Jacketed bullets with no cannelure in a revolver

Lee FCD will make a cannelure for you. That is one option.

I would think you could load them for 38 spl. Just using the roll crimp. I would be hesitant to load them for 357 mag though.

I load 158gr plated bullets with no cannelure in 38 Special and 38 Short Colt and have never had an issue. A very light crimp is all I use.

Many pistol bullets head space on the mouth so no roll crimp, they use a taper crimp instead
and dies are available for that.

As mcb noted at normal 38 Special loads there shouldn’t be a problem.

If the case is properly sized and the expanding plug isn’t oversized.

150 grain .357 bullets in a 9mm?

A very light roll crimp or just enough crimp to remove the belling from the expander will work OK in .38 Special. They’d probably work as good as any 147 grain bullet in 9mm.

If your neck tension is good and you aren't loading them to maximum pressure you should be good. I bought a cannelure tool probably close to 30 years ago for adjusting the bullet seating depth on .45-70 jacketed 400 grain SP bullets that wouldn't chamber in my Marlin 1895 with the crimp groove they came with and recently used it to cannelure some 230 grain JHP's that were made for .45 ACP so I could load them in .45 Colt cases.

desmobob said:

If they were plated bullets I'd have no concerns, but they're jacketed. I don't know if they have enough "give" for the crimp die to press the case mouth into them. I'll try with an empty case and see how they hold with a push against the bench like I do with auto pistol rounds. I'm just worried about the possibility of bullet jump tying up the revolver and having to pull down a bunch of loaded rounds.

I'll test the ability of neck tension to hold the bullets and I'll see if a slight roll crimp is possible. And I won't load too many if dummy round tests seem OK. I guess if the lack of an effective crimp and bullet jump did turn out to be a problem, the rounds would be easy to pull down with a kinetic puller!

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A slight crimp with work on jacketed too. For polymer coated lead bullets I don't use any crimp at all just enough of the crimp die to remove the bell in the case. Never have an issue with bullets pulling out with 38 Short Colt, 38 Special or 45 ACP in a revolver.

Walkalong said:

The standard pistol FCD will not, the collet type crimp FCD for pistols can (Sort of), but I would just taper crimp them, Lee sells one for about $12, or you could use a 9MM seater to do it.

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I guess I am only familiar with the collet type.

I loaded some old 230 gr fmj .45 ACP bullets into .45 Colt cases a while back. No cannelure and the thick jackets made the bullets as hard as a rock.

Just put on the best roll crimp you can, and with that and neck tension they’ll hold.

Stay safe..

My buddy gave me some Rainier 250gr plated bullets with no crimp groove for use in 45Colt. I just seated them to 1.600" and just gave them a very slight crimp with the standard seating die. They were very accurate.

38spl, not 357 if there is no cannelure. In .357 you could do it but they would need to be pretty mild loads.

Can I safely load these for .38 Special? .357 Magnum, or will the bullets jump? Light roll crimp? No crimp?

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You could, bullets won’t “jump” but if the neck tension is insufficient they might pull under recoil.

“crimp” means different things to different people. To some it means removal of the flare they imparted on the mouth of the case to put it back the way it was without changing the bullet shape in any way.

On the other end, there are folks that crimp the case so much they actually swage the bullet smaller inside the case. The softer lead/copper bullet will get smaller and stay and the “springy” brass will rebound a bit making the case to bullet fit worse than before being crimped.

If I have bullets with no cannelure, I go minimum. If I can pull a bullet on a finished round and see that I have messed it up in the loading process, I change what I am doing.

I was wondering if a typical revolver caliber sizing die could press a roll crimp into a jacketed bullet with no cannelure without collapsing the case.

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Yes, it can do that but will obviously distort the bullet in doing so.

If you are buying bullets that were not made with provisions for a roll crimp, you might try loading them without one and see if they are pulling during recoil. If they don’t, I would stop there.

Unless of course you wanted to make a learning experience out of it and take the same load and swage the bullet with a roll crimp as you previously described and shoot the two side by side, so you could see if the effects were positive or negative on accuracy.

Just use the dies you have and put a perfect roll crimp. not to much not to little.
Or as mentioned buy a taper crimp die

Several have said it, buying the Taper Crimp Die is the thing to do.

If you’re not loading them into a tubular mag rifle (setback) or an airweight revolver (recoil pulling), then the .38 loads you’re describing putting together with those bullets should work fine with the dies you have.

Stay safe.