I am trying to understand why this would be dangerous. I am shooting Ruger GP100 - SS, 4" barrel, .357 Magnum revolver. My magnum load is 7 grains of Unique behind 158 grains Remington bullet.
Now if I take this charge and put it in .38 brass - same bullet, same charge, same case only 2 millimeters shorter - why it would not work or become dangerous from the same revolver built for magnum charges?
What is there I am missing? I believe I can take 357 Magnum case and push in the bullet to be the same COL as .38 special without compressing the charge. Why would the length of the case make such a difference? Logical explanation is really needed here - and yes, I am always getting in trouble for my questions

t least theoretically the slightly less combustion chamber of the shorter case will cause an increase in pressure.

The same thing will happen if you seat the bullet deeper in the magnum case...you will experience an increase in pressure but may never notice it.

I have a hunch it won't be consequential.....but don't know the pressure listed by Aliant for the load you listed.

Plus, can you insure the rounds NEVER make it into a .38 special? That's the reason the two cases are different lengths - to prevent chambering a .357mag in a .38. I do not recommend you circumvent that safety feature.

Internal case volume affects pressure a lot! It has something to do with the pressure curve and how much powder ignites in the first few milliseconds, less volume = more pressure every time. Some cast bullet designs do have two crimping grooves, I load a 170 gr. FP SWC out in the lower groove in .38 special cases to use in my Rossi 92 carbine, and so internal volume is only a little sell than .357 mag, but even then I still load moderate "38special +P" powder charges in those .38 cases.

As mentioned in some circumstances with some loads what you actually notice will probably be nothing. However with the right combination of powder, primer, seating depth, and bullet weight you might find your barrel bulged or worse.

I agree that using the criteria you presented should not be much of an issue, however you cannot rule out the differences in components, and their construction. Similar to loading +P loads in standard cases. You might load some forever with no issue, but it only takes one to realize it isn't really worth it.

There is also the ever so slight chance of one of those loads being shot in something NOT designed as tough as the GP and it might not be a pleasant experience either.

I used to shoot quite a few 38 loads from my GP's but I gave it up after finding a carbon rings built up in the cylinder of one. It took more time and effort than it was worth to get it all back like it should have been. I have since regulated the shorter cases to the proper revolver. I do however have some .357 loads which are about the same as the 38spc's which shoot very well.

do not use this concept, as it WILL be radically higher pressure than the 357 load in 357 brass...

quote:

Originally posted by Czech_Made:
I am trying to understand why this would be dangerous. .....
What is there I am missing? .....

Czech,

Don't do it!

A 357 case is manufactured to take 2.5 times more pressure than a 38 special case. I would not trust that a 38 case is manufactured with a safety factor that high!!!

Since .357's are so rare and difficult to find it makes perfect sense to endanger yourself, anyone around you and anyone who could come in contact with the ammo by overloading .38 cases to .357 loads.

By the same token, I'm always impressed at the logic when my clients tell me that by simply going over the recommended loads they can get their .308 almost up to .30-06 velocities or make their .30-06 almost as powerful as a .300.

Its always comforting to have folks able to capture and utilize that sort of logic following me with a loaded gun during a hunt.

Well here is an example of why you might not want to do it...

quote:

Originally posted by RaySendero:

quote:

Originally posted by Czech_Made:
I am trying to understand why this would be dangerous. .....
What is there I am missing? .....

Czech,

Don't do it!

A 357 case is manufactured to take 2.5 times more pressure than a 38 special case. I would not trust that a 38 case is manufactured with a safety factor that high!!!

Do you mean there can be metalurgical difference?

I can't believe you are still trying to "make it work"????

If you want to shoot .357 Magnum, go buy one.

These kind of "theoreticals" can get folks seriously injured.............

Bob

quote:

If you want to shoot .357 Magnum, go buy one.

Bob, he HAS a magnm. That's the point!
Czech, you are correct that in your example there may not be much difference. That's because you are shooting Unique, and you are shooting a 38 spl. in a 357 magnum gun. If you have a 357 mag. then I would recommend shootng 357 cases in it. That way if you also have a 38 spl. there is no danger of shooting very "hot" 38 spls in a 38 spl gun.
Peter.
Peter.

quote:

I believe I can take 357 Magnum case and push in the bullet to be the same COL as .38 special without compressing the (7 gr Unique) charge.

I THINK that would be fine, so far as it goes. There is no real difference in the strength of the cases, the difference is in the revolver's cylinders.

