"This may be a dumb question but if your revolver is a .357 magnum, why mess around with .38 Special cases? The full length cases make life so much easier."

How does it make life so much easier? In the neighborhood of 95% of the rounds which I fire in my .357s are .38 Special. Paper targets don't care. And I never seem to have the dreaded crud buildup in front of the .38 Special case mouth. Maybe that's because I always use a wire brush when I clean my chambers.