With any luck brass and bullets will arrive this week. I decided to start with the Hornady 180 SSP since I am building a whitetail load. From searching this site and other 357 Max sites, primer choice is small rifle (magnum?). From what I gather a good starting point is 26.0 grains of AA1680, with 28.0 grains being the ceiling. Crimping seems to be trial and error.
The Lyman manual is the only manual I have with a listing for 357 Max, it's for the Contender pistol. It doesn't have any AA1680 info.
What do your 357 Maximums like?
Good morning and welcome YRU,
The maxi has quite a loyal following here and with the Handi. Many of us have more than one!!!
Your choice of a Hornady SSP for whitetails is a good one. But the 180 XTP and Speers 170 GD and 180 FP are also good choices!
For powders I also much prefer the AA1680, but 4227 and even H110/296 and Lil Gun have proven to be good preformers as well.
Back in the late '80's I bought a contender barrel when the cartridage first came out and shot it with 158G bullets and H4227 powder as I was also shooting the 357 Herrett with the same powder and bullets. I discovered that these bullets would under penetrate and over expand at the velocities attainable. When the XTP line came avalible and I discovered the 158 FP bullet and the SSP line form Hornady things improved. A bit later Nosler brought out the Partition hand gun line and the 180g version was also good.
I sold off that Herrett as the Maxi did almost the velocity and had none of the pit falls. I discovered a Handi in factory chambered in maxi! Hornady had it with that SSP as I had killed a couple more deer with it it was proving itself as about perfect for the maxi velocity range. AA1680 powder has very close to the burn rate of the 4227's and when I tried it my accuracy improved. I worked up to 26g for best accuracy with out any pressure signs, that's almost 2200 fps from my H&R (chronographed velocity).
My point is DONT START at 26g of AA1680 powder... Its a near MAX loading... You may well get there or even surpass that loading, butits unsafe to start at the top...
Good luck,
CW
