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Why is .357 Sig the redheaded stepchild of handgun ammunition?

I never knew .357 sig was a red headed step child round. We all knew .40 was.
357 sig seemed like a good and slightly exotic round to me but not uncapable or wierd

Heck, that dude in the church one tapped that mofo with .357 sig. I thought that blasted it back into popularity. Truthishly? I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any of it. Hard pass.
 
It waa cheap (50cpr) up until election time.... now it's still around with a stupid price LOL glad I stocked up....
 
Double tap is garbage, done, the only one that loads custom ammo like that correctly is Underwood..... or at least I don't remember double tap ever coming back from the fiasco they had years ago where they were sending out lots of shitty ammo....
I always had good luck with DoubleTap, but I don’t really use them that much, just for my 357 Sig and 10 MM.
 
I always had good luck with DoubleTap, but I don’t really use them that much, just for my 357 Sig and 10 MM.
Admittedly maybe they recovered or something but at one time there was a pretty bad fiasco with them on sigforum.... people ending up with shit ammo, then. refusing to issue refunds Etc shit like that...
 
In the 40 years I've been shooting, I've seen a whole slew of new cartridges hit the market, only to fade into obscurity.
Very few ever seem to gain enough popularity to stay in the game for the long run.
Off the top of my head there's .357 Maximum, .32 H&R Magnum, .327 Federal Magnum, .41 AE, .45 GAP, .50 GI, and those are just some of the handgun chamberings, the list of rifle cartridges is even longer.
Anyone remember the Winchester WSM and WSSM family of cartridges ?
Or the competing Remington Ultra Mags (RUM) ???
If not, you're not alone.
It's really tough to come up with something new and revolutionary, that has staying power in the market, because people like to stick with the old tried & true.
That's why most of the cartridges that remain in popular usage today have been around for close to 80 years or more.
.30-30, .30-06, .45-70, .30 M1 Carbine, .45 ACP, .45 Colt, .38 sp., .32 ACP, .380 ACP, 9mm Parabellum, .357 Mag., .44 sp., .44 Mag, there's nothing new here, and that's the way it shall remain.
 
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In the 40 years I've been shooting, I've seen a whole slew of new cartridges hit the market, only to fade into obscurity.
... there's nothing new here, and that's the way it shall remain.
I suspect whatever gets chosen for the NGSW will have considerable staying power.

To my mind, .357 Sig and .40 suffer from the same limit on their potential market. The performance bump they offer over 9mm isn’t enough to overcome the first mover advantage plus the engineering and ergonomic tradeoffs.
 
I think most of us are not competitive shooters snd want a proven, inexpensive and commonly available round for self defense. .45 is my go to, but 9mm is fine also. I guess I never felt the need to try out new fangled calibers.
I think cost and availability are major driving factors, if 9mm cost as much (it does now lol) as .357 Sig I don't think people would be choosing 9mm over the .357 Sig given the extra velocity and power. I mean, not unless they are reloaders and don't want to deal with a bottleneck case.

About the only times people are willing to try a handgun other than 9mm is if it's exceptionally cheap to shoot (i.e .22), is available in a significantly smaller size pistol (i.e. .380), or they want more power for woods protection from big animals (10mm or .45). Other than that, if it's not as cheap as 9mm is, the interest is very low.
 
In the 40 years I've been shooting, I've seen a whole slew of new cartridges hit the market, only to fade into obscurity.
Very few ever seem to gain enough popularity to stay in the game for the long run.
Off the top of my head there's .357 Maximum, .32 H&R Magnum, .327 Federal Magnum, .41 AE, .45 GAP, .50 GI, and those are just some of the handgun chamberings, the list of rifle cartridges is even longer.
Anyone remember the Winchester WSM and WSSM family of cartridges ?
Or the competing Remington Ultra Mags (RUM) ???
If not, you're not alone.
It's really tough to come up with something new and revolutionary, that has staying power in the market, because people like to stick with the old tried & true.
That's why most of the cartridges that remain in popular usage today have been around for close to 80 years or more.
.30-30, .30-06, .45-70, .30 M1 Carbine, .45 ACP, .45 Colt, .38 sp., .32 ACP, .380 ACP, 9mm Parabellum, .357 Mag., .44 sp., .44 Mag, there's nothing new here, and that's the way it shall remain.
The .32 & .327 Magnums have pleasantly surprised me as to the resurgence they've gotten the past 6-7 years. There's at least good reasons as to why people are buying them and I think they're gonna have staying power, but stuff like .41's, .357 Max, 45 GAP, etc. just doesn't offer enough to justify them. I mean, the .357 Max is nice from a rifle and the .45 GAP makes sense during AWB times, but what they're offering compared to what else is commonly available are minor improvements to minor problems.

