Bring back the 357 Maxie

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Bake

New member
I've been looking at some of my old reloading books & notebooks, and I believe a conversion just might be possible. I was thinking about the Henry Single Shot or one of the others might be a solid test bed for the conversion.

A few years ago I was a Silhouette Shooter, using a TC Super in 357 Remington Maximum. Won a couple of NRA "10 Rams" hat pins, and had a "Hell of a lot of FUN". I still have a lot of my supplies.

Has anybody else been thinking along these lines Like taking some of the old Super Mag Handgun Cartridges and going for a run one more time? ? ?
 
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P

P Flados

New member
I got into IHMSA in the mid 1980s and bought a brand spanking new Dan Wesson 357 Max revolver.

I still have and shoot that gun.
 
N

NoSecondBest

New member
Lots of people shooting them. Barrels are easy to get along with unfired cases. I’ve had three in the last couple of years. Check out MGM barrels or go to BellmTC website.
 
B

Bake

New member
Not the direction I Am headed. It was hard to find them (the 1980s, Austin, Texas) in the gun shops, they were all out at the range, and no one wanted to sell. At about the same time in Seattle, I saw 1 or 2 in every (sometimes 3) gun shop. Back then I used the TC Super in 357 Maxie, and a Remington XP100 in 7mm RBR.
 
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W

wizrd

New member
I really wasn't aware the .357 Max. had gone away, - for us who like them, anyway. 10" and 14" contender barrels, + Rem. single shot pistol bullets, - what's not to love? 25 or so years ago, guy at a show had a table full of .357 Max. ammo at $2.00 per box, - took me two trips to get them all out to the car.
 
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NoSecondBest

New member
It didn’t go away. Outside of some IHMSA Silhouette shooters there never was a lot of interest in the cartridge. It gained a lot more popularity with hunters who outnumbered the silhouette crowd. The ammo companies never produced it, it was a handloaders cartridge. Once some mid west states opened limited rifle seasons with restrictions on case length, diameter, etc it suddenly got noticed. Now the ammo companies want to jump in with the .350 Legend and the gun companies want to produce guns. Where were they back when the Max was already proven to fill this niche? Oh well, its still hanging around and still taking deer.
 
S

Scorch

New member
Wow. Talk about beating a dead horse. While the 357 Maximum was OK cool, it was never as popular as even some relatively unknown cartridges like 45 Win Mag, 445 Super Mag, 45 Super, 9x23, etc. It wouldn't be a matter of reviving it, you would first have to put life into it. The only people who like the 357 Max were silhouette shooters and midwest deer hunters.
 
P

P Flados

New member
The Dan Wesson was easy to acquire.

I joined the local club that shot IHMSA. When I joined IHMSA, I started getting Elgin Gates' "The Silhouette". Gun and supplies for the sport were sold at great prices through this "newspaper" format publication that came out monthly.

One of the guys at the club did FFL stuff for members for like $10 per transaction.

Only thing I regret is not getting more guns this way. The Ruger in 357 Max and the Dan Wesson in 41 Supermag were available, I wanted them and I could afford them.
 
U

Unclenick

Staff
The 357 Maximum was in the 1993 SAAMI standard, so the industry maintained reference ammo for it member manufacturers. That means they tried making it. How long they tried, I don't know. May have been brief if it didn't sell. It's gone from the 2015 standard.
 
T

TX Nimrod

New member
....It gained a lot more popularity with hunters who outnumbered the silhouette crowd. The ammo companies never produced it, it was a handloaders cartridge....
Click to expand...

You must be confusing the .357 Maximum with something else, for years Maxi ammo was loaded by Remington, Federal and others. The cartridge was developed for silhouette shooting, and silhouette shooters fired ‘way more rounds than hunters ever did; the cartridge never set the hunting world afire after all the bad print press about frame cutting.

Regardless it is a fine hunting cartridge, several shooting buddies in Alaska used their 10” Contenders on deer and caribou where it performed well with 180-grain bullets.



.
 
R

rc

New member
I think the cartridge would be best in something like a trim slim lever gun. In revolvers the flame cutting of the top strap seems to be a major problem but a lever gun that would shoot mag and max rounds interchangeable would be nice.
 
R

rc

New member
Well people thought the 327 federal lever gun was too much to ask. I'm not likely to get a 357 max but I could see it as a handy short range big game thumper in the same class as 35 remington but easier to load.
 
S

Scorch

New member
if they ever make a 336 marlin rifle in that caliber I'll have one.
Click to expand...
Won't happen. I've done a custom for a customer. Too much of a pain to get it to feed. Build a 357/44 Bains-Davis instead.
 
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