.38 spl Min. & MAx. OAL

use the crimp groove to attain the oal

The casting shop didn't "put the crimp groove that far forward". The mold is made that way for that bullet by the manufacturer of the mold, which was probably Magma. That's the way the bullet is designed to be loaded, so crimp into the groove and fire away.

There is actually no minimum OAL for the .38 Special per se. Hollow Base Wadcutter bullets designed for bullseye shooting are designed to be seated flush with the case mouth, with no part of the bullet extending past the brass. The length of the case determines the OAL for that particular bullet. The S&W Model 52 pistol was designed to only shoot flush seated bullets.

Revolvers are very forgiving when it comes to OAL. When loading to medium power loads, there is a lot of leeway as far as OAL is concerned. You just don't want to seat the bullet so far out that it binds up the cylinder, and the crimp is designed to keep the bullets from "walking out" of the case when you fire the previous rounds.

Hope this helps.

Fred

Seating depth/OAL only matters in small volume, high pressure, fast powder cartridges such as the 9 - 10 mms/.40 cal. pistol rounds with bullets in the lands. And then only if you're loading on the ragged edge of safety. None of that applies to revolver cartridges, seat your .38s where ever you wish.

Seat them to the crimp groove. That and your cylinder pretty much determine OAL.

Anyone but me notice the difference in case length in Walkalongs pic. I hope that was just a reference pic.

How short a case can 38spl safely use? What does one do with "short" brass?

I've never seen a minimum case length spec anywhere and case length will determine your OAL for a given bullet

Walkalong said:

It is actually a .38 Spl case and a .357 Mag case. The intention was to be able to show the crimp groove along side the seated and crimped round. More visual info.

I did the same thing with .44 Spl and .44 Mag cases on crimp pics for .44 Mag.

More pics here.

Click to expand...

I was thinking that that's what it was and thank you for clearing that up.

Greetings
The case length becomes important if it is shortened too much.
The inside diameter of many cases becomes less closer to the web. Results would be as the bullet is seated closer to the web the outside diameter of the case can become too fat to enter the chamber.
My first encounter of this was shortening 9mm brass for 9 Mac use only to discover a caliber .363 seated bullet made the outside diameter too fat that pistol's chamber.
In real life if you decided to shorten 38 Special brass to use a longer bullet then idealy you would want to start the load developement from the starting load knowing pressures would be somewhat different.
Mike in Peru