The Firing Line Forums

Go Back   The Firing Line Forums > The Skunkworks > Handloading, Reloading, and Bullet Casting

Closed Thread
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old May 28, 2010, 06:18 AM   #26
salvadore
Junior member
 
Join Date: January 1, 2007
Location: Idaho
Posts: 2,282
"I don't have a .357 pistol any more, so this is just idle curiosity, but let's say you have a bunch of .38 brass and not much .357 brass. There's a lot of room inside a .38 cartridge, so could you make up a load with .357 (or nearly so) levels of performance using a .38 case?"

Responding to the original question. Yes.
salvadore is offline  
Old May 28, 2010, 07:32 AM   #27
dahermit
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 28, 2006
Location: South Central Michigan...near
Posts: 6,501
.38 Special brass has a very short life with standard loads. They seem to develop long cracks with a few re loadings even with light loads. Pushed to higher pressures, case life will certainly be even shorter. That is why I use .357 mag. cases in my .357 even for very light loads (along with the fact that my 686 does not shoot .38 special loads very accurately.
dahermit is offline  
Old May 31, 2010, 12:30 PM   #28
Unclenick
Staff
 
Join Date: March 4, 2005
Location: Ohio
Posts: 21,022
Quote:
Originally Posted by FEG
Newton was a pioneer in physics, and bridges built according to Newtonian principles are still standing today. That said, he was still wrong. If people had been content to blindly follow Newton, the world would be a very different place.
Actually, Newton's not wrong for most practical purposes. He just didn't get it right far enough to cover relativistic velocities or to cover the subatomic world that quantum mechanics deals with. But Einstein's relativity equations get the same results as Newton's do when an object is not moving, like your bridge. Same with averaging cumulative quantum mechanical events up into the macro world. And, even when it is moving, within practical velocities and measurable limits, the differences relativity equations produce usually don't matter.

For example, in Newton's physics, a bullet that weighs 150 grains standing still, has that same weight traveling at 2800 fps. But Einstein tells us traveling that velocity increases its mass to 150.00000000061 grains relative to a stationary observer. We can't normally detect the resulting momentum difference in real world situations. Newton certainly had no instrumentation that would indicate the difference, or I'm sure he would have tried to account for it. Bullet-to-bullet manufacturing weight tolerances are much bigger than that. So, bottom line, the difference has no practical use to those of us who are not physicists.
__________________
Gunsite Orange Hat Family Member
CMP Certified GSM Master Instructor
NRA Certified Rifle Instructor
NRA Benefactor Member and Golden Eagle
Unclenick is offline  
Old May 31, 2010, 04:28 PM   #29
FEG
Senior Member
 
Join Date: July 14, 2008
Location: Indiana
Posts: 324
Quote:
So, bottom line, the difference has no practical use to those of us who are not physicists.
The former residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would beg to differ, if they could. Of course they can't...because of the practical applications of nuclear physics.
__________________
WARNING: CZs MAY BE HABIT-FORMING.
Consult your doctor if nursing or pregnant.
FEG is offline  
Old May 31, 2010, 09:28 PM   #30
RedneckFur
Senior Member
 
Join Date: January 14, 2007
Location: Central NC
Posts: 1,424
Quote:
The former residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would beg to differ, if they could. Of course they can't...because of the practical applications of nuclear physics.
Whats that got to do with loading .38 special or .357 magnum?


Most of the time you will be safe loading 357 level loads in 38special cases if you're going to shoot them in a 357 mag. handgun.

However, if you ever get the loads mixed up, or a freind grabs a few to try in his 38 special, It could end with somone badly injured or killed.

Short answer... Yes, its possible. No, its not a good idea.
__________________
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
-George Orwell
RedneckFur is offline  
Old May 31, 2010, 09:55 PM   #31
SL1
Senior Member
 
Join Date: November 8, 2007
Posts: 2,001
Maybe this thread needs to be closed.

It seems that most readers are completely missing the OP's actual question, and posting answers to a common debate THAT THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT. Since that other issue has been the subject of several other recent posts, this one has gotten pretty useless.

SL1
SL1 is offline  
Old June 1, 2010, 09:58 PM   #32
gwalchmai
Senior Member
 
Join Date: December 7, 2001
Location: outside the perimeter
Posts: 333
Any of you gentlemen ever hear of the .38/44 HV?
gwalchmai is offline  
Old June 1, 2010, 10:08 PM   #33
Walkalong
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 30, 2007
Location: Al.
Posts: 196
Quote:
Obviously, you'd have to be careful not to use the rounds in a .38 by mistake, but would it work otherwise? Or is the .38 case itself a limitation?
Yes, the problem of them getting in the wrong gun exists, which is why I always recommend using .357 brass to load hotter than .38 levels.

That said, the case won't limit you, although it wear out a bit sooner than .357 brass.
Walkalong is offline  
Old June 1, 2010, 10:29 PM   #34
zxcvbob
Senior Member
 
Join Date: December 20, 2007
Location: S.E. Minnesota
Posts: 4,720
Quote:
Any of you gentlemen ever hear of the .38/44 HV?
Yes, I load them for my Marlin carbine so I can fit an extra round in the magazine. I use only Winchester brass and I mark the case head with a red Magic Marker and put them in a box that says "Danger: For Rifle Use Only!" (The red heads are in case they get separated from the box.) But I've ordered a bunch of hard DEWC cast bullets and will start using them in .357 brass. I can still load that extra round in the magazine without worrying about them ending up in some stupid person's RG or old top-break revolver when I'm not around. Or having a case head separation a few inches from my face if the .38 brass isn't as strong as I think it is.
__________________
"Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant. It just makes me want to set myself on fire!" —Lucille Bluth
zxcvbob is offline  
Old June 2, 2010, 12:13 AM   #35
Johnny Guest
Moderator in Memoriam
 
Join Date: August 28, 1999
Location: North Texas
Posts: 4,123
PLEASE - - Try out the "SEARCH" feature

".357 loads in .38 cases" or "magnum loads in .38 cases" or variations of that theme will get you links to several lengthy discussions. We seem to get one of these threads every few months. And, they always end up the same way: The guys who want to do it end up saying, "Well, I'm a-gonna do it ANYWAYS and you cain't stop me." And, even the more conservative particiants cannot gainsay that Skeeter and Elmer and who-knows-who-else were doin' it back in nineteen-aught-forty-nine.

Yeah, there was a time when magnum revolvers were hard to find and were horribly expensive when they could be located. Further, .357 brass USED TO BE scarce and hard to locate. Friends, that was then, this is now. Neither the revolvers nor the brass are hard to find now, and, making allowances for inflation across the decades, the cost-per-unit-per-hours-worked-to-earn -the-price is actually lower today than it was then.

Another tidbit: there are a LOT of aluminum alloy framed revolvers in circulation now, where there were few or none prior to 1950. A steel-framed S&W or Colt will take a certain amount of overloading and simply shake loose rapidly, without blowing up. You get to the blowup point a lot earlier with an Airweight Smith or a Colt's Cobra or Agent. I quit putting BIG loads in .38 Special cases when I decided I didn't want to be responsible for dropping a megaload cartridge at the range and causing injury to the person finding it.

Anyway, this topic has been pretty well thrashed out by now. The thread is CLOSED.
Johnny Guest is offline  
Closed Thread

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 12:54 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
This site and contents, including all posts, Copyright © 1998-2021 S.W.A.T. Magazine
Copyright Complaints: Please direct DMCA Takedown Notices to the registered agent: thefiringline.com
Page generated in 0.04884 seconds with 10 queries