Today's range lesson, the failure wasn't my S&W 340

[TeamPB]

Great range day. This forum inspired the drill, twenty five yards, full size silhouette, with my carry piece, a 340 PD. Five rounds of .38, nice results. Five rounds .357, good but climbing and moving left. Five rounds .357, concentrating, all 8, 9 or 10 ring. Four rounds .357, fast, the revolver locks up on the fifth shot!?!? Examine it, manipulate it, it won't open. Heck! I bet it is the internal lock! We all know the lock is a bad idea? Did the recoil cause it to lock? Of course I don't have a key with me. Switch to my back up carry piece, a 360 PD, same drills, twenty five yards. All good. I also had a 686-6 and a 19-3 with me, so all continued to be good!

It wasn't the lock! An Aguillia .357 round had its soft nose bullet come loose and it was binding against the frame. At home, in the vise, glasses and ear pro on, I tapped the bullet back into the cylinder, all is good.

When I carry I have complete confidence in myself and my pistols. Not quite 100% confidence going forward. I think this was a great lesson for me to learn. Do I need to carry two pieces? Or should I carry an N frame? If it locks up it could still do double duty as an effective club. No, I will stick with a J frame and the three dogs I usually have with me .

 

[chief38]

My opinion is to carry Buffalo Bore "Heavy" 158 grain, SWCHP-GC .38 special +P rounds and not 357 mag's in a lightweight J frame. Out of a 2" barrel they do 1,025 fps (personally chronographed many times). Shooting .357 mag's out of a 2" barrel is a handful and the true benefits of the magnum rounds are not even realized. Much of the powder charge is burned outside the barrel so it is not really propelling the projectile much faster. Handling the recoil of the Buffalo Bore is by no means for the recoil sensitive, but much less than magnum loads. Follow up shots with the BB .38 spl's. are also faster with less muzzle blast. I will also say the Buffalo Bore ammunition is the most consistent I have ever chronographed. 1,025 fps out of a 2" tube is nothing to sneeze at! I have never had a Buffalo Bore round back out of the case under recoil. Just food for thought.

 

[stansdds]

My experience with short barrel 357 Magnums comes from my 640-1. Being chambered in 357 Magnum, that's what I figured I would shoot through it. I tried the magnificent one-shot-stop full power 125 grain JHP loads. Whooooo! Impressive blast, impressive flash, impressive recoil, not so impressive time between shots. Next, I tried the very light weight 110 grain JHP "white box" loads. Not as bad as the 125 grain loads, but still quite the handful. The I dropped back to using 38 Special +P, specifically, Speer's Short Barrel 135 grain +P ammo. Very tolerable load in the all-steel J-frame. I expect their reduced power, short barrel 135 grain 357 Magnum load would also be really good, but that load can be hard to find. In short, full power magnum ammo in a revolver with a barrel significantly shorter than 4 inches is likely a case of the juice not being worth the squeeze.

 

[Shibadog]

Great range day. This forum inspired the drill, twenty five yards, full size silhouette, with my carry piece, a 340 PD. Five rounds of .38, nice results. Five rounds .357, good but climbing and moving left. Five rounds .357, concentrating, all 8, 9 or 10 ring. Four rounds .357, fast, the revolver locks up on the fifth shot!?!? Examine it, manipulate it, it won't open. Heck! I bet it is the internal lock! We all know the lock is a bad idea? Did the recoil cause it to lock? Of course I don't have a key with me. Switch to my back up carry piece, a 360 PD, same drills, twenty five yards. All good. I also had a 686-6 and a 19-3 with me, so all continued to be good!

It wasn't the lock! An Aguillia .357 round had its soft nose bullet come loose and it was binding against the frame. At home, in the vise, glasses and ear pro on, I tapped the bullet back into the cylinder, all is good.

When I carry I have complete confidence in myself and my pistols. Not quite 100% confidence going forward. I think this was a great lesson for me to learn. Do I need to carry two pieces? Or should I carry an N frame? If it locks up it could still do double duty as an effective club. No, I will stick with a J frame and the three dogs I usually have with me .

I want a heavily crimped round. Blazer and some other rounds have little to no crimp. Under heavy recoil it works exactly like a kinetic bullet puller.

 

[Sgt. Buzzard]

Do you mean Aguila? Personally that brand is on my do not buy list. A 11.7 Oz. gun requires a hard crimp jacketed or semi jacketed load. A hardcast lead 148 or 158gr. in a hot load I would still want to test even in .38. Had that happen 50 years ago reloading hot rounds.