I thought one could always "find a way around it in Mexico". It's called "La Mordida".
Just curious uf you lose some accuracy shooting 38's out of a 357.
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I thought one could always "find a way around it in Mexico". It's called "La Mordida".
calmex
Member
Usually, if you are living and working for anytime in any area of Mexico you'll learn that "the mordida" is something people from out of town or foreigners have to pay to solve little problems like perhaps a traffic violation or some infraction real or imagined by the "Officer".
If you actually do live and work in an area, and speak Spanish and inter-relate with the locals -- everything is resolved through a "favor exchange". I lived and worked for 26 years in Central Mexico and do not recall paying a bribe, per se, but I do remember many times that I "fixed" problems through exchanging a favor or two between willing participants. Maybe some free Ice Cream from my Ice Cream Store in exchange for getting my electricity back from a black-out before worrying about the rest of the town? Or free Ice Cream for overlooking the fact that I drove past you while you were on foot-patrol and me and my friends were drinking Pacifico out of tins? It's all good, man.
Corruption is highly misunderstood in Canada and the US. A person can be thoroughly corrupt through-and-through and still be a good guy. Or, the next person can be thoroughly corrupt through-and-through and be a bad guy. Or even, a thoroughly corrupt person could have one foot in both worlds, always looking to the wind to see which direction the flags are blowing.
The favor exchange gets things done. It makes the wheels of a resisting bureaucracy roll, at least for you if you have the right favor to exchange or can come close enough.
On a highway miles from where you live, being pulled over by the State Highway Patrol, you'll either be paying an actual bribe or talking your way out of it with your excellent Spanish. I always succeeded with door number two. But others may have mileage that varies. I was there a long time, but that doesn't guarantee that on my next trip, I won't have to reach for the wallet. I wouldn't declare too vigorously one way or the other what might happen, it's always sort of up in the air.
With the Mexican Army, bribes are not a safe thing to attempt. They might arrest you and burn you at the stake to prove to the World they are not corrupt. Much better to find actual "work-arounds". Registering a .357 Magnum that's marked as a .38 Special with an actual .38 Special cylinder on board is a work-around. The .380 ACP problem was solved with a work-around that the Mexican Army could live with. Bribes would not have worked, although certainly some favors were exchanged.
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I absolutely love all the stories EVERY time you post. Also, as I read them, they play in my head like the scene from a movie or possibly even a well-done, high budget, prime time TV show. You tell stories that paint a picture that you have loved your time spent there and I feel like I would read a novel full of them while at the same time, I would not choose to ever put myself in the same place. 
Love 'em. Keep 'em coming!
Love 'em. Keep 'em coming!
calmex
Member
I absolutely love all the stories EVERY time you post. Also, as I read them, they play in my head like the scene from a movie or possibly even a well-done, high budget, prime time TV show. You tell stories that paint a picture that you have loved your time spent there and I feel like I would read a novel full of them while at the same time, I would not choose to ever put myself in the same place.
Love 'em. Keep 'em coming!
It's comments like this that make me want to post something occasionally, you know? Thank you very much.
Any way you look at it, bribe vs. favors, you are living at the mercy of a corrupt regime which is now heavily influenced by murderous organized crime groups. As long as you play their game, you'll prosper; that is if the winds don't blow some other direction. Good luck! Back to the OP's original question: the same ammo out of a .38 SPL cylinder vs. .357 Mag. cylinder will not show any increase in accuracy, all things being pretty much equal.
I have a nickel 27-2 with a 8 3/8" barrel.
It is sighted in at 25' with the same ammo
I shoot in my model 52. The grand
Kids love it. Sand bagged off bench
they shoot jelly beans for targets.
They hit close to 50%.
It is sighted in at 25' with the same ammo
I shoot in my model 52. The grand
Kids love it. Sand bagged off bench
they shoot jelly beans for targets.
They hit close to 50%.
calmex
Member
I remember in my early testing that the Lee TL-Wadcutter (which weighed around 150 grains with our lead mix) was very accurate out of my K-38, but did not hit to the exact point of aim in my Heavy Duty like the 160 grain SWC did. Also, I was interested more in using the actual ammo I was carrying daily in competition -- which was the SWC.
So I stopped the testing of the wadcutter and really just tested the comparative accuracy of the SWC loading between all my guns, which I found to be close enough between all of them to not worry about. So it's interesting to hear about your results using wadcutter ammo.
