Why was the .357 mag developed? Loading my 340 up

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kip

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I love my M&P 340 and would say its worth the money. I believe that any level of skill would be able to shoot the dot and notch sight better than any other j frame.

Did the .357 mag work that much better in the street? Is it worth having a 2 inch over a .38 for atleast blast or is it just a noisy and painfil .38 special in a J frame? Would think a close to contact shot would involve muzzle blast.

I am stuck between 135, 158 gold dots, or some type of heavy hard cast. Maybe load first 3-4 gold dots and last 1-2 heavy hard cast. Have 125 leads in it right now. In a J frame, what would I notice different between the 125 and 200 grain loads? I have seen recoil go down with heavier weights. Maybe its just me.
 
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While most people would say that you are gaining nothing by shooting .357 out of a 2in barrel (and I would tend to agree), if you are looking for scientifically supported information; then you need to be shooting 124gr jacketed hollow-point .357.
 
kip said:
Did the .357 mag work that much better in the street?
Click to expand...

In a word, yes. It was/is a significantly better stopper and penetration through windshields, car doors, etc is world's better vs the .38 Special.

Regarding shooting .357 Magnum from a snub-nosed revolver is concerned, you gain blast and recoil on the negative side and 200-400 fps more velocity with the resultant additional generated energy on the positive. Whether this is a fair trade-off is a decision you'll have to make for yourself. FWIW, I keep my .357 Magnum snubbies loaded with .357 Magnum ammo.
 
Lets take it a step farther....what will a 41 MAG do that a 357, or 44 MAG won't? I guess I have not done my homework, but I never could understand where the need for the 41 MAG came in.
 
I suppose one could ask if many calibers were worth developing.

While I love the .45acp 1911, I have some .357 S&W guns that I keep fully loaded as backups and just gave one to a daughter for her self protection.

Would I take a .357 mag loaded with the mag rounds over a .38spl? Yes. I carried a .357 for yrs daily and loved it. Still do.
 
Any one that claims you gain nothing firing a 357 Magnum cartridge over a 38 Special cartridge out of any firearm has never studied ballistics.

With similar weight projectiles the 357 Magnum cartridge will yield 30%-60% more velocity than it's 38 special brother when fired from a 2 1/8" snubby. Yes I have chronographed dozens of snub nose revolvers with hundreds of different loadings over the past several decades.

Each and every time, the 357 Magnum cartridge moved the projectile faster than the 38 Special cartridge when fired from the same firearm.

Even if it were only a 10% increase.......it can not be called nothing.

As XTrooper says, you need to decide if the additional recoil that goes along with that additional velocity is worthwhile to you.

Personally, all of my 357 Magnums are loaded with and practiced with 357 Magnum ammunition. Even my snubbies. The only time they are fed 38 special ammunition is for chronographing or ballistic testing.

j-frames.jpg
 
.357 evolved in 1934, a combined effort of a few guys, most notably Elmer Keith and D.B. Wesson.......developed from the "Hi Velocity" .38 Special developed for the 38/44 Heavy Duty revolvers, those hi-powered .38's were not for use in K-frames,but people shot them in M&P's anyway and loosened them up....... Colt used this to their advantage saying the Official Police could handle the Hi-Vel .38's.

The .357 was developed partly due to the need for Police Officers and Federal Agents to shoot through cover like car doors, etc. The organized crime wave in the 20's and early 30's along with guys like Dillinger and Capone gave police a need for a more powerful sidearm. When you're going up against guys packing BAR's, you need something with more punch......Lots of Feds were carrying .38 Super Colt 1911's, but local policemen did not have this option, and needed a more powerful revolver cartridge. We had a good family friend who was a Police Officer in North Jersey, I honestly forget what city but I want to say Paterson, for anyone who cares=) from the late 40's to the 60's, he was a "gun guy" and he said he recalled when his dept. authorized .357's in the late 50's and he "felt like he had some real artillery on his hip" after that. From some of the stories he told, he actually used it a few times too...... I forget what revolver he said he carried, had to be a S&W 27 or a Python I would imagine...... I asked him why he didn't carry something like a .45 and he said ".45's were military pistols, revolvers were cop guns......." He passed away years ago but he was a wealth of knowledge of how things were "back in the day" as a LEO in NJ.

I'm a huge fan of both the .38 and .357 and I have become vary familiar with it's history and development. I find that era of our history fascinating, how the .357 was partly developed to give police a better advantage over armed gangs.

I don't know much about .41 Magnum, just that it was intended to be an "intermediate" Magnum, to be "more than a.357, but less than a .44".......it never caught on with police but has found a cult following among shooters.
 
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I will go the other way and say no.
I dont need to shoot through car doors or through walls.
Spending lots of time at the range at 45' I can tell you that I can get 5 shots of 38 Wad Cutter out of my J-Frame into a paper plate REAL fast,, No matter how many times I tried, The recovery of the 357 takes a bit of time and skill to land the shots in nearly the same place fast.
38 Wad cutters, About as fast as I can pull the trigger.
357, Well some time passes if I want them to hit my paper plate.
So for me,
I am comfortable with my 2", 5 shot J frame with 38 wad cutters of 38 specials and my ability of landing my shots where I want them.....
My choice,
357 IS more powerful and has the ability to penetrate well better than the 38 special or the 38 Wad cutter.
Only pays off IF you hit your target.
Peter
 
Don't overlook .327 either......

