Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMan
Full load...equals the original .38-44 load...
Home cast Lyman/Thompson 357156 with 6.0 grains of Unique. Have both the original Lyman mold, a MP Mold that can be used solid, HP and PentaPoint as well as a MP aluminum mold that is a non-gascheck.
Runs in the mid-900s from a 649 2" to 1140 from a 4" Heavy Duty. It is just a little slower than the Outdoorsman load in solid and HP from Buffalo Bore.
For just target shooting and plinking, 4.0 of 700-X with most any 150-160 SWC works great and is cheap...
Bob
ps...as far as the SAAMI limits go...can someone please tell me why a J-frame can be chambered in 9mm at over 30k psi but everyone wets their underwear when someone goes to 26k in a .38 Special in the same gun...what am I missing?
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I still prefer to use recent published data for the .38 Special and everything else as well and make no apology for doing so.
However, your point regarding 9mm vs. .38 Special pressures in a J-frame is worth considering. I don't have the answer, but would speculate on several things. The 9mm has always been loaded to 30K or more. It's always been a smokeless cartridge and I doubt any weak guns have been chambered for the 9mm. Pretty consistent high pressure loadings for more than a hundred years.
The .38 Special started off as a low-pressure black powder cartridge. Smokeless load pressures were greater but probably not by a great deal. Many of the older revolvers weren't particularly strong ones and then one has to consider the cheap Spanish revolvers and other junkers that have been made for the .38 Special.
To complicate matters, the high-pressure factory .38 Special loadings beginning in the 1930s would tend to negate any argument about "weak" revolvers. Many commercial loads and handloads have, in recent decades, been toned down somewhat over the hotter loads of years past.
Better and more accurate ways of measuring pressure have become available, but .38 Special pressures have been all over the place in more than a hundred years. Whether or not that accounts in any way for present day SAAMI specs, I don't know.
It's also of some importance to note that prior to "+P", many shooters reasoned that if a barrel was marked .38 Special and ammo was marked .38 Special, the two were made for each other regardless of other considerations. That may not have been the best way to look at it, but you didn't hear about anyone blowing up guns because they fired the 110 Norma jacketed hollowpoint (the hottest of the hot .38s) in a Chief Special.