davebell18,

People get too hung up over COL listed in the reloading manuals. Particularly for revolvers COL is not critical as long as the cartridges are no longer than the cylinder of the gun they will be shot in.

All the COL listed in manuals means is "With this bullet, in this cartridge, the resultant COL when we loaded them was x.xxx". It isn't a specification, it is a reported result.

As Rule 3 said, a revolver bullet, .38 in this case, should have a well defined crimping canellure. Seat the bullet so the mouth of the case is slightly below the top of the cannellure and crimp there. Don't worry about measuring COL, it serves no purpose and is a waste of time. None of my personal loading/chronograph data records include COL as the bullet will always be seated to the cannellure!

The only time COL is important is when loading ammunition with un-cannellured bullets. In this case it is necessary information so everything can be duplicated later, or you have a base length from which you make seating depth adjustments.