Henry Rifle Forums

i’ve been reporting on a little project I’m working on in the reloading bench topic but thought I would start a separate discussion here.

A local guy got me interested in creating what is called a gallery load in 32 caliber. A gallery load as most know is a low power cartridge that used to be used at shooting gallery’s all over. Think carnival back in the day when life was simpler. I live in a rural community and shooting is legal in this part of the county. However our CC&R’s state no shooting is allowed within the community. This is due to not being a nuisance to the neighbors. So my plan with this load is to break the rules (oops) and do some low noise plinking. The HOA president is my next door neighbor and I recently helped her husband set up his rimfire range so I’m not concerned about the HOA unless somebody complains.

The guy who got me interested in this project had a bunch of .315 Hornady pure lead round balls for muzzleloading. I have a Ruger SP 101 in 327 Fed Mag which is what i plan to use for these gallery loads. He recommended using 32 acp brass but I found that the rim was too small for the Ruger’s firing pin to strike hard enough for detonation. So I’m using 32 S&W long brass which seems to be working fine. At least in my one test shot.

I loaded up six more using 2.0 grains of Unique for the next test. I understand to put a light crimp on the ball and I want to make sure that even with this mouse fart load that the balls stay in place. I’ll be shooting these this afternoon.

It’s been interesting doing this project right down to my powder funnel. The brass is so short that even in the tallest part of my loading trays I couldn’t get the funnel to seat on the case mouth and powder would spill. I bought an additional funnel and cut it down so I wouldn’t lose any powder. Worked great.

So to date here’s a pic of my “custom” funnel and the six test cartridges. More to follow.

The .32 S&W Long was a not uncommon cartridge for the centerfire stage of the 2700 match. There were a few high end target pistols that came with both .22 and .32 barrels for that purpose. Still has a following, and you should have no problem getting some load data to work with. Even better that you're shooting it in a revolver, so no action to cycle. I'd think fast powder would be the choice with these, but I'm sure there's a wide range that works.
Looks like a fun project, and those loaded rounds look similar to the old "BB cap" ammo that came in the little round containers, similar to percussion caps. I'll bet they shoot pretty well too.