you can bump up the velocity even more and still avoid those fouling problems looking at the 158 grain flat nose thick plated berries bullet and you know 158 is kind of funny I started loading for 357 Magnum back in the 1970s and I saw 158 and I thought what the heck's that why not 160 why not 150 but there it is 158 grains all these years later it's still one of the standard and most readily available bullets for 38 special and 357 Magnum we'll take a look at this particular bullet from berries it's got a weight of 158 grains which is very normal I've shot bullets as light as 110 from my 357. those are real screamers and all the way up to 180 grain bullets in the 357 as well usually when I'm using the 38s I use 148 150 158 grain bullet diameter on these bullets along with most other bullets for these cartridges is .357 inches you'll find a lot of lead bullets or 0.358 and that works very well for them required twist these will work out of any 357 or 38 rifle or handgun that I've ever used the twist rates in these range from about 1 to 14 up to about 1 to 17 right in that range and these bullets have no stability problems whatsoever so I loaded this ammo at home on my Lyman press a big All-American turret press and I used four dies and I like using four dies when I've got something that needs a crimp at the end of it so we've got your decapper and Sizer die and then we've got another die that actually takes the case mouth and flares it out or expands a little bit to make it easier to seat the bullet so you're not shaving side you know Material off the sides of the bullet the next one would be the seating die get that right in there what's nice about seating these particular bullets has that crimp Groove exactly where you need it for a perfect seating job in that crimp Groove that's when we go to the fourth die you can seat and crimp on the same step you can do that I like to go ahead and seat it get everything exactly right and move to another die and crimp it you can use either a factory crimp die or I just used another roll crimp die and it worked out really well I use the Lyman powder measure it was throwing good consistent charges I made that happen by the powder Choice the CFE pistol powder is real fine grained and it flows and it does a real nice job metering through there and the same thing with the h110 really tiny little granules and they flow there really well so I didn't bother checking in between very often and primed all the cases for this with the Lyman hand priming tool and that also worked out well so about our hand loads I loaded both 38 special and 357 Magnum for this video and these are intended as practice loads that's what this berries bullet excels at shooting steel punch and paper that kind of thing not to say that you know it wouldn't take down something but there's different bullets available for that too so with the 38 what I was trying to do was get a practice load that would give me roughly the same velocity with the same weight bullet as the famous old FBI load 158 grain soft lead hollow point at around 850 900 feet per second depending on which particular handgun you're using it in that load still has a reputation as a man stopper it's a pretty doggone effective load 438 special okay gives you a lot of good for you so what I did is I evened up with 158 grains and then selected the standard Winchester small pistol primer also 5.4 grains of CFE pistol and I got that from Hodgdon it's uh just about Max so this is a plus P load for the 38s this is not intended for your light duty old 38 Pistols that are not plus P rated this is for use in Plus p38s or 357 Magnum revolvers and of course use the 158 grain berries flat nose thick plated bullet so it could handle those moving over to the 357 there's a bit of a disparity depending on your Source about what a Max load for 158 out of a 357 actually is so I tend to stay a little more conservative on my loads and I went with hornady's load data on this one they had a Max of 15.6 grains of h110 I loaded it 15.5 and used a small Magnum Prime small pistol Magnum primer and of course the same bullet and we got some pretty good velocities out of that particularly when we put them in the rifle so we took our firearms and ammo outside about 20 degree temps here at the ultimate reloader ranch today all snow covered a lot of fun actually shot some steel and ran it over the chronograph did the 38s and out of the revolver Gavin's really nice 586 six inch revolver we've got an average velocity of 864 feet per second which is about where I expected to be with this load that is roughly the equivalent of the FBI load the old famous FBI load extreme spread and SD around 65 and 24. so not quite as good as I'd want for a match but for shooting speed steel or just just getting your practice in it's good enough then we rolled that same ammo through the Henry rifle with the 20 inch barrel I expected a little bit more of a gain in velocity because it only wound up about 40 feet per second faster at 902 feet per second we did have a big extreme spread on that I'm not sure why 175 foot per second extreme spread from our slowest to our fastest and a 77 was our