Why is .38 Special so long?

We already have a short .38 Special, it's called the 9mm Parabellum.

Because the 9mm was designed as a smokeless powder cartridge from the start it's short. I have a feeling if they made a short .38 Special it would cause all kinds of problems so it's probably a bad idea.

i wish someone would make a proportionally sized 9mm revolver

Maybe back when the Blackpowder guns were around for only 3 years before the smokeless 38's were made they could have changed over to a smaller case but after over 100 years of revolver production I highly doubt anyone would want to change the dimensions of the .38 Special. I do understand your frustration but it's not only the .38 Special that's like this. Another one that comes to mind is the .45 Colt. Now that's a huge case that is left mostly empty unless you use Trail Boss to load it!!!

It might be because it was originally a black powder cartridge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.38_Special

A .38 Special Short does exist, and is not the same as the .38 S&W.

i wish someone would make a proportionally sized 9mm revolver

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There are some out there, but not too easy to find. Taurus made one.

One could always get a Case Trimmer, and, lean into it a little bit, and, shorten them to 9mm P-'08 length...

Why is .38 Special so long?

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Firearms designed to shoot the .38-44 cartridge made good use of it.
I'm not sure why the 9mm Federal never caught on
I've thought a rimmed 40S&W would be kinda cool, but having a shorter cylinder with a high pressure round could be hard on the fingers.

I've thought a rimmed 40S&W would be kinda cool, but having a shorter cylinder with a high pressure round could be hard on the fingers.

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Bingo. When Smith & Wesson marketed a K-frame 3-inch round butt 9mm revolver, it retained the full cylinder length. You really don't want a barrel-cylinder gap poised over your support hand...even if there is a frame between'em. "Like a Cutting Torch" is the operative phrase.

Well, I guess a rimmed 9mm then. I really don't see how any problems could come from it. There's open space in the .38 Special that doesn't need to be there, so why have it waste room?

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One advantage is that you have greater powder space and lower chamber pressures.

I won't carry anything lighter than 158gr. in a .38 or .357 Magnum. Try to load a 158gr. bullet in a 9x19mm case and see what kind of pressures you get at any useful velocity.

There's no reason why you should be bothered by the case length, but if you are, you can always use .38 Long Colt or .38 Short Colt. Apparently, .38 Long Colt has a certain popularity in Cowboy Action Shooting.

The cheapest alternative is to buy some Fiocchi 38S&W which will work just fine as 'range fodder' in your gun. 38 Long Colt etc is more expensive to shoot, unless you are going to roll your own. Dave

The Charter Arms 9mm Federal (rimmed) was a flop.
Some say they dropped it because it turned out you could load 9mm Fed into a .38 S&W and subject it to about triple pressure.
Some say it just didn't sell.
It was on a Special length cylinder and frame anyhow. Tooling up for a new frame would be an expensive experiment.

It WOULD be cute if S&W did it; the old Terrier with heat treated cylinder to handle the hotter load. But again, what if you loaded a .38 S&W with ".38 Short Special +P+"?
The big companies worry about stuff like that, they don't want to get sued on the "deep pockets" theory.

"...called the 9mm Parabellum..." It's called a Colt .38 Short, Colt .38 Long, .38 S&W, etc.
The .38 Special case is longer so you can't load it into a .38 Long Colt revolver.

The cheapest alternative is to buy some Fiocchi 38S&W which will work just fine as 'range fodder' in your gun.

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.38 S&W is different from .38 Special. The case diameter is larger and will NOT chamber in a properly set up .38 Special revolver. .38 Special can usually be chambered in the .38 S&W, but the improperly supported cases bulge or split.

I haven't seen a .38 S&W that you could chamber .38 Special in on account of the .4" longer case. Except for British surplus Lend-Lease and Victory models reamed out for surplus sale back in the Colonies, that is.

The .38 Special case is longer so you can't load it into a .38 Long Colt revolver.

