As we are limited to the .38 Special Cartridge, our "maximum loading" is the .38 Special Heavy Duty rounds fired out of Heavy Duty's, Outdoorman, and home-made H.D. and Outdoorsman revolvers. (By home-made, I mean "other" N-frame revolvers remarked and sometimes rebarrelled. The copies are often VERY good.)
However, other stuff is out there as well. After all, if a 28 can become a nice 23, a 19 can certainly become a nice 14 or 15. A 66 could become a 67.
Testing last Saturday with "heavy duty" loads to make IPSC major with a bit of leeway, we were getting our 160 grain bullet up to a nice 1,250 out of the Outdoorsman with one-thumb extraction, and about 1,180 out of the 4 inch Heavy Duty (with one-thumb extraction.)
"Let's test it out of my snubby!" A friend decreed. This snubby would be a 2.5 inch nickled 19 that has become a 15. The load we were testing was using Green Dot powder, which burns rather faster than some of the others. Velocity out of the 2.5 inch barrel was a respectable 1,130 fps -- a 179 power factor. We are not trying for "maximum effort" here, there's no need. That load is already well known being either Elmer's or Skeeter's loadings using 2400 powder.
Safe loads -- although heavy -- from our 2-inch J-frames using the same bullet/different powder charge are up around 950 to 980 fps with rather painful recoil using the small wooden grips. I'd say it's a significant enough difference to be worth it.
All our Heavy Duty loadings have the primers painted red with a permanent marker, and are loaded into red cartridge boxes for rapid visual identification by ourselves while remaining unsuspicious to the "authorities" should we run into one of the notorious Highway Check-stops.
A "Mexican Python". Marked Diamondback. The work is usually very good. Jeff Cooper also said that "silly regulations provoke transparent evasions" and he certainly hit the nail on the head with that comment.
