What did you do in the reloading room recently?

huskyal02_R1 said:
Question, I'm new to reloading. Can you load 357 Mag with 38 special case?
Click to expand...
Can? Sure.
Should you? No.
If someone accidentally pops that hot loaded 38 into a 38 revolver they’re going to blow their gun up.
Not to mention things like thin 38 special wadcutter brass that might blow up.

Load some 38+p and look for some 357 brass
 
huskyal02_R1 said:
The Henry that I have is rated for both, and if I want to reload for 357 mag, would it safe to do so using the 38 special casing? My understanding is the 38 casing is a little shorter. It is for the Lever gun.
Click to expand...
Not safe. The smaller case capacity will make the pressures unsafe.
Do you need 357 loads? Where are you located? I’ll trade you 50 each 357 for 50 each 38 special so you don’t need to blow yourself up.
God forbid you dropped a 38 (357) on the range and some poor old lady with a nice old K frame blew up her hand and face. Not to mention the nice old K frame.
 
Not in the reloading room, but at the range.

I received a bunch of primed .223 brass already sized, I expanded, charged, and used some Hornady 55g #2266 FMJ I was given, and they don’t chamber. I used the OAL from Hornady, and the bolt would not close fully on any.

I pulled those projectiles and measured with my caliper, which I should have checked the case dimensions, but assumed that would have been done before being primed by whoever previously.

Bought a case gauge and many did not pass, so I resized 50 cases again without the decapping rod figuring that was the problem and rechecked them to be close to specified. Loaded those, and today the bolt won’t fully close on all except one which fired.

I haven’t pulled them yet, but my assumption is the cases are too long which I didn’t check before loading, although I should have. My other thought was maybe they aren’t be sized correctly, but my die is as far down as it can go, and they load fine into the case gauge, so kind of at a loss here.
 
Michael J. Spangler said:
Not safe. The smaller case capacity will make the pressures unsafe.
Do you need 357 loads? Where are you located? I’ll trade you 50 each 357 for 50 each 38 special so you don’t need to blow yourself up.
God forbid you dropped a 38 (357) on the range and some poor old lady with a nice old K frame blew up her hand and face. Not to mention the nice old K frame.
Click to expand...

To illustrate, suppose you load a 125 grain Hornady XT over 10.9gr HS-6 to a COAL of 1.590" in .357 magnum brass. In .38 special brass you drop to 1.450", but that increases the pressure by something like 34%. Your .38 special round is 34% higher pressure, potentially making it unsafe even in a firearm chambered for .357 magnum. To compensate, you can drop the charge down to about 9.6 grains of HS-6. According to Gordon's Reloading Tool, that will give you about the same PSI as the .357 magnum load That will work in modern .38 special brass. I've done this, reduced the load for a shorter COAL to arrive at a round that's about the same pressure as the .357 magnum load. It was with Universal rather than HS-6. However, as Michael says, it is an accident waiting to happen, not because there was anything unsafe about the rounds in a .357 magnum gun, rather because some unforeseen sequence of events might have seen them get into something only rated for .38 special. I was glad to shoot the last of those rounds and have no plans to ever do this again.

I'll suggest a different solution that will optimize use of .38 special brass. Instead of jacketed bullets, use coated lead bullets like Missouri Bullet 125 grain TCFPs. The Brinell 12 ones will do. Load them to 38+P load data in 38 special brass. Because coated lead has lower friction than jacketed, they'll come out of a 20" barrel at a sufficient velocity that you won't be bothered that they aren't .357 magnum loads.
 
Last edited:
Michael J. Spangler said:
Not safe. The smaller case capacity will make the pressures unsafe.
Do you need 357 loads? Where are you located? I’ll trade you 50 each 357 for 50 each 38 special so you don’t need to blow yourself up.
God forbid you dropped a 38 (357) on the range and some poor old lady with a nice old K frame blew up her hand and face. Not to mention the nice old K frame.
Click to expand...
I'm located in Woburn/Burlington area and I can definitely see the concerns that everyone had pointed out.
 
huskyal02_R1 said:
Thank you very much for everyone's input on my question, it helps a lot.
Click to expand...
I also have a Henry carbine in 38/357. It will shoot 38 special but the rifle definitely performs better with 357. 38 specials don't feed as reliably and they are nowhere near as accurate as 357 mag. 38 specials are fun for short range plinking at like 25 yards. If you try them at 50 yards or more they are all over the place.

