Is it OK to load 38 Spcl cases to .357 Mag ballistics?

[smithbm]

I know that shooting such powerful loads in anything other than a .357 Mag could be catastrophic. That's not my plan. I know the .357 Mag was originally developed in standard 38 Spcl cartridges and the added case length came along after the fact to prevent people from using them in weaker framed revolvers. Other than accidentaly putting these rounds in a 38 Spcl, what kinds of problems would a person face ballistically speaking? Please assume that these rounds will be used in a Ruger Blackhawk only.


Editted to provide clarity on the hypothetical intent of this thread.

 

[ReloaderFred]

It's not generally a good idea to load .38 Special cases with .357 Magnum data for a couple of reasons. First, you'll notice that when you size a .357 case, there is more resistance during the sizing. This is because the .357 case is thicker in the wall area, along with the base, since the pressures are twice as high in the .357 Magnum as they are in the .38 Special.

The second reason, as you've alluded to, it the possibility of someone putting the .38's with the magnum loads in to a small frame .38 revolver, or even worse, an old .38 revolver.

It's much better to just buy, trade for, or scrounge, .357 Magnum brass and keep the .38 brass for .38 loads. Perhaps there is someone in your area who would be willing to trade you, or you can list them on one of the forums.

Hope this helps.

Fred

 

[Quoheleth]

An idea...

Load the .38s to .38+p level. It's the "best of both worlds" IMHO. You can use your scads of .38spcl brass, it's warmer than the mild loads, yet not quite so hot as the maggie loads (and, therefore, saves you a tad of powder each time).

Hey...we gotta do what we gotta do, right?

Q

 

[Crazy4nitro]

The 38/44 loads are kinda what he could be looking for...
Use with caution...

But as a Practice,I dont let others shoot my reloads unless they use my Gun..

 

[Bula]

+1 on the +p loads. If your looking for more oomph from your 38 loads, try to find some 170 grainers and load them at +p ranges for that bullet weight.

 

[bruss01]

The reason .357 brass is longer is NOT because it needs more room for powder. The reason is to prevent the round from being chambered in a gun that only supports pressures of the .38 special round. Now, I'm sure that you already know this fact, but take a look at what you're proposing, deliberately circumventing an established safety convention. Sure, you intend to only use those rounds in a .357, but some day you could make a mistake, or a friend of yours on a range trip could make a mistake. The ammo might leave your control ( you could be hit by a bus, seriously) and someone ends up using that hothothot ammo in a gun that can't take the strain and KA-BOOM. It could be the louse who swipes your range ammo off the bench when you're not looking. Fine, he gets what he deserves, you say, but do you consider that he may use it to teach his 12 yr old daughter to shoot using it? I'm sure you don't want that on your consciense. The safety convention of the longer case was designed to prevent just this sort of mishap from occuring.

Hey, you get kudos for thinking of this as a neat little recycling trick, but just go ahead and get yourself some .357 brass and reload that to any .357 pressure spec you choose. I think after some reflection, you'll agree that's the better option.

 

[BBQJOE]

I like your thinking brus01.

 

[Odnar]

Take a look around, I was able to get 500 pieces of mixed nickel .357 mag brass for $30 at the last gun show I went to. Way cheaper than trying to replace a gun, or a body part.

 

[TN Shooter]

Although the other posters have made some good points, the real reason that you don't want to do this is because of PRESSURE. The .357 loads you will be putting in the .38 case were designed for the larger volume of a .357 case. By putting the same volume of powder in a smaller case, you will create excess pressure.

 

[pinkymingeo]

Per the Lee manual, the 357 actually has less usable case volume than the 38spl. The 357 case is much thicker, especially at the base. You can expect a 38 case to split well below magnum loads.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

I would say the only .38 Sp brass that would probably be safe is Winchester brass because it is very thick. That being said I wouldn't take the chance because like said above, the ammo may leave your control and cause an injury or worse.

You could always buy some .357 Magnum practice ammo and get brass that way. You can buy 500 rounds of reloaded .357 Magnum SWC ammo from Bestshotammo.com for only $90. That's not much more than buying empty brass and you get to shoot off the 500 rounds before you reload it. $9 for 50 rounds of .357 is less than the current price for new .38 Sp ammo. http://www.bulkammo.com/

 

[ranger335v]

Let me repeat bruss01's observation; The issue is less with the brass than the hangun. Even so, if you seat bullets in .357 cases at .38S depths you will run pressures up MUCH higher than normal! So - Don't do it!

