I was on Midway last night, I can't recall exactly what I was looking at right now but the soft 158's were 500 at a time and out of stock. Thanks for the tip on the Speer Bullets I'll have to dig around and see if I can find them. I have some hard cast 158's and I think I'll work them up in the warm range just to see how I control the recoil. Rimrock bullets has a 158 they claim is the one used by Buffalo Bore and they sell them in 100 packs.
I can do the same with some 110 Hornady XTP's just to get a feel for them as I could do with an available 125-130 grain bullet to simulate the Gold Dot load.
Doc Robert's indicates the Corbon 110 DPX load is effective even out of the 1 7/8's barrel, I don't know if I can hand load a Barnes 110 to Corbon velocity though, and the same with the other bullet weights.
I've done a lot of "internet researching" and it usually comes back to the "FBI load" being the "best" for the 1 7/8" snub, the trick being able to get a soft bullet going in the 800-850 fps range, with faster being better. Lot's of positive remarks for the 158 grain Buffalo Bore the plus P load looking like it might be a bit much for the Airweight 442.
The 135 Gold Dot load appears to be a good one, but probably out of my price range even if I could find them...and forget about practicing with it.
Practice makes perfect and especially so with this little gun, so I want to be able to duplicate hand loads to whatever load I choose to go with, no way can I afford to put a lot of lead downrange at factory prices.
Red, thanks for the load info.
Right now I have a small quantity of 125 Nyclad and some old 129+ Federal Hydro shocks for CCW, but not enough to practice with.