There may still be some here who suffer under the delusion I'm a nice guy.... A few years ago I bought the first 329 I saw. I'd planned to do just that. I've had a 337 and a 360 for a while now. You can shoot them, but you always wonder who is getting the worse end of the deal, the shooter or shootee. So I took my then new 329 along on an outing.
Everyone knows the he-man who can handle all recoil without a flinch, or at least brags he can. I have nothing to hide. I don't like pain at all. So when the subject of the new light weight Scandium-Titanium guns came up, I said I had one along and wanted to shoot it. So as I walked up to our informal shooting line, I was loading the cylinder. 3 and 3. Back to the part about me being evil. I had 3 nice light specials, barely more than 44 Russians.
Long ago I'd found a sale on some Speer 300 grain "bear loads". I guess they were for somebody who wanted to shoot them out of a Ruger or long barrel 629. But for fun I just loaded them in the next 3 positions.
I walked up to the line, turned on my new fangled laser, took aim, and let rip. Actually the Specials aren't that hard to control, very similar to firing a 38 special in a 360 or 340. The gun goes bang and the bullet pretty much goes where the first one was aimed. Then if you can control the flinch, the second one goes about the same place, and so does the third. But then my Oscar performance of saying "ouchie, ouchie, it hurts.". Drew him right into the game.
3 down, 3 to go. The guy gets a wry smile of superiority on his face and takes my gun in hand. Yes, a 357 hurts like all hell in a 340 or 360. You've yet to experience pain until you touch off a full house 300 gr load in a 329. But the poor fool took his punishment. I'm thinking the first one stunned him and his pig headedness got the best of him, so he went for #2. I thought I saw tears in his eye. Then he handed it back to me!
I put the gun away, unloading it as I walked. All the evidence was gone.
Later in the day I noticed he was drinking a cold beer. Funny way he was doing it. He was holding it in his right hand and taking it in his left to drink, then putting the ice cold beer back in his right that he had rested on the arm of the folding chair. Funny thing. And he'd stopped shooting for the day, too.
In the progression of things, I think the bullet weight really starts to play a role.
If you want to shoot your J frame with 357s, I'd suggest you test some of the intermediate loads with lighter bullets. 110 isn't all that bad, and the 125s and 13?s aren't too intolerable. Common sense says to stay away from the heavy bullet/full house cartridges.
Oh, back to the friend. He made it through the day OK. There were some amused smiles between others. I actually got it back out and we fired a full box of 50 Specials, very mild, between about 5 of us. Everyone commented about the "brisk" recoil (its not all that unmanageable.) The injured shooter was using adult beverages to dull the pain. A few days later one of our group saw the guy out shopping. He'd recovered the use of his hand. When asked what he thought of the 329, he said he didn't think he could afford one at this time!
Me, I still call it the best 44 Special they've ever built. And I think the 340-360 is a darn good 38 Special carry gun. If you decide to make it more, test it first. And if you do test it, do it when you're alone so you can hide the pain.
and that bugger is trying to crawl all over me 
