Pulled bullets and dumped powder out of old 243 and 270 reloaded brass. Cleaned the brass and the bullets, reloaded the 243 bullets with Reloder 22 powder and replaced the bullets.
Funny how that is. I have some 50-60 year old boxes of .38 HBWC target loads from Western. I'll get around to chronographing them before they're all used up but it only takes one shot to know they are loaded way hotter than current factory ammo. When shooting steel plates at 75 yards, the difference in delay between the boom and the clank is obvious.
I think .38 load data has been dumbed-down over the years. No doubt due to the number of 100+ year old guns out there. Current Hodgdon data for standard pressure cast 158 gr LSWC .38 loads says 3.7gr of W231 is the max. The Lyman III edition of 1980 says the max is a whole grain more, at 4.7 for the 358156. That's a big difference. Super light loads never worked for me with cast bullets. I sometimes load a 148gr cast WC with the same load. It's a service-power WC.
I am looking forward to the chronograph data report.
