Henry Rifle Forums

Has anyone measured the cartridge OAL in their 357 BBS? I suspected that the chamber on mine was rather long so I purchased the Hornady-OAL gauge. Hornady does not sell a modified case for the 357, so I had to make one using my fire-formed brass. The correct drill/tap for doing this is available through Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0195 ... UTF8&psc=1 ). I measured the OAL of my rifle at 1.794" (see picture) and as you can see, the cannelure (Sierra #8340 158 grain JSP) is a long way forward of the case mouth. The SAAMI maximum OAL for the 357 is 2/10 shorter (1.590"). When I load to SAAMI max length, the cannelure rests nicely at the case mouth before crimp.

Has anyone else measured the chamber on their 357 BBS? If so, what kind of numbers did you get?

Welcome to the forum. When I first bought my BBB 357, I checked online to see if anyone had measured for COL. A poster on a different forum measured his at 1.7155”. I have the link if you want it. They made the measurement by slitting the top of a case so that a bullet could slide in easily. Chambered the round then removed and measured. No primer was used.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Actually I started by doing the somnething very similar - very lightly crimped an empty deprimed bullet seated very long. Chamber, remove and measure. I repeated this a number of times using different amounts of crimp until I got a reproducible 1.74 plus/minus 0.002". At the time, I thought "This simply can't be right" so I bought the OAL gauge and repeated as described in my post here.