 

[smithbm]

I think everyone accepts the fact that it's not a good idea to shoot .357 Magnum loads in a 38 Spcl handgun. My question has nothing to do with shooting .357 Magnum loads in a 38 Spcl handgun. My question is about shooting .357 Magnum loads in a .357 Magnum handgun (Ruger Blackhawk) using 38 Spcl cases as the delivery vessel.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this. Can anyone provide an article or a link to a writeup with pictures of split cases or damaged .357 Magnum handguns? Maybe some calculations on chamber pressures? Does anyone have any real life personal experiences (no "I knew this guy" stuff)? I don't really plan to do it myself because of the whole potential for a mixup, but I would like to educate myself.

I just took some case measurements with some dial calipers. By my measurements on once fired cases (I'm no professional so take them for amateur measurements) the .357 Magnum cases are identical to the 38 Spcl cases at the mouth. The .357 Magnum cases are .003 inches thicker at the base. That doesn't seem like much of a difference to me. Can anyone take some better measurements for comparison? I personally don't see any proof of impending catastrophic case failure upon comparison of the two cases but like I said... I'm no professional.

 

[Mal H]

How did you measure the case wall thickness at or near the base (the web)? If you'e talking about the case diameter being .003" greater, that means very little concerning the pressures that the various cases can withstand.

 

[KHawk]

Very risky!!!!!!!
"For a few dollars more" you can safely load those loads in the right cases.

 

[baz]

I think the posters understood exactly what you were proposing, and proferred a variety of valid reasons against it.

You can probably assume that if you use even low end 357 loads in 38 spc cases, that you care going to exceed SAAMI specs even for +P.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

I guess nobody likes my idea of buying reloaded .357 Magnum ammo on the cheap and get brass that way.

 

[bruss01]

The original

I know that shooting such powerful loads in anything other than a .357 Mag could be catastrophic. That's not my plan. I have about 2000 pieces of 38 Spcl brass .... Other than accidentaly putting these rounds in a 38 Spcl, what kinds of problems am I facing ballistically speaking? Please assume that I will use these in a Ruger Blackhawk only.

While I can't comment on "ballistically speaking" I can comment on YOUR PLAN. My comments above, and those of many others who care deeply about the future of the shooting sports say, YOUR PLAN may not be sufficient to prevent injury BEYOND YOUR CONTROL from occuring, thus putting another black mark on guns, shooters and reloaders, as well as on your personal consciense. We understand what you personally PLAN to do, but many of us are aware that oftentimes, things happen that were not in OUR PLAN, unforseeable or accidental.

We hope you won't take our comments as indicating that your plans are BAD, because if they happen the way you envision, possibly no harm will occur. But we are indicating that if things don't go according to your plan, that someone may be injured, and we're sure you wouldn't want that. In fact, I think most of us concur that only a person who has no concept of the idea of "risk" and good judgement would take the chance that his PLAN might go horribly awry, and end up causing someone needless injury. Unless of course they were a sociopath with no concern for what harm others might come to. We're pretty sure you don't fall into this last category or you wouldn't be discussing the issue and asking for input. Well, at least I'm personally willing to make that allowance on your behalf.

If you're asking out of idle curiosity from a mechanical point of view, well and good. If you're asking with the actual intent to follow through with this idea, you will find the vast majority of us her urging you not to, for the reasons we have stated. Help keep shooting, reloading and gun ownership alive. Don't circumvent a safeguard intentionally for any reason, certainly not to use up some inexpensive 38 special cases, if you value the shooting sports.

 

[smithbm]

Quote bruss01:

While I can't comment on "ballistically speaking" I can comment on YOUR PLAN. My comments above, and those of many others who care deeply about the future of the shooting sports say, YOUR PLAN may not be sufficient to prevent injury BEYOND YOUR CONTROL from occuring, thus putting another black mark on guns, shooters and reloaders, as well as on your personal consciense. We understand what you personally PLAN to do, but many of us are aware that oftentimes, things happen that were not in OUR PLAN, unforseeable or accidental.

We hope you won't take our comments as indicating that your plans are BAD, because if they happen the way you envision, possibly no harm will occur. But we are indicating that if things don't go according to your plan, that someone may be injured, and we're sure you wouldn't want that. In fact, I think most of us concur that only a person who has no concept of the idea of "risk" and good judgement would take the chance that his PLAN might go horribly awry, and end up causing someone needless injury. Unless of course they were a sociopath with no concern for what harm others might come to. We're pretty sure you don't fall into this last category or you wouldn't be discussing the issue and asking for input. Well, at least I'm personally willing to make that allowance on your behalf.

If you're asking out of idle curiosity from a mechanical point of view, well and good. If you're asking with the actual intent to follow through with this idea, you will find the vast majority of us her urging you not to, for the reasons we have stated. Help keep shooting, reloading and gun ownership alive. Don't circumvent a safeguard intentionally for any reason, certainly not to use up some inexpensive 38 special cases, if you value the shooting sports.

