A month back or so I described a problem I had with TulAmmo .357 Magnum ammo in my S&W 386NG.

To recap: I was in a place with limited ammo selection and had cleverly left my own at home. Hence, the TulAmmo purchase. I would never use steel-cased ammo in my semi-autos but couldn't think of a reason to be concerned about a revolver.

I loaded seven rounds of their 158-gr ammo. My chrono puts it at about 38+P velocities. Not magnum.

The first round fired just fine, felt OK and left a hole about where I expected. Same for the second round. There was no hint of trouble.

Then I tried pulling the trigger again and the gun was locked up tight. I could not pull the trigger, could not cock the hammer, and could not rotate the cylinder by hand. It took two of us, one forcing the cylinder to turn while the other forced the trigger and hammer, for the hangup to let go and we could open the cylinder. We could see no signs of damage. We noted the fired shells were quite hard to eject, requiring a tap with a brass rod. They will go only about 2/3rds of their length back into the chambers.

Fearing damage, I sent it to SW August 7 asking them to inspect and repair as necessary. I did NOT ask for a shipping label but they sent me one anyway. I waited for an invoice. August 24 it came back, NO CHARGE. S&W replaced the hand and cylinder stop NO CHARGE! The paperwork says it was also function checked.

What they didn't say is that they cleaned it and must have done a tad more to the lockwork because it is noticeably tighter than when I sent it to them. Or maybe that's just the new hand and cylinder stop. Total round count when I sent it would be about 750, a mix of .357 Magnum and .38+P, many of them my handloads. My 357 Magnums are true magnums, topping 1,300 fps from a 4" Python.

S&W did not comment about the TulAmmo, but I will. I have read many comments on this forum from people who say they use it with no problems. I hope that continues for them. I know shooters who said they had failure to extract problems in autos, so I would never use it in an auto.

I have now banned it from my revolvers. A couple forum members stated that the steel does not contract as readily as brass, and that can cause hangups. That may indeed be what happened to me. The chambers in my titanium cylinder (installed by S&W at my request when new) do seem to be tighter than the stainless steel original one.

So, scary lesson learned. TulAmmo fans, don't flame me, but it's now banned from all my guns.