Overall, use what works best for YOU, not someone else!:)
 
Research the 357 Registered Magnum and you'll get all the info and more. Look in the expert commentary here in the forum. Hope that helps you out.
 
The .357 Mg was developed to improve the ballistics of the .38 Sp. in an effort to make it more viable as a police service revolver cartridge.

The first thing that was done in this regard was to load .38 Special ammunition to 35K pressures, but that carried with it the liability of these hot loads finding their way into older guns that would not handle the extra pressure.

So S&W lengthened the case by approximately .125" so that they wouldn't fit into a gun chambered in .38 Special and the game was afoot.

It is the same story with the .41 and the .44 Mg. revolvers. Elmer Keith promoted the .44 Mg. loading and I think the .357, and Bill Jordan was a big promoter of the .41 Mg.

The primary reason for these ballistic enhancements was to sell guns, which they have done rather well.

As to the necessity of any of them, well that depends on how one defines "need".
 
"In a word, yes. It was/is a significantly better stopper and penetration through windshields, car doors, etc is world's better vs the .38 Special. "

I totally agree with this the 357 was designed to be able to effectively shoot through a car door thus limiting cover options,45 has better "knock down" power but where penetration is needed the 357 is a much better round, and in my opinion a much more accurate round based on its design.
 
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Of course, whether a given cartridge is better for doing a given job as compared to another cartridge depends on the platform from which they're shot. :)

Heavyweight .357 loads out of sufficiently long barrels do give considerable velocity advantages over the same bullet weights in .38 Special loadings from the same barrel length. Does that mean that your 1 7/8" Ti/Sc-Al 340 is going to be a better manstopper than a 4" K-38? Depends, on what you put in it, I guess.
 
For me, I'll let the MachoMen keep the magnums in their snubs. :)

I use 135 grain Gold Dot +p's for 2.5" or less barrels and save the magnums for 3" or longer. Not due to any perceived ballistic advantage, but I can recover faster and hit faster due to the weight of the particular revolvers. Not too much of a fan of .357 in J frames, don't own one at the moment, but the one's I've shot were not pleasant imo and tended to have too much flash and recoil to deliver effective multiple shots.

Nothing matters but hits right? So I'll settle for a tad less power (or a lot less power) and go for control and accuracy. That's my choice on the inherent trade off being discussed here.

YMMV, and almost certainly will.
 
340sc with medium velocity loads like Remington 125's or Golden Sabres is quite manageable. Not as harsh as full throttle loads and more power than the .38+P. I train often enough with the 340sc to be able to stay on target with reasonable speed. It's nice to be able to carry a powerful gun in your front pocket the same as you can a mousegun.
 
So I'll settle for a tad less power (or a lot less power) and go for control and accuracy.
Click to expand...

My 25-ounce Rhino (shoots from the bottom chamber) is the only lightweight .357 Magnum that I've ever been able to shoot rapidly with magnum heavy-bullet loads. :)

Barring barrier penetration (which is not an issue for me in my life), the .357 Magnum's additional velocity (out of a sufficiently long barrel) gives a shooter more distance - good for hunting (but, again, not an issue for me in my life). Everyone needs to pick what best suits his needs - I wind up loading middleweight high-tech bullets (those short-barrel 135-gr Gold Dot things) to where they hit 1025 fps from the Rhino's 2" tube (very controllable and accurate) and figure it will get me the shot-placement and penetration that I would need in a bad situation. If I were hunting with a .357, though, I'd use a longer tube and a bullet that weighed at least 158-grains - and I'd look for about 1400 fps velocity.

medium velocity loads like Remington 125's or Golden Sabres
Click to expand...

The 125-grain full-bore magnum loads certainly have a good rep . . . out of 4"+ tubes. My chrono experience tells me that the full-power loads from shorter tubes or these medium-velocity "magnum" loads, really amount to concussively blasty, recoily, low-capacity 9mms. I'm not going to tell you that's per se ineffective (we all like our 940s), but it might not be the best way for everyone to garner those downrange results (compared to flatter, higher-capacity, easier-to-reload-quick pocket 9mms). Great to live in a free country, though, and to have the ability to pick what best suits one's perceived needs. :)
 
History of the .357 Magnum - going back to the 'Registered Magnum'? Phooey, the real reason the .357 Magnum was devised is simple - to give us .38 lovers a wider choice of launch platforms. Ever seen a .38 Special with more than a 5 or 6 round capability? How about stock moonclip capability? Seriously.

Of course, we .357 Magnum-wimpy reloaders, who can't find enough .38 hulls to load, can always load our favorite plinker-loads in .357M cases. Just a request, if you please, of the macho-Magnum shooters... please don't shoot my admittedly 'mild' .357M loads and then ask me if I ever use powder - or always just use primer-only! Words hurt...

Stainz
 
As far as I'm concerned the .357 Magnum round is the end all be all of handgun rounds. Personally I don't find the muzzle blast or recoil from a 2 – 3" unpleasant at all.

As for the .41 magnum it was developed as a police round, with two different factory loadings, one of which was a 210Gr. SWC at 950 FPS, then the second factory load was a heaver 240Gr JHP at 1,300 fps, which was intended to be a hunting load. Well young cops being macho as only young cops can be many loaded up their 41 Magnums with the hot ammo and could not handle the recoil. Additionally the size and weight of the big N frame was just to much for most to carry on a gun belt all day. The 41 Magnum and the two revolvers chambered for it were excellent choices but never got the attention or chance they deserved.
 
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