I think I've already answered this in my previous post.

Quote smithbm:

I don't really plan to do it myself because of the whole potential for a mixup, but I would like to educate myself.

... and others.

I have also edited my thread opener to show the hypothetical nature of this thread. I often like to ask stupid questions such as "Why does this happen?" or "How does this work?" (questions that many people don't like to hear). As I already stated, I think everyone agrees that this is generally not a good idea. That point has been made. Thank you for emphasizing it. The last thing that I want is to have innocent people get hurt. If some dumbass gets hurt because they do this without knowing what will happen... that's a different story. Maybe by discussing this very real situation on an open forum we can provide one of those dumbasses (who probably thinks that there's no possible way he can get his ammo mixed up no matter what anyone says) with enough information to not want to find out on his own. As you stated, I am smart enough to ask the stupid questions before I try to do the dangerous things on my own.

Now that we've settled the whole ammo mixup issue and established that I won't be actually doing this:

Quote Mal H:

How did you measure the case wall thickness at or near the base (the web)? If you'e talking about the case diameter being .003" greater, that means very little concerning the pressures that the various cases can withstand.

At the mouth I took both interior and exterior measurements. At the base I just measured the external diameter with the assumption that the interior case wall was straight. That is a very broad assumption so it would be great if anyone can provide more accurate data about the interior and exterior dimensions of these two cases. I suppose I could cut them in half lengthwise and get some more accurate data.

 

[bruss01]

Smithbm -

Ok, sorry to belabor the point... I get the idea now that you're asking in a hypothetical "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" sort of way, as in "If I drove my car as fast as I could off the edge of the grand canyon with the pedal floored, do you think the engine would explode on the way down due to no load on the drive wheels or remain intact until the final impact?".

I think we've all asked imponderable, ridiculous questions like that at times, just for entertainment value or for making some small but (dubiously) important point about something. I think that's why discovery channel's "Mythbuster" series has become so popular.

Just wanted to make sure nobody was seriously considering doing this in real life. The "kids, don't try this at home" slogan seriously applies to this thread!

Personally I think the pressure would be high if the load conformed to the load specs for a .357 case due to lower case volume (maybe somebody will correct me on this). You can probably test out your theory using a program called QuickLoad which will let you work up internal ballistics for a given bullet weight, case, and powder charge. As long as the pressures generated don't exceed those for which the gun is chambered, I don't know that there would be a problem, case failure being the only potential for issues that I see, and I think they're pretty much the same as .357 cases, aren't they? (asking, don't know for sure). If you trimmed .357 brass back to .38 special length, would you be able to load it to .38 special level pressures? An interesting mental exercise, I wouldn't try this myself nor recommend anyone else doing it.

 

[jfh]

and just to make sure people see bruss01's assessment,

let's repeat it--in bold, and bigger:

Just wanted to make sure nobody was seriously considering doing this in real life. The "kids, don't try this at home" slogan seriously applies to this thread!
​

Mental Masterbation can be fun, but in reloading we'd better know when we're doing it.

Jim H.

 

[happy old sailor]

Why Bother

 

[pinkymingeo]

My one, and I hope only double charge was 6.4 Bullseye in a 38spl case under a 158 LSWC with standard primer. Alliant lists the max for .357 as 6.5 with a magnum primer. Happily I fired it in a .357 revolver. The case split from neck to rim, and I had to beat it out with a wooden dowel. 38spl cases are not strong enough for magnum pressures.

 

[Jim Watson]

As somebody said above, look up .38/44, there was a recent Handloader Magazine article with load data approaching modern .357 ballistics.

Good thing Elmer Keith and Skeeter Skelton, et al, didn't have the Internet, they would never have gotten anything done.

 

[smithbm]

Quote from pinkymingeo:
My one, and I hope only double charge was 6.4 Bullseye in a 38spl case under a 158 LSWC with standard primer. Alliant lists the max for .357 as 6.5 with a magnum primer. Happily I fired it in a .357 revolver. The case split from neck to rim, and I had to beat it out with a wooden dowel. 38spl cases are not strong enough for magnum pressures.

This is the kind of first hand knowledge that I was looking for. Was there any damage to the revolver? Could you do it again and this time take some pictures or video for us? I kid. I'm glad you didn't lose any fingers... you didn't right?

Quote from Jim Watson:
As somebody said above, look up .38/44, there was a recent Handloader Magazine article with load data approaching modern .357 ballistics.

Good thing Elmer Keith and Skeeter Skelton, et al, didn't have the Internet, they would never have gotten anything done.

I will have to check this out. This is sort of how the idea got thrown into my head.