I'm not a huge fan of sloooooow moving bullets in a 38, too many problems. IE, not enough penetration & bounce back/ricochets.
You're going to beat that light j-framed pistol to death with a steady diet of that heavy powder/bullet combo.
You’d do better with a lighter bullet in that short bbl’d light weight pistol. Bullets in the 125g to 150g range will give you a good speed to weight ratio in that short bbl. It might sound dumb but a WC bullet in a short bbl’d 38 is a real thumper with their huge meplat.
Something to think about
: A 4” test bbl
358429 170g 4.6g WW231 855fps 16,900
358495 148g 4.9g WW231 1001fps 16,800
I know every pistol is different but I’ve always used a standard of I’d lose or gain 50fps for every inch of bbl difference between my bbl length & the test bbl length.
I’ve shot a lot of the 358429 bullets in the past in anything from 2” snub noses to a 10” contender bbl. That heavy bullet worked best in the 38spl cases with the 8 3/8” revolver bbl’s & the 10” contender bbl’s where they could get speeds up to be effective. When you start getting in the 700fps to 800fps range with this heavy bullet your doing both it & yourself an injustice.
From left to right, a 358495 WC bullet, a 38spl, a 357 for a revolver & a 357 for a contender. All of these are what I call heavy target loads. You put them on target, their heavy hitters.