100 grain .38 Special HBWC bullet load

[cdrt]

I won a bunch of 100 grain Star swaged .38 Special HBWC bullets at the Texas State Pistol match this weekend. I checked my loading manuals and am thinking 2.7 grains of Bullseye should work with these in my Clark 1911 conversion. Anybody ever loaded this particular bullet?

I don't think I want to shoot them in an outdoor 2700, but I bet they might work well at an indoor match.

 

[rcmodel]

I have my doubts 2.7 Bullseye & a 100 grain bullet would even begin to cycle a 1911 .38 Special.

2.7 with a 148 grain bullet used to be the gold standard load in Colt & S&W 52's.

But I doubt that much lighter bullet would not have enough recoil to open the action.

rcmodel

 

[zxcvbob]

Off the top of my head, I'd say you'll need closer to 3.5 grains. Start at 3.0 and go up slowly.

 

[cdrt]

I load 2.7 BE with the 148 grain bullet now for the Clark and it functions well even with the heavy slide configuration.

I figured the 2.7 BE might be light after I posted the query and had decided to start with 3.0 BE. I don't want to drive them too fast since they are swaged and the lead will be pretty soft.

If they don't function with the 3.0 BE load, I will probably load them light and shoot them out of my K38 to practice for the Distinguished Revolver match.

One of my old manuals shows a starting load of 2.0 BE with a similar bullet which would be really pleasant in the K38.

Besides the 1,000 Star wadcutters, I won a 1,000 Star .45 ACP FMJ bullets but I already know what load to use with those.

 

[Jim Watson]

Were these old stock from someplace?
I thought Star bullets had closed down.

 

[cdrt]

One of the sponsors of the match donated them. They were in their garage gathering dust. When I opened the boxes, the newspapers they used for packaging were dated 2001 and 2003.

 

[bunnielab]

Are there any "little" manufactures of swaged bullets? I can only find Hornady and Speer ones for sale. Sometimes ZERO brand but never the ones I want instock.

 

[Canuck-IL]

The BE shooters that swore by Star and don't want to switch to cast are using a lot of Precision Delta...
http://www.precisiondelta.com/products_new.htm
Magnus also offers swaged...
http://www.magnusbullets.com/
other than Zero, I think that's it for swaged.
/Bryan

 

[bunnielab]

Thanks for the info. One more question. This is from PD's site.

Product Caliber Description Qty Price Buy
PDB-B-148-HBWC-ML 38 Spl 148gr HBWC 1000 $68.00

PDB-B-158-SWC-ML 38 Spl 158gr SWC 1000 $76.00

PDB-B-38-148-HBWC 38 Spl 148gr HBWC 1000 $64.00

PDB-B-38-158-SWC 38 Spl 158gr SWC 1000 $72.00

Any idea what the "ML" stands for?

 

[LeonCarr]

ML stands for Match Lube, which is a cleaner lube with less barrel fouling and less build up in reloading dies.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

 

[cdrt]

Getting back to what this post started about: I tried 3.5 grains of BE today and the slide cycled (barely) with this load. Still no leading, so I may go up to 3.7 and see if that does the trick. It is an accurate bullet and very pleasant to shoot. Should be a great indoor load for Bullseye matches since the pistol has very little recoil.