173 gr keith

This is one of the truly great bullets of all time and a long favorite of mine.

Elmer Keith was having a very good day when he designed this slug.

I have shot literally many tens of thousands of these cast from the Lyman 358429 Mold. I probably have 10,000 in the basement right now.

My favorite recipes:

7.0 grns of Unique in a .357 Magnum Case
5.0 grns of Unique in a .38 Spl. Case.

I have won matches with these loads.

About the only legitimate complaint about this design is that in shorter cylindered N-Frame Smith Magnums such as the 27, 28 you must crimp over the front driving band. If you use the crimp groove the resulting round is too long for the cylinder. This due to the original intended use being the .38-44 round. In K- Magnums, no such issue is encountered.

Drew

I haven't shot this bullet but I do cast one similar. It is an H&G #290BB. It is similar to the H&G #51 that was modified by Phil Sharpe. Mine casts right at 162gr.

Here is a picture after casting:


Here are some loaded in 357mag. cases:

I love reading old accounts and articles about shooting and reloading for these guns we like so much. I never know what useful things I might re-learn.

The 358429 bullet being too long for .357 cases in N-frame cylinders when crimped in the proper groove has already been mentioned, but that didn't stop the early experimenters.

When S&W introduced the .357 Magnum to shooters, gun cranks immediately began to check out the long-range potential of the new revolver and cartridge. Old American Rifleman mags of that era are filled with chatter about this, and E.K. was prominent in publishing a few articles with photos on this subject. Maj. Doug Wesson went on an extended western big game hunt to showcase S&W's newest Pride and Joy. There is a whole chapter in Ed McGivern's book, Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting on the subject of long range revolver shooting. There are even photos of man-sized targets shot at ranges up to 600yards! Absolutely amazing how precise a revolver can be at that range!

What I didn't find out until recent years was that these amazing 400-500-600 yard shots were mostly done with handloads using .38 Special cases - not with the .357 cases. At that time, the only .357" bullet capable of accuracy at that distance was Elmer Keith's 358429 design - all others weren't nearly so perfectly matched to this bore and twist at those distances and would begin to "keyhole" beyond 200 yards.

These fellows knew that they could crimp over the driving band and have it fit, but for some reason, these rounds did not offer up the same long-range results. They even trimmed .357 cases to a length that would just barely allow this bullet to fit in the cylinder, but got results that were just as good with plain ol' .38 Special brass and +P+++ charges of powder.

xtm

I don't have a 358429 on hand for comparison, but here is an example of 358477 - Ideal/Lyman's clone of the various ammo manufacturers design which would fit in the .357 Magnum's cylinder. This one drops out at 155gr. with wheelweight alloy.


You can readily see how much shorter the nose is than the Keith-designed bullet. This bullet design was never as accurate, but outsold the better design because of its length.

Note the rounded bottoms of the lube grooves on this example. E.K. specifically instructed Lyman/Ideal to cut the lube grooves in his designs with square bottoms - to hold more lube and to help prevent collapse of the bullet with high pressure loads. Lyman/Ideal ignored this for decades because they felt that the rounded cuts would aid the bullets to drop free from the mould. Once again, time has proven ol' Elmer correct.

xtm