For 357 mag loads I've found imr 4227 to be an excellent powder with 158 jacketed. H110 works well too.
 
andrew1220 said:
You buy it online or? Buddy of mine is looking for jugs of Titegroup but will buy one pounders if price is decent. I see the Ram and another vendor only has one pounders in stock but he wants to buy in bulk.

I used to run TG with Xtreme plated bullets in 9mm for years. Yup burns hot and not super “clean” until you get closer to max charge weights. Decent economical powder.
Click to expand...
@andrew1220 Ram has 8 lb Titegroup and another one too, but I don't know the code word for it :) The other one is much cheaper.


EDIT: This is crazy, 8 lbs just showed up at Larry's now too
 
Last edited:
Picked up a box of large rifle primers thanks to @andrew1220 today and figured I’d set up my dies and press for .32 Win Special since I have all the components now.

I originally bought a .321 bullet mold off eBay a couple week ago as well as the Lyman lubesizer die and top punch so I could have a friend cast bullets for me.

The bullets turned out good and are 165gn:
065D0136-D6DA-477C-8B1E-110AE1CB4280.jpeg

Some fine tuning on the seating die and I was able to achieve the OAL with a .338 crimp on my test cases.

image.jpg

Next step is to load some once fired brass with 25.5gn of IMR3031 and test fire tomorrow if I am able to come back to it tonight/morning.
 
Last edited:
MaybeMe said:
Picked up a box of large rifle primers thanks to @andrew1220 today and figured I’d set up my dies and press for .32 Win Special since I have all the components now.

I originally bought a .321 bullet mold off eBay a couple week ago as well as the Lyman lubesizer die and top punch so I could have a friend cast bullets for me.

The bullets turned out good and are 165gn:
View attachment 616132

Some fine tuning on the seating die and I was able to achieve the OAL with a .338 crimp on my test cases.

View attachment 616134

Next step is to load some once fired brass with 25.5gn of IMR3031 and test fire tomorrow if I am able to come back to it tonight/morning.
Click to expand...
Sweeet! Glad to see my post was helpful. Surprised those LRP were there. They must have just put them out on the shelf
 
50wt said:
You find the components first and THEN buy the rifle. And 6 dasher ? Why would you want to get started in the most popular cartridge size now?
Click to expand...
planning for an ideal timing of life events was never my forte. :)

i still got all i needed for it, mostly, just will need to fireform brass instead of buying ready to shoot one. it`s just odd as it was available al this time i was looking at it before, only now it is gone from everywhere, for some reason. or it can be just a spring thing when all want to stock up.
 
wegman said:
Bought myself a 1911 (RIA) in 38 Super...now looking for 38 Super
Click to expand...
I should have a classified for this shortly. I’m thinking 8 cents per case. Cleaned but not yet deprimed. (I can deprime with no sizing if you want). Mix of Win and R-P. How many? I have to count to see what how many I have.

Got these in a larger lot I bought and I don’t need them.

PM me if you want them.
 
I've got a gallon of brass to work on, that's two loads in the wet tumbler. Three if you count the rifle stuff needing to be cleaned again after resizing from all of the lube.

Some of it I don't reload. Some I do. Today I will be setting enough aside that I don't reload for a buddy still in the Navy who's half a year out from retirement as a CPO (E-7) to us Army folk. He's hilariously short on everything reloading-wise. I hope to help eliminate one of those problems soon enough with the brass at least.

Decapped a bit, taking a break now to give her royal fluffy highness the attention that she's been demanding of me for the past half hour. Those behind the ear scratchies must be releasing some sort of crack like enzymes it seems, lol.
 
Well the .32 Win Spec I reloaded went well.

All chambered and fired fine except a few where they overcrimped because my die worked itself tighter as I didn’t torque the lockring enough.

Confident enough now to continue with that.

My other issue is the .223 I reloaded. I received primed cases from a friend who got them from a friend and after a couple issues, I ended up trimming and resizing them all.

I still have the same issue where the bolt won’t close and they seem so close in spec and fit in the cartridge gauge, I don’t understand where the issue lies. Does anyone have any suggestions?
 

Similar threads

Reloading dies many to choose from
Replies
2
Views
92
Patriot Firearms & Ammo
Patriot Firearms & Ammo
45-70 reloading
Replies
18
Views
300
Broc Tuah
Broc Tuah
Reloading deals
Replies
1
Views
157
Chevy 2 65
Chevy 2 65
best press for precision reloading?
2 3
Replies
89
Views
2K
northny
N
410 Mec shotgun reloading machine FB ?
Replies
1
Views
43
T-Unit
T
Back
Top Bottom