What is this statement supposed to mean?
25 Feet???
That close a distance is insufficient to establish any conclusions regarding accuracy of a given load or gun.
Try 50 yards. That's 6X the distance.
Increase the target size by the same factor.
A jelly bean is about 1/2" long. So, that translates into a 3" target.
Oh, but wait! You say the hits are "close to 50%".
What does that mean? Is that good or bad? You can do the same thing with a BB gun that costs less than $100 at Walmart! Where are all the other shots going?
Will your 50 yard groups stay within 3" "close to 50%" of the time? Or not? Again, what about all the other shots?
Are we talking groups that will measure several inches, or possibly, several feet?
How will they compare to groups fired out of your model 52 with the same load?
The answers to these questions might actually tell us something!
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How often do you find a handgun that will shoot accurately at 25 feet but is inaccurate at 50 yards?
Unless you are so close the bullets are going into one ragged hole shooting small targets at close distance is every bit as good as shooting large targets at long distance for evaluating accuracy.
If you are shooting a handgun with a scope or some other sort of optic you might notice a change in elevation at longer distances due to the increased distance between the sight and the bore. But that is rarely large enough to make a difference at common handgun distances.
Heavy bullets in a revolver hit higher than lighter ones. But once again I have found that changes in the point of impact 50 yards are about 4 times larger than the change at 12 yards.
If you have access to a 50 yard range it certainly doesn't hurt anything to shoot at that distance. But mostly it just makes it harder to see the groups without a pair of binoculars or a spotting scope if your eyesight is not what it used to be.
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If there's a difference, my shooting abilities aren't good enough to prove it.
I disagree. Having spent a significant amount of time with a Ransom Rest in a former life, I can say that even guns and ammo that are accurate even at 25 yards may not be so at 50 yards. 50 yard shooting should be the minimum distance to test for someone who is into precision pistol shooting or medium to large game.
John Patrick
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Talking about the US? Sounds like it…
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How large were the groups at 25 and 50 yards?
I use a rest on occasion but still have to line up the iron sights after every shot which limits accuracy. When I was reloading and trying to find the most accurate load for my 610 the best I could ever do was about 1.5 to 1.8 inches at 25 yards for a 6 shot group. It turned into a quest for a magic load that would shoot better but I never found it and concluded that was all the gun was capable of and good results for a revolver. The gun might have been more accurate than I could shoot it. And that was 30 years ago when I had an easier time focusing on the sights. Groups at longer ranges were proportional to the increase in range.
If you were getting sub 1 inch groups at 25 yards on a regular basis with the Ransom rest you could have been seeing things I would not have noticed.
Protocall_Design
Vendor
The best way to find the accuracy without a Ransom rest is to put a low power crosshair scope on the gun. Shooting on a solid bench in a rested position gives you as much repeatability as you're going to get hand held.
I found that just about any load would group well at 25 yards so I didn't waste my time testing at that distance. I did nearly all of my testing at 50 yards. At 50 yards, over the years, I'd be happy with 2"-3" ten shot groups. Some "groups" were huge, like 8". The quality of the bullet base was a significant factor in accuracy. The Ransom Rest requires good technique and must be mounted on a wooden board which must be affixed to a super SOLID base. Are you saying that you fire one shot from the machine rest and then readjust the Ransom Rest?
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No, I never owned a Ransom rest and used sandbags for a rest. As a result I was never sure if the groups I was getting were limited by the accuracy of the gun and ammo or my shooting ability.
The club I shoot at has one now and I think it is attached to one of the concrete benches. But I quit reloading before it was available and mostly shot off sandbags only when I was developing a load.
calmex
Member
I ran the franchise for San Miguel de Allende of "Helados Santa Clara". Interestingly enough, although there is a new and very small cubicle company store version of "Helados Santa Clara" in San Miguel near the city square today, if you Google Helados Santa Clara San Miguel de Allende many of the photos that will appear will be of my store -- which I closed in 2016 so I could return to Canada to finish working the required time to obtain a Canadian Pension.
This idea was planted in my mind by former Canadian Ambassador to Mexico David Winfield, who was visiting my store questioning me about how former U.S. Consul Phil Maher had handled some of the "unmentionable" problems that come up from time to time in a Consular Agency.