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Not really. Revolvers chambered to use the .38 Long Colt have bored-straight-through chambers, and because of this will accept .38 Special cartridges. Some of them will also accept a .357 Magnum round.

Obviously this is not a recomendation to use either .38 Special or .357 Magnum cartridges in a revolver intended to be used with .38 Short Colt or .38 Long Colt ammnition.

The .38 S&W Special cartridge, which was introduced in 1899, was intended to be an improved .38 Long Colt, and offered an additional advantage at the time, which was that one could also shoot U.S. .38 service ammunition (.38 Long Colt) in a .38 Special revolver. Smith & Wesson, Military & Police barrels were so marked on the side.

Recently some combat gamers have taken to using handloaded .38 Short Colt cartridges in .38 Special revolvers, as it's faster to load and eject the shorter length round. As a result loading dies are available, and this should provide an easy answer for those that want a "short" .38 Special.

.38 S&W and .38 Special are both black powder era cartridges. .38 Special is long enough to hold a 18 grain charge of FFFg that would give the same velocity as 3.7 grains Unique smokeless powder. And 3.7 grains Unique will fit a shorter .38 S&W case with room to spare.

I had considered shooting a .38 S&W in the black powder cartridge matches and acquired .38 S&W casings for reloading. The factory spec unfired casings will not fit in a .38 Special chamber: the casing diameter and rim thickness are a bit thicker than .38 Special.

However, I did come across a small lot of ammo marked .38 S&W that were .38 Special rim thickness and case diameter but .38 S&W length. That means they would have been slightly undersized in a .38 S&W gun. Most .38 S&W ammo and casings will not fit a .38 Special gun.

Looking at my J-frame .38, the length of the .38 Special puts the cylinder/barrel gap a safe distance ahead of my trigger finger, and I don't think I would be comfortable with a shorter cyclinder. Especially with a two-hand hold.

Double check: the odd casings that I have are head stamped .38 S&W yet appear to be either .38 Special or .38 Colt dimensions.

Why is .38 Special so long?

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Gets the bullet that much closer to the target.

Why is .38 Special so long?

Gets the bullet that much closer to the target.

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I laughed so hard that coffee came out of my nose. Good one! I certainly appreciate this type of humor!

.38 Super ya mean (rimmed 9mm)?

The extra space in the .38spl is not wasted even though black powder is rarely used. There are smokeless powders that take up a fair amount of that room for improved ballistics. 2400, 4227, etc. Even the pinch of Bullseye in target loads don't end up with a cavernous space. The .38spl is like the .45 Colt and .44spl. They all do well with black or smokeless just the way they are.

Oyeboten said:

One could always get a Case Trimmer, and, lean into it a little bit, and, shorten them to 9mm P-'08 length...

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Not a good idea for two reasons. First is that the chamber pressure would rise to far too high a level unless the powder load is reduced a LOT. Look at the chamber pressure in 9mm vs .38Spl for loads using the same amount of powder and with 124vs 125gn bullets. The larger case room of the .38Spl holds the peak pressures down to about half.

Another reason is that the chambers in the cylinder DO have a step in them. THe idea is that the bullet is into the forward portion and supported and sealed before the tail of the bullet leaves the case. If a very short case is put into a long chamber the bullet would leave the case before it enters the bore sized portion of the chamber. Much gas blowly would occur with resulting leading. An there's an excellent risk of the bullet tumbling during this unsupported if short bit of flight and shave lead as it enters the bore sized forward portion.

We get away with it when shooting .38Spl from .357 guns because the difference in case lengths is less than the bullet insertion depth in the case. So the bullet from a .38 is sealed in the bore size forward portion before it leaves the seal of the case.

But couldn't some company load a shorter case to the exact same ballistics?

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Yes they could, but they never will.

The natural progression of revolver cartridges has always been to make the new more powferful round longer then the one that preceeded it.

Why?
So you can't stick a .357 Magnum in a 1915 era .38 Spl Hand Ejector.
Or a .38 Spl +P in a 1880's S&W .38 S&W top-break.

rc