38s Oal?

[Litespeed]

Hi all,

I'm new around here, what a great hangout! After years of shooting a 5" 45 ACP, I'm now shooting a 38 Super Commander in IDPA/steel, and need to work up loads. Standard, non-ramped Colt barrel.

Making diligent use of the 'search' function here, I've noticed that many Super shooters are loading to 1.230-1.250ish. Factory loads, ball and Silvertip, measure in the 1.270 range.

What is the advantage of loading shorter? Feeding in open guns? Or just a function of the particular bullet being used vs. amount of leade/freebore in the particular barrel (I.e some truncated cones need to be seated deeper)?

My initial inclination was to load in the 1.250-1.260 range, as that's what's worked best in 45. Any input much appreciated!

Stan

[BrianH]

Sometimes the bullet nose will stick on the inside of the mag body.

[reneet]

I don't have any personal experience with 38 Super in a single stack but can tell you that 1.240 is the oal I've settled on for my STI but Wide Body caspian I used to shoot would take 1.260 oal so that's what I would feed it. I haven't noticed alot of variance dependent upon bullet shape. Generally speaking, the single stack should allow for a longer oal.

Load them as long as possible so that you can load your mag to full capacity as long as that length feeds in your particular gun.

[Bucky]

One of the reason people give for loading longer in the .38 super is improper rim stacking - with the .38 super being a semi rimmed case. In other words, the rim of the top round in the mag gets behind the round beneath it. So, when the slide strips the round, it has a lot more resistance as the top rim has to jump under the one beneath it. I'm not sure if the factory is taking this into consideration with their long length.

That being said, I generally run 1.250 in my single stack with round nose. Sometimes a wee bit shorter with flat points or hollow point.