SD so that's that's also a little high but that's what it was and that's why we do this testing to kind of see what's going on the the 38s by the way were wonderful to shoot out of the Henry there's like no recoil it just it's just there it's fun you put the sights on target you squeeze the trigger it goes Ding and everything's a lot lots of fun out there moved up to the 357 loads and obviously they're quite a bit more powerful same revolver Gavin's 586 with a six inch barrel 1120 feet per second this time for our berries bullet now that berries bullets rated for a Max of 1500 feet per second so we're at 11 20 out of the revolver I'm thinking Hmm that'll be interesting if we run that through the rifle 156 feet per second extreme spread more than I wanted and there were a couple of them there that were real obvious high and low and then the SD was 61 feet per second not the best not the best we can work with that I try to get that better put those in the rifle and here I'm sorry we exceeded the manufacture specifications this bullet was supposed to be running no more than 1500 feet per second because it could start damaging that copper plating and then you expose some lead and you can wind up with some fouling inside your Barrel so we're at 1622 feet per second out of this which didn't surprise me a lot it was worth trying though and we got a extreme spread of 98 so things actually tightened up a little bit and our SD is only 42. things were looking quite a bit better with that but that is something that berries recommends not doing if you want to run hard and fast in your 357 take a look at a different bullet That's rated for a higher velocity potential this one is not supposed to go over 1500 feet per second and we took it there in conclusion these are both pretty powerful loads the 38 is up there at the plus P up at the top end of that the 357's got a little more wiggle room you could get up a little bit higher with a different bullet I wouldn't want to push this one any higher than we did at least not through the rifle if you're shooting through a pistol there was there was a couple hundred feet per second left there to play with if you wanted to do that so they're both pretty powerful loads and although they are plinkers the lighter weight you go with your revolver the more you're going to feel this okay so if you've got one of those aluminum frame two inch j-frame revolvers these are going to get your attention particularly the 357s no doubt about it this loads are recommended only for revolvers that are rated for plus P or that are already 357 Magnum capable don't want to be putting them in any of those old heirloom collector there's guns that are not made to that kind of strength specifications they are economical practice loads this is a this is a load and it's held down mostly by the price of the bullet being less expensive keeps the cost of your ammunition less expensive you can shoot more for the same amount of dollars or if you get a little wild and crazy on the reloading bench you just make a whole bunch of them and have a lot more fun without spending too much they do produce less fouling than some lead bullets I know there's some really great lead bullets out there that don't foul much at all if you use them appropriately but this is a real simple easy way a good alternative of reducing the lead or yeah reducing lead fouling in your Barrel there's definitely a place on my reloading bench for Barry's bullets particularly this 158 grain because I do like to shoot my 38s and 357s what I want to know is what are you using for your planking and your target practice loads is it lead hard cast lead are you using Barry's bullets if you are drop a comment and we'll have a discussion that concludes this video that means it's time to wrap it up I hope you enjoyed this video don't forget to like And subscribe also we're on Facebook YouTube Rumble where we've got unrestricted content and Instagram make sure to follow us on all those channels ultimate reloader also has a commercial Solutions division serving law enforcement the military and the gun industry we have some unique capabilities including a comprehensive Suite of recoil testing and evaluation capabilities trigger profiling and more if you're interested in custom rifles like what we build here on the channel or Gunsmithing Services you're going to want to go to rifles.ultimate reloader.com and get on the waitlist if you're interested in becoming a professional gunsmith check out the Sonoran Desert Institute they've got a degree program they've got a certificate program and you can study from home learn more at sdi.edu thanks again for watching [Music]

Channel: Ultimate Reloader

Views: 75,529

Keywords: 357 Magnum, 38 Special, Ballistics, Berry’s, Berry’s bullets, Chronograph, Federal, Handgun Training, Henry, Hodgdon, Hornady, Leupold, lever action, Lyman, Pistol, Progressive Press, RCBS, Reloading, Reloading Blog, Reloading Data, Reloading Dies, Reloading Press, Reloading Videos, Revolver, Self Defense, Single Stage, TESTED, Turret Press, Ultimate Reloader, velocity

Id: 5Qx6qmI9Zms

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2022