.356 Slug in a 38/357?

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snubbiefan

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I think I know the answer here already, but I will ask before I shoot them to find out.

Me and the buddy were sitting on his back porch this morning tossing bullets. We normally cast the .358 105 grain SWC from a Lee mold, which hits my scales at 108 grains. He had a 9mm .356 124 grain mold handy and I cast a handful of those to try in my 38-special.

Can anyone mention any possible ill effects of doing this? I suppose I will find out about any accuracy issues when I shoot a few.

How about suggestion for a good bullseye, or red-dot load under this bullet? Nothing "blazing"....only plinking and the possibility of a little better SD round than the light 105 SWC.

Yep...I'm cheap and do not want to buy another mold right now.
 
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I use 356 147 truncated cone 9mm projectiles all of the time in my .38 spl handguns and lever gun when I am shooting SASS. They feed incredibly well, are very smooth and are quite accurate. Might work for you as well....
Randy
PS...I have no problem with excessive leading..
 
It won't matter. Most cast bullets for .38/.357 need to be at least .358 or .359 and you are going to try a .356 in there...

It's going to be lead city in your bore.

How do I know? I have the exact same mold. I sized some of them down to .356 to load into 9mm to try out. Dummy moment, I loaded them into .38's not thinking. Shotgun pattern on target. Lead linded bore. Not "leading", lead "lined" bore. You may get lucky. Crazier things have happened. My guess is the gas was escaping the back end and just melting it as it went down the bore. I really have no idea. I had to do the copper chore boy fix. For a while.
 
It's hard to say without knowing your alloy, lube quality, and actual bullet size. Did you measure and/or size them? Anyway, possible ill effects include extreme inaccuracy and extreme leading.
 
I've probably heard enough. Probably won't cast another handful, but may shoot these few up just to see. I can see where the rifling may not have a chance to "grab" the .356 slug and it pretty-much slides down the barrel getting shaved as it goes.

THANX!
 
Loading and firing 0.356" bullets in a .38/.357 revolver.

Ahem, YES, I've done that, and it was a mistake.

I ended up with bullets stuck in the bore, partial combustion of powder charges, and mediocre accuracy.

Not recommended after firing several thousand loads like that.
 
The bullets I am using from Sutter's is a pretty hard cast 147 truncated cone 9mm using 4 grains of Unique. No leading problems at this point and having fire over 2000 of them in the SASS it should show up by now.

Accuracy in my 1866 Uberti at 50 yards for a 10 shot string over a rest is between 1 and 1.5 inches. With the handguns at 15 yards the results are about the same over a rest.
They feed better than round nose projectiles in my rifle. The pistols are not a problem either.
Hope it works well for you when you try it. It did for ME!
Randy
Let us know what YOUR results were. Thank you.
 
snubbiefan said:
I can see where the rifling may not have a chance to "grab" the .356 slug and it pretty-much slides down the barrel getting shaved as it goes.
Click to expand...

Actually it's worse than that. Hot gasses will be able to flow past the bullet and melt off lube and lead as the bullet passes down the bore. Should make for a fun clean-up job.
 
Man-o-man....plenty of opinions all over the place here. I am going to try this 15-20 or so that I have over the 2.8 Bullseye load out of a snubbie. Ain't that much barrel to foul.:D

These are wheel weights tumble-lubed with Alox. We'll see.
 
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Shoot and see is the only real answer anyway. In many .38s they will be dandy. Some guns will lead but shoot okay. Some guns will hate them. In all of this precision measuring and sizing we tend to forget that tolerances exist and there are "in spec" guns out there in .38special/.357 magnum,with bores of .354-.360....some of them have matching cylinder thoats on the big side of things ....hardly any do on the small side. Despite the variations most perform adequately with lead bullets of standard .357-.358 so not surprisingly many will do fine going up or down a thousanth or two.
 
I think you are absolutely correct. I have shot a gazillion alox lubed cast wheel-weight slugs dropped straight from the Lee mold and rarely measure, or size one. You know they can vary in diameter by a thousandth or two. Never had one hang-fire, or seriously lead a barrel....it's about all I shoot.

I plan to shoot these few up, but don't intend to make a routine practice of it.
 
IME, it would be extremely rare for the mold so labeled to throw the exact same diameter bullet. That is why most casters own a lube-sizer. I have shot many 356402 Lyman bullets in my 357's and 38's as they measure 358+ out of the 2 molds I have owned. If you size them to the normal size that you do for your gun and they have shiny bands, meaning they were sized, you are good to go.
 
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