Quiet .357 Magnum Loads?

[jibjab]

using AA9 for .357 mag loads,

This my favorite powder for .357 Mag in 2.75 and 4" barrels

[Clark]

To get more power [one shot body shots, not head or neck shots] and less noise from a gun [does not wake up the wife], I have found that I want to get the powder expansion ratio up and the muzzle pressure down.
The threshold of super sonic gas is one atmosphere above ambient.

What does it all mean?
Compressed small charges, long barrels, and large calibers.

What does THAT mean?
A big BB gun.

How about handguns?
Even a primer will be too much charge to be quiet with a handgun.

[SL1]

Even a primer will be too much charge to be quiet with a handgun.

While a primer is loud in a handgun if fired in an empty case, if you use a wax or rubber bullet, it is really quiet. About all I hear is the "bullet" striking a target. And, that is with small rifle magnum primers in a revolver, using .357 Magnum cases.

Clark, one question: When you use a solid metal "filler" in your cases, as shown in you last post, does that filler piece ever move forward out of the case. I am thinking about whether it could tie-up a revolver cylinder or bang into the rifling in the throat of a long gun.

SL1

[Clark]

It sounds like I need more handgun testing.
I have found that rifles are noisy if the bullet does not seal with the lands. I can allow no gas to leak around the bullet during jump.
That is why I have the two presses on the same home made die with a ram between them, to swage the bullet into a sized and shape that seals the powder behind the bullet when jammed into the lands.

I clean the inside of the case and the outside of the filler [Steel or Aluminium ] with alcohol. Then put Loctite 601 on them. I press them together in a vise with a small socket wrench as a spacer.
None have come loose with 601, one came loose with just a press fit.

To cut the taper of the insert to be a press fit:
I measure the case wall thickness in .1" increments from the web.
I make a formula for slope and offset outside diameter for the case.
I put those in a spread sheet, print it out, and use the the DRO on the lathe and the chart to make my hands a crude CNC machine.

I like to drill the flash hole big enough for Red Dot flakes to fall down it.

I made a test fixture to measure sound.
Most people would be better off with a commercial sound pressure level detector and modify it for faster attack time to measure the sound of a gun shot.

[nicknitro71]

Just keep it subsonic. I load all my .357 and .44 magnums (and also .45 ACPs) to shoot between 900-1000 f/sec for more predictable ballistics and overall better accuracy and precision at longer distances. Those bullets have really poor aerodynamics and when they transition from super to subsonic there is a sharp and unpredictable drop in the ballistic arc and usually this happens within 100 yards. It's one of those catch .22s: either you got to make sure to stay supersonic all the way or you're better off staying subsonic, the latter almost always the case for handgun cartridges.