[pepperbelly]

My dad loaned me a pistol to use in the centerfire portion of the bullseye matches. I had been using my SA .45acp and he thought a lighter caliber would help my score. He had 2 1911 pistols in .38spcl and loaned me 1. It's a Colt that was in .38 Super and was modified, by someone who knew what he was doing, to .38spcl. It shoots a swaged hollow-base wadcutter. It also has an AMU barrel and is very accurate.
The references I have been able to find say those pistols use a rimless .38spcl. This uses a regular .38spcl case- loads, ejects and shoots just fine. The magazine doesn't like more than 5 rounds though. If we load 6 the top round tips too far down to load. It's possible the mag is designed for the rimless.
Is anyone familiar with these pistols? What is the difference between the regular .38 and the rimless case, other than the lack of a rim?

The other is now a safe queen. It's a Colt NM .38spcl midrange 1911 pistol.
I have looked on a couple of auction sites and haven't found any. He is not interested in selling it, but we are curious what it's approximate value is.

Thanks,
Jim

[Jim Watson]

The Army did some work with converting .38 Supers to .38 AMU (.38 Special semi-rimmed) for NRA Centerfire guns, but everybody soon moved on to straight .38 Special conversions. The magazines are only meant to hold five, since that is all you need for a string on the bullseye target.

There is no difference between .38 Special midrange wadcutter and .38 AMU except that the latter has a semi-rim the same diameter as .38 Super so as to not require alteration to the breechface and extractor.

Frankly, the conversion is probably more accurate than the Colt built in .38 midrange.

[rcmodel]

The .38 AMU was a semi-rimless .38 Special disigned by the Army Advanced Marksmanship Unit at Ft. Benning in the early - mid 1960's.
That didn't amount to much, so later on, they figured out how to get them to feed .38 Special wad-cutters.

There was never any intent to use more then 5 rounds in the magazines since Bullseye matches were shot in stages of 10 rounds, and there was plenty of time to change mags.

All the service AMU units, as well as Jim Clark, Pachmeyer, and others modified guns for them, and it was a pretty common center-fire match gun for awhile.

Then folks figured out they could shoot as well or better scores with 185 grain SWC target loads in .45 ACP.
The .45 "wad guns" (as opposed to Hardball guns) were set up to handle the light loads reliably, and with lighter "center-fire" triggers.
At that point, the .38 Specials were mostly converted back to .45 ACP match guns.

We still had a few .38 AMU and .38 Spl. match guns at 5th. Army AMTU when I shot & gunsmithed for them in 1968 -69-70, but almost nobody would use them after they got a .45 wad-gun they liked.

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[pepperbelly]

Thanks for the info RC.
I have been shooting the centerfire and .45 matches. So far my high score with the .45 has been a 797. I have shot an 824 and an 825 with my MkII .22.
Dad was thinking the lighter recoil might help in timed and rapid fire stages.
I have been loading a 200gr LSWC over 4.5gr of WST. I use this same load for my falling plate matches and usually win.
I will try this .38 and see if it is any more accurate than the .45. If not I will stay with the .45 to keep things as simple as possible.

Jim

[Jim Watson]

That is a stouter load than needed for paper targets; 800+ fps depending on whose data you believe. I'd get down around 700 fps for target shooting.

[pepperbelly]

I have trid a load of 4.1gr WST but the groups opened up a noticeable amount (I don't remember how much).
The load I am using was actually our starting load when we ended up with 16 pounds of WST. I tried the load in my SA, that has actually been reworked into a match pistol by SA when correcting a problem, in Dad's SA Target and his Kimber Match. This load had very tight groups in all 3 pistols, which seemed unusual to both of us. The only load developement I tried was the 4.1gr and quit messing with it after seeing the group size.
The recoil isn't really strong- I used it to win the high overall score in the plate match last month. The recoil impulse of WST is sharper than when I used Unique, but WST is so much cleaner than Unique I am willing to deal with it.
I may try some other loads, 4.2gr, 4.3gr and 4.4gr, but with it shooting so well with 4.5gr I would have to see a big difference and that doesn't seem likely- the 4.5gr is a very accurate load in my pistol.

Jim

[rcmodel]

I forgot to mention that at about the same time the .38 Spl. 1911 conversions were reaching their heyday in the early 60's, S&W brought out the Model 52 Master .38 Special semi-auto in 1961.
It was more accurate then anyone could hold one, and pretty close to 100% reliable with the rimmed .38 Spl. wad-cutters.

That, and the super-accurate & reliable .45 ACP wad-guns were the death nell for the .38 Spl. 1911 conversions in center-fire matches.

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