Shorter bullet or more powder?

[Big Guy]

Working up a load for .38 super using 125 g. Zero bullets and N350.

At 1.224” and 8.3 g. N350, PF = 165-166 (Dawson .38 super barrel).

A buddy indicated that I should shorten the bullet to around 1.200”.

Should I shorten the bullet or bump the powder to 8.6-8.7 g?

Old load consisted of 124 g. MG at 8.3 of N320 (PF of 170).

Any thoughs???

[Fireant]

If they feed fine then bump up the powder.

[Singlestack]

I use the same load and I seat my .355 125g HP Zero's @ 1.230 and I get about a 170~172 pf load. I bought some .356's by mistake and I got about what you are getting. I had to bump my load up to 8.6 to get 170~172 pf.

[XRe]

You do no want to shorten that load to 1.200". 1.224" should be just fine. Pick an OAL that is as long as will properly feed in the gun 100% of the time, and then work up the load from there by varying the powder charge.

[G-ManBart]

If the gun is running reliably I wouldn't mess with the OAL. If it were my gun I'd load a few rounds at 8.5gr and see what those do. If that didn't give me PF170-171 I'd add a tenth until it did. If you can't get out to chrono frequently I'd load some at 8.5 then some at 8.6 and again 8.7....one of those will give you the PF you want.

[Flexmoney]

OAL should be determined by what runs best in your gun. I don't think it should be used to adjust power factor..