Yeah, seating the bullets deeper reduces the internal volume and will surely increase pressures. But considering the burn rate of Unique AND your modest .357 charge of 7 gr. I doubt it would be dangerous in a Ruger.

So, the REAL potential hazard of your question becomes might your "hot .38s" get loaded in a real .38. That charge is NOT moderate in a .38! I have both a .38 and .357 and I would NOT load your charge in a .38 case, not at all.

There is much wisdom/truth in Mr. Dettorre's photo and his list of web experts.

I decided to do it the right way - build up the charge in .38 in small Unique increments and stop when there are signs of high pressure?

Why? Well, why do you reload?

Mike,
Two questions, how was the recoil on that shot and did you hit the Point of Aim?

Seriously, that looks like it would have sucked, I hope whoever shot it has all their fingers.

There are dimensional differences in the .357 Magnum shell to withstand the pressure. If you cut down a .357 to .38 length the case wall is too thick to load a bullet without internal trimming. The case head is also thicker

From Speer Number 12, 158 grain cast lead, 4.3 to 4.7 grains of Unique. Speer does not list a 158 grain jacketed bullet for .38 special or .38 special +P.

I have done it quite a bit, and it is relatively safe SO LONG AS YOU MAKE SURE THE OVERALL LENGTH OF THE LOADED .38 ROUND IS THE SAME AS THE OVERALL LENGTH OF THE .357 MAGNUM CARTRIDGE WHEN USING THE SAME BULLET!!

When I was young, some loading books and periodicals suggested doing exactly that for people who had .357 revolvers but didn't have a supply of .357 brass.

With straight cases, by seating the bullet out to the overall .357 cartridge length, you effectively increase the case capacity of the .38 Special case. Naturally, that is NOT true with bottle-necked cases.

Edited to add:When I was a Sheriff's Deputy in California in the 1950s, both our Sheriff's office and the two local PDs restricted their officers to .38 Special ammo in their revolvers, but NOT to factory ammo. A fair number of local officers carried their revolvers loaded with .38 Special brass with .357 powder charges and the bullets seated out to .357 length.

They figured the extra power might come in handy in a gun-fight, especially if the perps were in a vehicle, and that whoever inspected their fired brass afterward was gonna see nothing but an empty case (or cases) marked ".38 Special". Even cops sometimes need an edge if they can find one....

Sam,

I have no idea about the photo. I simply googled images of blown up revolvers.

Alberta Canuck

Your post reminds me of a episode of the TV show Police Story...

Early in the show one guy gives his partner a coule of "Hot Loads"...

Later they go into a bank to stop a robbery, and get into a shoot out...

When IAD gets there the witneses state that the "Cops" guns sounded like CANNONS ...

Come to find out the Police admit they were using loads with "RIFLE" powder...

Actually it was a common practice around here back in the day when some police carried 357's.

I always carried something that started with "4", but a bunch of my buddies carried 357's. We could get all the once fired 38 Special brass we wanted for free.

So what we basically did was to duplicate the old 38/44 Heavy Duty loads.

Not as hot a factory 357's but more powerful that even the +P 38 Special loads of the day.

We most often used Hercules 2400, but we used Unique and SR 4756 as well.

I would start with 5.5gr of Unique and work up .2 tenths of a grain at a time, looking for pressure signs and easy extraction.

I would use a good crimp on the bullet.

Glad to hear from you Nitro Express 450...I've noticed before that you and I seem to share a lot of memories of the same era.

Yes, a good crimp is necessary to keep the bullets from "walking" even farther forward during firing and tying up the cylinder at the worst possible time. In those days taper crimp dies weren't too commonly in use, so it was no big trick to get a good crimp on a bullet, even if it didn't have a groove where you needed to crimp. With the right bullet sometimes one would get lucky and be able to crimp into a lube-groove instead of what would normally be the crimp-groove.

It was no problem for us to use reloads because all three of our departments used Star progressive loaders to load pretty much ALL three departments' duty AND practice ammo. Our local taxpayers expected us to be cost-effective in those days. We often traded officers running the loaders at night when they were suppossedly finished with their shifts.

But then, some of us prefered to load our own anyway, as we knew how much care WE individually took to make ammo for times when our lives were on the line. For several years all my stuff was loaded with my Lyman 310 tong-tool until I got a good healthy raise and could afford a Herter's press. (My deputy's salary as late as 1960 was still only S235 a month, gross. I normally worked 14-16-hour shifts with no overtime or comp-time for that princely sum...and still had to show up in court almost every week-day as a witness too. And I still LOVED the work.)

