Short Barrel Gold dot .38 in 4" .357 revolver ?

[joe_security]

Is there any good reason not to use .38 +P gold dot SB in the 4" .357 K- frame revolvers ? I was thinking the low flash powder would make it a good HD load. I was using 158gr. Fed LHP for years.

 

[Steve C]

Is there any good reason not to use .38 +P gold dot SB in the 4" .357 K- frame revolvers ?

No reason not to use it if you want to download the .357 mag to a .38 spl. The short barrel Speer is a good load for a .38 spl and you should pick up another 50 to 100 fps in muzzle velocity.

 

[Ed Harris]

I've done my own water-jug expansion tests of the 135-grain Gold Dot "short barrel" ammunition from both 2 inch and 4 inch barrel revolvers and it performs very well from either length. You will be well served by this load.

 

[Marvin KNox]

The .38+p for short barrels performs well from snubbies. Some say the .357 (which uses the same exact bullet) is "over driven" somewhat - but still holds together fairly well because it is bonded.

A longer barrel in .38+p will give a bit higher velocity than a snub. But it will still be slower than the ..357 loading. It should perform well and hold together well even with 100 fps more speed than when used through a snub barrel.

Even though the people at Speer assured me that the bullet would hold together and perform well even when "over driven" (their words) - I still changed to DPX for my .357 load.

Even though I had concerns in .357's - I would probably not be concerned at all with the slight bit of speed difference created by a couple of inches more barrel on my .38 spl. revolver.

 

[Walkalong]

No reason not to.

 

[jfh]

I chrono'd the factory load in a 4" barrel 686: avg, 1014 fps. It should perform fine at that velocity.

The 2" velocities I've gotten run abou 880-910 fps.

Jim H.

 

[rcmodel]

Speer uses the Gold-Dot bullet in the short barrel loads.

The GD bullet has an electroplated jacket so it is not going to come off or apart at higher velocity.

rc

 

[jfh]

rcmodel: the original specs for this bullet apparently set an upper limit of about 1050-1100 fps before fragmentation would occur. They were fairly adamant about that early on--but who knows, maybe it was a marketing angle to reassure buyers they weren't getting hard-recoil ammo.

I suspect that Speer has now tweaked their alloy / BHN / electroplating so that they are not so worried anymore.

Jim H.

 

[rcmodel]

Yes, but I doubt they were ever worried about exceeding the bullets design limits in .38 Spl +P loads.

The warnings I recall were about not using them in .357 max loads.

rc