Making light and heavy revolver loads shoot to same sight setting

[Veral]

  I have many customers who purchase two or more bullets styles and weights for one revolver, but the serious flaw in having several bullet weights / loads for one gun is that the sights have to be changed whenever switching from the light to heavy load.

   It is pretty common knowledge that revolvers shoot lower as velocity is increased, using any given bullet weight. (Profile, or nose shape,  is not part of the equasion.  So if we select a 300 gr 44 as an example, point of impact will  cover a range of sight settings when shot at different velocities which work the rear sight down near the bottom of its travel     With a lighter weight, bullet the rear sight setting range from low velocity to high velocity would be considerably higher than with the heavier bullet.

  The solution is to use a light bullet for your heavy loads, and heavy bullet for light loads.  I recently worked up loads for a 38 special where I used a 150 gr bullet driven at some pretty spicey +p velocities.  Didn't chronograpth but estimate the velocity to be something  on the order of 1100-1200 fps.    The light load is 170 gr which I estimate to be  slipping out the muzzle ar around 800 fps, this using a very vast powder, (Winchester WST, which I have no load data for.)  This light load is working at fairly high pressures but the fast powder is so well consumed that the report is just a relitively soft pow.   Delightful to shoot, without ear protections, for small game, while the heavy laod is exceptionally deadly for a 4 inch barrel 38, should I need to use it on serious critters, of whatever species.  By the way, my powder of choice for this load is Hodgen Universal, because of the low muzzle flash and blast, but any slower powder will give the same resulsts.

  There is no other way to make two loads shoot to the same sight setting, and though it is backward to what we think is right, it is what works.   The heavy bullet, moving much slower, raises the barrel enough to put the bullet impact under the sights, even though felt recoil is very light and no massive report.    The light load will knock a one ton beef to it's knees instantly, so it actually isn't a whimp.  It just feels like it is.

[facetious]

I got a 150 OWC mold from you back in the early 90's . I found that a load of 15 gr 2400 in a .357 mag. case shot best. I then worked up a load for 38's using Herco upping the charge a little at a time till it hit the same spot at twenty five yards, the load was 5 gr. As the range gets longer the point of impact changes but inside thirty yards  I can use them interchangeably with the same site setting.

[Veral]

  Now listen here bud!  You just told us you did what I said would not work!   Delightful!  I like it.! Though I've never been able to do it, and I don't believe that you have attained what I'm really talking about, which I'll explain a bit clearer.  Even so, if you like what you have, use it, by all means.

  Your issue that drop is much greater is true with the loads I've worked up too.

  An important factor to me when developing two different loads which shoot to the same sight setting is that they be easily identified, even if they've been carried together in a jacket pocket for 6 months and are bettered some.    So I always use something with greatly different nose shapes
That is an important issue for me, but the REALLY important issue is that the mild load shoot with a soft report and recoil.   VERY MUCH SO IN BOTH RESPECTS! 

  The only way I've been able to do it is to make the 'light' load with a heavy bullet and small charge of very fast burning powder, tuning the charge to make bullets print to the sights at whatever range I choose, with 25 yards being the norm.  The heavier the light load bullet weight is the quieter the load will be, and slower moving.  So to get a good killing speed, which is my reason for the light load, I pick a weight that can be driven at about 800 fps and hit at the sights, when set for my heavy load .
 
 Seating bullets backward for the light load gives the apperance of a wadcutter, and makes them very deadly at low velocities, and accuracy is normally very good, about like full wadcutters, out to 50 yards or so, which encompases the range which most people will use such a load, for small game etc.
  If you have a SWC, or other bullet which has an undersized front drive band, don't expect to get good results when seating them backwards, but try, it might work.  It must be full diameter and the crimp groove filled with lube. for optimum performance from backward bullets.

  Over 30 years ago I developed a snake load for my Wifes little 3 inch barrel 38.  The bullet weighed 180 grains and had only a small drive band at one end and another about 3/4 of the way down.  A cylinder in other words, and the rear band was up from the base so it wouldn't swell the 38 brass to prevent chambering.  I loaded a very tiny charge of 700 X, the charge long since forgotten.  But the report wasn't much greater than a toy cap gun, and the bullets were clearly visible in flight if shot toward a light back drop.  Daisy BB gun speed.  They would cluster into an inch at 25 yards and chop a rattler almost in half.  She killed something like 30 rattlers with that load, some of them as long as she is.  5 ft 2 in.  Also took quite a few cottontail rabbits with it, and it dispatched them instantly.   In here ammo pouch there was a special compartment with another bullet, of forgotten weight, loaded to +p pressures, but engineered to hit to the fixed sights at 25 yards also.   I don't recall her ever shooting one of the heavy loads, which were intended to stop bulls which weighed well over a ton, or perhaps a sop head trying to rob or molest her.

  This wife load thing, and straining at finding a load which she can handle comfortably, yet powerfull enough for it's intended use, keeps most reoladers, in fact everyone I've ever talked to,
in quite a tither.   However, I have a strong opinion, unshakable in fact, that what I did with that gun is the right way to go.   Never let her shoot the stout load in practice, but of coarse don't make it so crazy that the gun will fly out of her hands, if she has a feable grip.  If she only shoots pleasant loads which don't hurt her ears, or hands, she won't be afraid nor start a flinch.  Be sure to talk to her about the defense load and let her know it is stout, and explain that if she ever needs it, there will be enough adrenelin running that she won't her the shot go off nor feel the recoil, but will even wish it were more powerful. ------  Even deer hunters are affected this way, and we all know it.  How much more so if we are trying to save our life or defend our family?

  Maybe that's why it was easy to convince my wife, as she has huntied with me for 52 years.   One time, many years ago, before I got into lead, I had worked up a nice easy to shoot 243 load for her to chase coes whittail deer with, down on the AZ / Mex border country.  We hunted for about a week without finding Bambi and one evening were out trying to pop some jackrabbits, with about the same "frustration".  When we finally spotted one, (we were riding in a sand buggy), she picked up my hot loaded rifle and blew it to shreds.   --  As she laid the gun back down I said.  'Did you know you picked up my gun?"   She said,  "Yes, I wanted to blow it to pieces!"   

  I developed the 38 load several years after that incident.   Maybe that was why she was easy to convince, that she would have no fear of the stout 38 load .

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[JustShootin]

Is this true for autos also.