He suggested that going back to Canada to get the Canadian Pension -- no matter how disagreeable it may seem leaving the action of Central Mexico to return to a country that is socialist and boring -- would help me out in later life.
Whatever. Now that I'm 66 (but still look 33), and we're about ready to start heading back -- at least for the winters, to start, I think it was an acceptable idea. I miss Mexico terribly, but I never missed Canada at any time. I'm sorry, but some people are wired for more action and uncertaintly than others, and I guess I'm one of them. But the extra cash of that pension flowing in will sure help. Even though I'll only be making a "half pension" of around 1,200.00 CDN because I was away for half the required time to collect a full pension, I'll be making about what a normal middle-class income is in Central Mexico which is a great start (if you speak Spanish and pay what stuff really costs as opposed to what it often costs for foreigners).
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You really need to get out more! Traveling to other countries can really give you a different perspective!
For an old PPC shooter this has been fascinating, and I can't recall when I have last seen it discussed. But I have seen it discussed, usually initiated by someone's certainty that shooting .38 in a .357 revolver would result in less accuracy. But this certainty was always without supportive documentation.
I shot PPC from the mid-60s to the mid-80s. In that time I talked to countless other PPC competitors and a few gunsmiths. I don't ever recall this subject being discussed by either the shooters or the gunsmiths, and these were the two groups one would expect to be most attentive to such concerns.
One thing I did hear frequently from PPC shooters was they had or were having competition guns built on .357 K frame revolvers to get the perceived additional robustness of a .357 K frame over a .38 spl K frame.
For me it was immaterial since I had both of mine built up on Ruger Six series revolvers, which, in general circulation, only came in .357 magnum. Several shooters I knew who were having revolvers built on Colt Pythons considered the issue immaterial; they wanted the snake.
By far the most used revolvers were Smith K frames, since the L frames were not introduced until (IIRC) 1980. Most of the gunsmiths that I knew of would build up a revolver on a Smith, Ruger or Colt frame, although some did not offer the Colt option. They would also build one up on a customer's revolver. If one purchased a PPC revolver built up on a K frame, that would be a blue .38 frame as that was the least expensive to source.
That soon evolved to the option of a stainless steel frame (and barrel) since that was strong shooter preference.
That was what I chose to do. Even in the dry climate of CA, many of the matches were held during the summer months in extremely hot locations. Sweating was unavoidable. The corrosion resistance of stainless steel, as well as its lack of a blue finish to wear off, meant that even the highest mileage guns looked new if they received reasonable care.
My two Rugers look almost identical until one looks extremely closely. Only one did all the shooting though. I had had the second one built up in case the first one had a problem, but that never happened. Only in stainless could two revolvers with such widely varying usage still look virtually identical.
Thanks gents for a look back at some great days.
I shot PPC from the mid-60s to the mid-80s. In that time I talked to countless other PPC competitors and a few gunsmiths. I don't ever recall this subject being discussed by either the shooters or the gunsmiths, and these were the two groups one would expect to be most attentive to such concerns.
One thing I did hear frequently from PPC shooters was they had or were having competition guns built on .357 K frame revolvers to get the perceived additional robustness of a .357 K frame over a .38 spl K frame.
For me it was immaterial since I had both of mine built up on Ruger Six series revolvers, which, in general circulation, only came in .357 magnum. Several shooters I knew who were having revolvers built on Colt Pythons considered the issue immaterial; they wanted the snake.
By far the most used revolvers were Smith K frames, since the L frames were not introduced until (IIRC) 1980. Most of the gunsmiths that I knew of would build up a revolver on a Smith, Ruger or Colt frame, although some did not offer the Colt option. They would also build one up on a customer's revolver. If one purchased a PPC revolver built up on a K frame, that would be a blue .38 frame as that was the least expensive to source.
That soon evolved to the option of a stainless steel frame (and barrel) since that was strong shooter preference.
That was what I chose to do. Even in the dry climate of CA, many of the matches were held during the summer months in extremely hot locations. Sweating was unavoidable. The corrosion resistance of stainless steel, as well as its lack of a blue finish to wear off, meant that even the highest mileage guns looked new if they received reasonable care.
My two Rugers look almost identical until one looks extremely closely. Only one did all the shooting though. I had had the second one built up in case the first one had a problem, but that never happened. Only in stainless could two revolvers with such widely varying usage still look virtually identical.
Thanks gents for a look back at some great days.
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