The Lightest Possible .38 Special Load

[Duane Thomas]

I have a friend named Bonnie who is a wonderful woman. She just kind of got shortchanged at birth. On her left hand she has a finger and a thumb. On her right hand she has a thumb. She owns two guns, a Smith & Wesson Model 60 .38 Special and a Beretta Model 86 .380. (The latter gun I chose for her, and got her a "most favored nation" price from Beretta - but I digress.) Anyway, Bonnie wants to begin firing her S&W .38. Her brother provided her some of his reloads - a 125-gr. JHP loaded to damn near book max. Not the best choice for Bonnie, given her physical realities, but when she complained about the recoil, her brother commented, "It didn't seem bad to me." Uh, no doubt, but you also have ten fingers.

Now it's my turn.

First we install some decent rubber grips on the gun instead of those horrible little slivers of wood Smith used to put on their J-frames. I work up a load with a 148-gr. LSWC and Universal that Bonnie actually likes firing. 100 rounds a session and she comments afterwards, "That was actually fun." Problem: she lives in Seattle, and none of the ranges there will allow her to fire lead ammo on their range. She has to come to Tacoma to do that. Which she's willing to do, but one of the reasons she wants a load she can comfortably control is that she's a serious Libertarian, and wants to be able to go to the weekly Libertarian Shooting Club meetings (yes, there actually is such a thing) and they shoot, you guessed it, on a range in Seattle that doesn't allow my lead bullet reloads.

So now I need to come up with a minimum recoil load in .38 Special, and it has to use a jacketed bullet. Which, I have to say, is a pain in the ass. I mean, really, coming up with an ultra-light recoil .38 Special load is generally simple. Start with a 148-gr. LSWC and.... Anyway, I chose the Hornady 158-gr. FMJ for my jacketed bullet. Now I need suggestions for powder and charge weight. Long range accuracy is not a concern, simply minimum recoil.

[gm iprod]

Duane,

Try this lot. I have personally let 8year olds shoot an old 4" Colt Police Positive (ex Royal Hong Kong Police Service) with the clays version.

Lightest to hottest (if you could call them that )

158gr Hornady, Zero, Montana Gold or Sierra JHP. I have shot them all, velocities nearly identical. I prefer Zero or Sierra.

3.0gr Clays = 590fps,

3.2gr HP38 or 231 = 610-620,

3.4gr Titegroup = 634,

3.0gr Bullseye = 650,

I have also found some old data for this.

Hi-Skor 700x 3.1gr = 650fps

Norma R1 3.0gr = 655fps

Red Dot 2.9gr = 590fps 3.3gr = 650fps

Absolutely next to no crimp, only just visible signs of the case being touched buy the taper crimp I use.

Velocities (on my loads) are an average of 12 rounds fired at 2 Meters. Extreme spreads (by memory) were not flash so I did not record them. Accuracy was slightly above average. I noted about 6-7 out of 10 in my reloading log. But the sights on the Colt are pretty rough.

What I did try and the accuracy was not any better to justify the extra work, was a 158gr FMJ (I can't remember the brand) loaded backwards and seated fluch to reduce case capacity and about 2.0gr Clays. Velocity was about 500fps in a 6" 686, but there was very little recoil if any at all. The only problem was when you shot at 50y and used a heavy card for the target backer the projectiles would not penetrate fully through both target and backer.

Very dangerous on steel. They can come back fully formed and not much slower than when they left.

Let me know how it works out for you.

[shred]

Does it have to be jacketed, or will plated lead be acceptable? If that's the case, Ranier, among others make all sorts of useful weights and shapes.

(yeah, I know you already picked a bullet, but I have no useful data for those)

[GvU]

Be carefull about these low velocity loads. The powder position will affect ignition. Even with a bit less than "normal" loads you can experience low velocities at the first shot.

In longer barrels like 5-6" the bullet can even stick in the barrel. Because the bullet jumps the cylindergap enough noise is produced to lead you thinking a shot has fired, but the bullet may not have left the barrel (no recoil).

A couple of years ago I stopped someone with 8 bullets stuck in the barrel (S&W 627)! He complained after 6 misses, I missed seeing his 7th shot, his 8th did't move the gun at all. It took 1,5 hours to draw the bullets from the barrel (there was no room for an extra bullet) and (lucky him) it showed no dammage.

