Guns for .38 S & W caliber

[Weimar]

Grayfox, I hear that. I have a Regulation I have been trying to sell. Guess I will just keep it for the next Allentown show.

Anyway, these 38 S&W are nice, only one I shot was an Enfield, but somehow I ended up with 200-300 rounds so guess I should go shooting

Ed

 

[DWalt]

Aside from S&W, one of my favorite fun guns is a ca. 1964 H&R Defender top break in .38 S&W with a 4" barrel. Much less common than those with 2" barrels. It even has adjustable sights. It groups as well as any other revolver I have. H&R and many other lesser-known manufacturers such as Iver Johnson made a gigantic assortment of .38 S&W revolvers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

[Ole Joe Clark]

A guy at church came up to me recently and handed me a paper bag with a partial box of .38 S&W, and some .38 Spec and some .357 mag hulls. He said the .38 S&W wouldn't go in the cylinder of his gun, so he brought them to me. He was trying to shoot them in his .38 Spec. I did a little snooping and found the reason why. They are about .005 larger than a .38 Spec. He said the others shot fine.

 

[DWalt]

.38 S&W cartridges do have a slightly larger case diameter than the .38 Special. Generally, .38 S&W ammunition cannot be chambered in a .38 Special revolver, but there have been reports that it can be done if the revolver has sloppier than normal chambers. None of my .38 Special revolvers will accept .38 S&W cartridges.

 

[ISCS Yoda]

I have a Model 32, virtually new, the successor to the Terrier, but I have never taken a picture of it. I usually forget I even have it. Cool little gun in .38 S&W.

Then, of course, there is my 4th Model:

 

[ISCS Yoda]

.38 S&W cartridges do have a slightly larger case diameter than the .38 Special. Generally, .38 S&W ammunition cannot be chambered in a .38 Special revolver, but there have been reports that it can be done if the revolver has sloppier than normal chambers. None of my .38 Special revolvers will accept .38 S&W cartridges.

I hate to disabuse you of the above notion but it is not true. And I used to think that it was 100% correct.

While it may be true for some guns it is not the case for many. Now, maybe it's sloppy chambers, I dunno, but I made a bet with the owner of an LGS that .38 S&W would not drop into a .38 Special and I lost that bet on several guns and didn't win on any.

I did not go home and try it on any of my other .38s but next time I pull them out I'll give it a whirl.

I do know that a billion years ago I discovered that .38 S&W would NOT fit into my Model 19. Then someone taught me about .38 versus .357 caliber bullets and I swore by that until maybe two years ago when I lost that bet.

Oh, yeah, you just KNOW I am going to try it someday soon!!!!

 

[ISCS Yoda]

Now that I think about it, I once had an old Forehand & Wadsworth pocket pistol that was in .38 S&W and I still have a vintage H&R pocket pistol in .38 S&W. It shoots .38 Colt Shorts, too. I need to take pictures of these toys......

 

[Leslie Sapp]

Here's mine. A circa 1938 Terrier

 

[DWalt]

I hate to disabuse you of the above notion but it is not true. And I used to think that it was 100% correct.

While it may be true for some guns it is not the case for many. Now, maybe it's sloppy chambers, I dunno, but I made a bet with the owner of an LGS that .38 S&W would not drop into a .38 Special and I lost that bet on several guns and didn't win on any.

I did not go home and try it on any of my other .38s but next time I pull them out I'll give it a whirl.

I do know that a billion years ago I discovered that .38 S&W would NOT fit into my Model 19. Then someone taught me about .38 versus .357 caliber bullets and I swore by that until maybe two years ago when I lost that bet.

Oh, yeah, you just KNOW I am going to try it someday soon!!!!

Within SAAMI dimensional tolerances, a minimum .38 S&W round could chamber in a maximum .38 Special chamber. The SAAMI minimum .38 S&W case diameter is 0.3803" while the maximum .38 Special chamber diameter is 0.3849".

The nominal .38 S&W case diameter is 0.3863" while the nominal .38 Special chamber diameter is 0.3809" Clearly an interference situation.
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This question inspired me to make a simple statistical analysis based on SAAMI tolerances. Assuming a totally random distribution of case and chamber diameters using tolerances between SAAMI minimums and maximums (probably not a valid assumption, as manufacturing precision is likely much higher than the SAAMI dimensional tolerances allow), there is about a 24% probability that a random .38 S&W cartridge will fit into a random .38 Special chamber. I expected a much lower probability. It's best to say only that it is possible that a .38 S&W cartridge can sometimes be chambered in a .38 Special revolver, both of which are within SAAMI tolerances, and leave it at that.

As I have stated in several previous postings, it is conventional wisdom that a .38 S&W bullet should have a diameter of .360"-.361", and it is assumed that using any bullet diameter less than that will be undersized for the bore and will result in poor grouping performance. However, the SAAMI-established minimum bullet diameter for a .38 S&W (lead) bullet is .355". Therefore, it is satisfactory to use standard .357"-.358" diameter bullets commonly used in .38 Special ammunition for reloading the .38 S&W. Several of my older reloading manuals affirm that, providing .38 S&W data using .357" bullets.

 

[Dude]

Great posts! I almost bought an I-frame about a year ago, but it sure didn't seem to have much rifling in the barrel.

 

[raljr1]

Ok, with all this talk about what fits where, I went to the ammo closet and pulled 2 rounds of 38 S&W out of a new box or Remington target ammo. Those 2 rounds dropped right into the following revolvers in my safe.

Model 19-3
Model 27-2
Model 1905 M&P
Charter arms Undercover

The only one i tried that they did not slide right into was my K38, they tightened up about 1/4 from shy of seating.

Now what? I would not shoot them from those because of the larger bullet diameter, but they fit in 4 out of 5 guns I tried them in.

I didn't try any older cartridges, maybe tomorrow.