Quoheleth
Member
I went to the range Monday with a batch of .38 Specials I had loaded over the weekend. My recipie: mixed brass, Winchester SPP, and 3.7gr Win231 under a Missouri Bullet .38 Match 158gr LSWC. They shot OUTSTANDING, accuracy wise, and the gun felt good shooting the loads. But, my goodness was there smoke! When I tried to shoot some clay pidegons on the 50 yard berm, the smoke cloud was such that I actually could not see the puff of dirt where my bullets were impacting. This is not an exaggeration. After 2 cylinders, I gave up and went back to my orange-on-white targets at 10 yards.
I know the smoke is mostly lube burning and cast lead will almost always have some smoke, but even some of the other shooters on the line were making cracks about my "black-powder loads." My load data came from the Lyman pistol & revolver manual and it's .1gr above their start data. If I bumped up a couple tenths (IIRC, max is just over 4gr) would that help?
I have been shooting Universal with this bullet and have not had this much smoke before so I don't suspect lube as much as powder. I thought Win231 was the cat's meow for .38 Special - that's why I bought it. If this is what I'll get, I'm less than pleased.
Thoughts?
Q
I know the smoke is mostly lube burning and cast lead will almost always have some smoke, but even some of the other shooters on the line were making cracks about my "black-powder loads." My load data came from the Lyman pistol & revolver manual and it's .1gr above their start data. If I bumped up a couple tenths (IIRC, max is just over 4gr) would that help?
I have been shooting Universal with this bullet and have not had this much smoke before so I don't suspect lube as much as powder. I thought Win231 was the cat's meow for .38 Special - that's why I bought it. If this is what I'll get, I'm less than pleased.
Thoughts?
Q