Bullet shapes

[rhodesengr]

Hi all. New to the forum and new to lever action rifles. I bought the Model X in 357. I mostly make my own ammo and am wondering how much bullet type/shape makes a difference with a Henry Rifle vs my 686 Competitor Revolver. I have seen some posts saying the SWC bullets are not a good bullet type for lever action rifles. I also have on hand 125gr Hornady XTP and a similar bullet made by Zero.

I shot my Henry for the first time yesterday with two loads using the 125gr XTP I already had on hand: the XTP with Enforcer and the XTP with H110. The speed results were rather impressive.
The H110 load gave me 1506fps average with my 686. With the Henry, that same load clocked in at 2142fps
My Enforcer load gave me 1340fps with my 686 and 1892fps with the Henry.
I had some rounds made with a 158gr SWC and AA#5 powder. For some reason I built them with a COL of 1.630 which was too long to feed from the magazine but I could fire them by manually loading. They clocked in at 1067 with my 686 and 1328fps with the Henry.

I bought the SWC bullets for a lower cost plinking round. Is it worth making some at the correct max length of 1.590 or should I avoid SWC bullets with the Henry?

[Vaquero]

Both my bbs 41 mag and the bbb 44 will both cycle swc's.
The 41 has and does cycle some rather long and heavy wfn with ease as well.
Maybe getting those back to their normal length may help.
Make a dummy round and let us know.

RP

[rhodesengr]

This is how the case and bullet line up at COL of 1.590. The case mouth is a bit above the crimp groove. I was probably just eyeballing the case mouth near the upper edge of the groove to end up at 1.630 but the bullet need to be deeper than that to be 1.590.

[rickhem]

Hi all. New to the forum and new to lever action rifles. I bought the Model X in 357. I mostly make my own ammo and am wondering how much bullet type/shape makes a difference with a Henry Rifle vs my 686 Competitor Revolver. I have seen some posts saying the SWC bullets are not a good bullet type for lever action rifles. I also have on hand 125gr Hornady XTP and a similar bullet made by Zero.

I shot my Henry for the first time yesterday with two loads using the 125gr XTP I already had on hand: the XTP with Enforcer and the XTP with H110. The speed results were rather impressive.
The H110 load gave me 1506fps average with my 686. With the Henry, that same load clocked in at 2142fps
My Enforcer load gave me 1340fps with my 686 and 1892fps with the Henry.
I had some rounds made with a 158gr SWC and AA#5 powder. For some reason I built them with a COL of 1.630 which was too long to feed from the magazine but I could fire them by manually loading. They clocked in at 1067 with my 686 and 1328fps with the Henry.

I bought the SWC bullets for a lower cost plinking round. Is it worth making some at the correct max length of 1.590 or should I avoid SWC bullets with the Henry?

That is a screaming fast load with the 125 and H110, would make a good coyote load. I loaded a bit with the 140 FTX, and with the 158 XTP HP, but for me, the 158 XTP FP grouped better. For your rifle, take a look at Lil Gun powder. I'm pretty impressed with what it does for me.

And as a tip for your cast bullets, you can always trim your brass to let you load to that OAL. Hornady uses shorter than standard length brass in many of their FTX loads, so it's not reinventing the wheel. Trim it so that you can use the crimp groove on those bullets, or just load them in .38 Special cases. If they're just plinking ammo, not loaded too warm, shouldn't be an issue. Keeping any trimmed brass segregated then becomes the focus.

[Luv the lever]

I use H110 for 357 and either True Blue, HP38 or Tite Group for 38's. I've found the barrel on the 3657x stays cool as spring water plinking away with 38's but does heat up on 357's. I usually stick to around 1.6 on the COL and had have issues with wad cutters loading from the magazine. Just having the issue with the WC stopped me from even attempting to load SWC choosing XTP for defensive rounds.
Welcome and enjoy the site, lots of great advise and help here.

[Steve51]

Everybody has their own preferences for bullets. For me, I only shoot jacketed bullets in my Henry centerfire rifles - except for the .45-70. Personally my favorite jacketed bullets are the Hornady XTP JHP bullets. They perform great in my .357 magnum and my .44 magnum Henrys. Never had a feeding issue with them.
For the .45-70, I shoot Hornady 300 gr. and 350 gr jacketed bullets but I also like to shoot the 405 gr cast lead bullets from Missouri Bullet Co.