For rifles you have to find a real niche to get any traction otherwise you become the next 6.5 Grendel or .224 Valkyrie. It seems if it can be shot from an AR, it's got a potential future as .300 is hot and .350 Legend and .450 Bushmaster are doing fine.
 
In the 40 years I've been shooting, I've seen a whole slew of new cartridges hit the market, only to fade into obscurity....
Not to mention all the TCU cartridges for the Contender now that nobody shoots silhouettes any more.

As for the 357 Sig - It sucks to reload it.
 
1. The world thinks that 9mm is the end-all, be-all. Vastly different than the world 20 years ago when the 9mm was a 380 with shoulderpads and that was barely a 32ACP with a bigger helmet on. Whether "we" all finally listened or just ran with the pack as it moved from big bullerts to slow, I dunno. 357Sig was one of those things I never owned but understood. Allowed you to get .357 performance from a semi-auto.


2. Seems like Underoos liked that chart so much they highlighted stuff to make them look brilliant. LOL. OTOH, Ranger T (aka "blaaaaaak talllinz") in 9mm is a pretty effective round in comparison to it's peers. Underoos ammo excepted of course. I notice the same bullet in 9mm vs 357Sig isn't that much less lethal. Heck, all of the wound-channel #'s might be that extra .8" of penetration. . . . which might be OVERpenetration.
Instead of a hug, it needs LeHigh and Underwood to make more fluid transfer cartridges:

Before, it was really just spicy 9mm. But with these modern bullets, the extra velocity gets you much better permanent cavitation. Check out the numbers vs 9mm below.


The only thing that beats it all around is the 10mm 115gr, but even that may penetrate a little too much for self defense use:
View attachment 438935
View attachment 438936
 
Not to mention all the TCU cartridges for the Contender now that nobody shoots silhouettes any more.

As for the 357 Sig - It sucks to reload it.

True and true^

There are a lot more that I didn't mention, like the Weatherby and Whelen families of cartridges, which are mostly obsolete nowadays (unless you reload). I bet many of the younger members here have never even heard of them.
 
I don't know why you would say it sucks to reload.

It's a bottleneck pistol cartridge.... lol.. nearly everything else is dead simple, but that one thing makes .357 Sig reloading significantly more complicated....

It's not going to be as bad as others, but still. The only person on this board that I ever knew that reloaded it on the reg was Round Gun Shooter (he had a newer handle that was his uspsa number, but I forget what it is. ) Somewhere on this board he has a thread or a post about reloading it.
 
It's a bottleneck pistol cartridge.... lol.. nearly everything else is dead simple, but that one thing makes .357 Sig reloading significantly more complicated....

It's not going to be as bad as others, but still. The only person on this board that I ever knew that reloaded it on the reg was Round Gun Shooter (he had a newer handle that was his uspsa number, but I forget what it is. ) Somewhere on this board he has a thread or a post about reloading it.
I just go an extra step. Run all the cases through a .40 S&W Carbide die first. Then reload with .357 dies. No lube necessary. Yes Gary was a big .357 Sig fan.
 
I also seem to remember Gary mentioning something about how it was much easier... if you had brass all from the same manufacturer something about it being more consistent....
 
I have a G33, with a .40 barrel as well...double your pleasure. the 357sig produces a fireball 6in out of the muzzle, but recoil is fine and the thing shoots dead on. I like it
 
If the extra step for .357 Sig is running it thru a carbide .40 die first and no lubing whatsoever, that's not so bad. Considering other bottlenecks like 5.7 and 7.62x25, those can't be sized with other dies to avoid lubing them. Still, time consuming extra steps aside, I don't see what .357 Sig is offering that makes it worth it over a hot 9 or the .40.
 
I don't know why you would say it sucks to reload.
It's the only cartridge I load that isn't straight walled, and the shortness of the bottleneck made setting up the dies to get the right crimp was tedious. However, the dies are set in their toolhead so that was essentially a onetime issue. I'm using Dillon carbide dies, and lube, so nothing but the crimp is different.
 
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