Speaking of the old .38-44 loads, of course the .357 Magnum was pretty much nothing more or less than a direct descendent there-of. After the .38-44 and its loads came out from S&W, they started having incidents where the .38-44 ammo was fired in cheaper and/or weaker grades/brands of .38 Special revolvers, and was somewhat discomboobulating them.

To cure that possibility, Mr. Wesson's boys lengthened the case and called it the .357 Magnum. Elmer Keith liked to take credit for that, but as you may recall there were other players just as significantly involved, some of whom got little or no credit at all.

Of course that lengthening of the case only worked some of the time to avoid disasters, as all three of the .38 Special, .38/44, and .357 will fit (with some bullets if not all) in such older guns as some of the .38 Long Colts. There they can be direct accidents waiting to happen.

(If the cylinders had a shoulder in the right place , the longer, more powerful, factory ammo wouldn't chamber. BUT, many had the cylinder chambers bored straight through with no internal shoulders. In those, Any of the more powerful cartridges which didn't shove their bullets so far out the front of the cylinder as to tie it up, could be chamberd and fired. And, maybe, KA-BOOM!)

But I have used a lot of .38 Special brass in those older Long Colts too with special weaker loads, and carefully colour coded brass so I didn't mistake them for more potent stuff and use them in my service guns sometime by mistake.

I never used much of the hot loaded, longer OAL .38 Special stuff when on duty because my patrol partner and I also carried a 12 gauge, a Thompson with a C-drum full of .45 ACPs and a bunch of spare stick mags, and a 37 m/m gas gun in our car. (Did you know a .37 mm gas round can sometimes penetrate clear through a wood frame house?)

We patrolled a part of the county which was about 55-70 crooked, unpaved, gravel miles from the nearest back-up, so sometimes we also threw a deer rifle or two in the trunk too.

(Wouldn't have mattered if it was 20 miles...in the Coast range where our county was/is, in those days radio technology was such that we often had no contact whatsoever with anyone else except each other and the perps.) We could get "skipping" signals someetimes from a department with the same officer badge numbers as ours, but which was located in Arkansas!! They could sometimes hear us too, but not often. Boy, if you don't think that was confusing...

I know YOU know all that cartridge stuff; was just tossing it in for some of the younger guys who may not have been around then.

Cheers

AC

quote:

Originally posted by RaySendero:
A 357 case is manufactured to take 2.5 times more pressure than a 38 special case. I would not trust that a 38 case is manufactured with a safety factor that high!!!

Perhaps, but neither can contain anywhere close to the actual chamber pressure unless supported by the cylinder walls. Case strength is overrated. The brass case is really just a container to keep the powder from spilling, and a gasket to seal the chamber. Heck, in the early blackpowder breechloading days the powder charge and ball were packaged in paper. Case strength obviously wasn't much of a concern then!

P.S. Thanks for the above Alberta, I never get tired of hearing stories from the old timers.

Well... almost never!

AC

I remember Herters well.
I used one of their sleeping bags when I was a Boyscout, and I still have a couple of their fiberglass fishing pole blanks that I wrapped myself.

I still load on a Star Loader.

Oh, and I have shot several 37mm Gas rounds through the side of wooden houses.
On brick houses I would shoot them through the windows, but it was hard to keep them from enetrating the sheet rock walls in side the house. It was always best if you could shoot them downward so they would hit the floor.

Did you ever use any Flite Rights, if so how many fires did you start.

If I remember correctly what caused the demise of Herters, they got in serious trouble selling feathers [for tying flys] from certain birds that were on the non importation list.

.450 NE No. 2 -

I still load an a Star too! Have two of the San Diego ones downstairs in my shop, plus three of their lube-sizers.

I like them as well or better than my Dillons, of which I have four at the moment...a Model 300, a Model 450, and two Model 550s. No offense to my old neighbor Mike Dillon...the Stars should be as good, in the dollars of the day the Stars were way more expensive...

You are dead right on Herter's demise. They got made into felons by that one, if I recall correctly. Had to pay a humongous fine, and were already having a tough time financially because of the passage of GCA '68.

For the first 14 years or so, GCA '68 required folks to sign in person for every ammo purchase and really screwed the mail order houses. Herter's was trying to set up a network of FFL-holding distributors in each state so they could still ship to shooters, but the fine on the endangered feathers and furs thing was the final nail in the coffin.

God bless the federal government. They're here to help, ya know. Help themselves build bigger bureaucratic empires, that is. Too bad no one makes a bleach we could clean the Belt-Line gene pool with.

Hang tough y'all.