Best approach: Deep seating (thats where wadcutters shine).

Try to find plated wadcutters and use a fast and preferably a bulky powder. I even used plated 148 HB-WC, probably Frontier (South African), but I wonder if they are available in the US.

My prefered WC loads are about 700 fps and loaded with 2.5 (lead) - 2.8 - 3.0 (plated) VV N310 from a 6" S&W M14-5 (the lead ones are more accurate, some cast holding 1" at 50m).

Pachmayer grips are a bit heavier, which reduces recoil a bit as well.

John

[GvU]

PS A .32 Might be an even better solution to a recoil problem.

John

[Patrick Sweeney]

Berry Bullets makes a jacketed/plated hbwc. That might solve all your problems.

[Duane Thomas]

What I did try and the accuracy was not any better to justify the extra work, was a 158gr FMJ (I can't remember the brand) loaded backwards and seated fluch to reduce case capacity and about 2.0gr Clays. Velocity was about 500fps in a 6" 686, but there was very little recoil if any at all. The only problem was when you shot at 50y and used a heavy card for the target backer the projectiles would not penetrate fully through both target and backer.

Very dangerous on steel. They can come back fully formed and not much slower than when they left.

gm iprod,

Would you use these loads on an indoor range that has a metal backstop 50 feet or 25 yards downrange? I would assume most ranges would have angled metal baffles to deflect bullets down into a bullet trap, right?

My FMJs are roundnoses. Might that lead to flame cutting? Though again, at close range - which is all Bonnie will ever use them for - does it really matter.

[Duane Thomas]

PS A .32 Might be an even better solution to a recoil problem.

John

Maybe true. But Bonnie's in love with her pretty stainless .38.

Women. Go figure.

[MoNsTeR]

I like the plated 148gr wadcutters and 125gr flat points for super-light .38's. Titegroup has proved a good choice, as it's supposed to be position-insensitive. I also like AA#5 or Clays with the 148's.

I wish there was a Libertarian Shooting Club around these parts

[gm iprod]

Duane,

On angled back plates I think they will be fine. It seems that if the steel is vertical or near vertical the problem rears it's ugly head. At 15yards or more I can't foresee any difficulties on angled plate. If there is some kind of wood frame holding the targets up then that will prevent a lot of the backsplash.

The projectile was a truncated conical nose shaped like a Sierra 158gr JSP. They were definetly not a Sierra though. I have not kept accurate records of that load as we went to a hollowbase wadcutter round the wrong way and got better results. Although there could be gas cutting (in theory) I suspect that with the miniscule amount of very fast powder that will not be a problem. According to all the crap that I have read on boattails (and this would qualify) the problem seems to exists more with large loads of rifle burn rate powder and extremely high velocities and therefore high pressures. We appear to be working with neither.

IM not so HO.

I agree with Pat, I would check to see if plated projectiles would / could be sneaked past the range officials, as these seem to be easiest to reload.

Let me know how it all works out. My 8 year old is annoying me to take her to the pistol club again. I think I can manage to con the lady of the house that this is all just so SHE can have a go, and I would gain nothing out of it (except maybe another excuse to by another pistol, rifle, shotgun, small hand held SAM).

[Duane Thomas]

My FMJs are roundnoses. Might that lead to flame cutting?

Actually, I misspoke. The bullets are XTPs with a TC shape. That's what I get for not reading the boxes well enough when stuff comes in. Shouldn't make any difference, just mentioning that in the interests of getting the facts straight.

[gm iprod]

Found some more old data. Circa 1985 Lyman Pistol & evolver Handbook.

158gr Hornady HP. 4" Barrel

Blue Dot 6.0gr = 546fps

125gr Hornady (you will love this)

2.8gr 700X = 473fps. If you don't like the look of the shot you have time to get in front and knock it into the centre.

They list an even slower load with something called AL-8?????

I wandered into a second hand book shop today (suppossed to be on my way to Dr. for blood pressure test) and found a much better way to relax, they had a couple of these old Lyman reloading manuals and a book on Colt Firearms 1836-1960 by J E Serven. Real Cheap.

The quack was a bit grouchy about me being late and the BP was a little high