UPDATE: Remington

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1 More BANG for the $$$: Economical, Hi-Po Handgun Loads! UPDATE: Remington Classic Loads:.38 Super &.38 S&W TESTED: SUPER-ACCURATE 6MM LOADS! The BR Is Back! Savages s Bench Rest 6mm August 2009 No. 261 Rifle Magazine Presents - HANDLOADER $ Printed in USA $5.99 U.S./Canada

2 August 2009 Volume 44, Number 4 ISSN Issue No Reference Books Reloader s Press - Dave Scovill.307 Winchester Bullets & Brass - Brian Pearce The Prairie Dog Gun Pistol Pointers - Charles E. Petty 7.65 Mauser Cartridge Board - Gil Sengel Custom Bullet Casters: Large and Small Mike s Shootin Shack - Mike Venturino Hodgdon H-322 Propellant Profiles - R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. Colt Single Action Army Goes Fully Automatic From the Hip - Brian Pearce The BR Is Back Savage s Bench Rest 6mm Charles E. Petty 44 Economical, High- Performance Handgun Loads Get More Bang for the $ Brian Pearce Remington Update on Nosler Model 48 John Haviland 64 Auto Versus Revolver Accuracy Investigating the Myth Ron Terrell Page Page Page Background Photo: 2009 Royal Tine Images

3 On the cover... Savage Model 12 6mm Norma BR (12-inch twist) is shown with a Zeiss Victory Diavari 6-24x56 T* scope. Rifle photos by G. Hudson. Page 44 Page 54 Page S&W,.38 Super Obsolete but Not Overlooked Mike Venturino Turning Powder into Velocity Efficiency by the Numbers Ed Gilfillan Rigel Jag Brushes Inside Product News - Clair Rees Issue No. 261 August 2009 AMMUNITION RELOADING JOURNAL Publisher/President Don Polacek Associate Publisher Mark Harris Editor in Chief Dave Scovill Managing Editor Roberta Scovill Art Director Gerald Hudson Production Director Becky Pinkley Contributing Editors Associate Editor Al Miller John Haviland Ron Spomer Brian Pearce Stan Trzoniec Charles E. Petty R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. Clair Rees Mike Venturino Gil Sengel Ken Waters Advertising Advertising Director - Stefanie Ramsey stefanie@riflemag.com Advertising Representative - Tom Bowman bowmant@sbcglobal.net Advertising Information: Circulation Circulation Manager Michele Elfenbein circ@riflemagazine.com Subscription Information: Page Publisher of Handloader is not responsible for mishaps of any nature that might occur from use of published loading data or from recommendations by any member of The Staff. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Publisher assumes all North American Rights upon acceptance and payment for all manuscripts. Although all possible care is exercised, the publisher cannot accept responsibility for lost or mutilated manuscripts. Handloader (ISSN ) is published bimonthly by Polacek Publishing Corporation, dba Wolfe Publishing Company (Don Polacek, Pres - ident), 2625 Stearman Rd., Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona (also publisher of Rifle magazine). Tele - phone: (928) Periodical Postage paid at Prescott, Arizona, and additional mailing offices. Subscription prices: U.S. possessions single issue, $5.99; 6 issues, $22.97; 12 issues, $ Foreign and Canada single issue, $5.99; 6 issues $29.00; 12 issues, $ Please allow 8-10 weeks for first issue. Advertising rates furnished on request. All rights reserved. Change of address: Please give six weeks notice. Send both the old and new address, plus mailing label if possible, to Circulation Dept., Handloader Magazine, 2625 Stearman Rd., Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Handloader, 2625 Stearman Rd., Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona Wolfe Publishing Company 2625 Stearman Rd. Suite A Prescott, AZ Tel: (928) Fax: (928) Polacek Publishing Corporation 6 Background Photo: 2009 Royal Tine Images

4 PISTOL POINTERS Iam not one to name my guns, and since Rod the Wonder Pistol is already taken, I haven t come up with anything cool. This one was christened for me, and I really would like to remember who called my Kimber the Prairie Dog Gun, but I m sure glad he did. I can, however, vividly recall how the name came about. Montana prairie dog country. It all began in March 1999, when I received a Kimber Super Match for an article, liked it and when the story was done sent a check. The gun sat around until one day I got a new Kart Easy Fit barrel to test. Carefully following Kart s directions, the barrel was fitted and off to the range it went. For the life of me I cannot find the test results with the new barrel but distinctly recall that quite a few groups were under 2 inches at 50 yards. At our range there are a bunch THE PRAIRIE DOG GUN by Charles E. Petty of round, steel targets that vary in size from 3 to 14 inches in diameter. They are 70 yards away. There is something undeniably satisfying about firing a shot, seeing and hearing a bullet hit the steel; but the load must be selected with care, for if the bullet gets there too fast, the bang drowns out the clang. A.45 ACP at around 800 fps has an ideal The steel training plate offers a tune-up for the real deal. bang/clang interval. The rebarreled Kimber was great for this, and unless I did something stupid, it would boringly ring the 14- inch gong at 70 yards and hit the smaller sizes with satisfying regularity. One day, shooting from a barricade rest position, it hit 50 straight on the big one. For quite a few years, I ve been making trips out West to the Dakotas, Colorado, Montana or Wyoming to protect humanity from the vicious prairie dogs, so I decided to take the Kimber along. That first morning when I went out with the gun in a holster, I was the object of some ridicule. Several comments were too crude to repeat, but the theme was, Why the **bleep** are you carrying that? My reply, I thought I d shoot a prairie dog. Oh, sure, they said. When we arrived at the dog town and began to set up, someone spotted a dog up the hill a bit and pointed it out to me. One of the other shooters had a laser rangefinder binocular and was locked on when the dog died. The range, 117 yards. There were some oohs and aahs, but the guide was adamant: You missed, he gloated. Let s go see. So we trudged up the hill, and as we neared the mound, the guide kept up an endless stream: There s no blood. He just went down the hole.... I felt good about the shot, but the absence of blood was a bit worrisome. I don t think so, I said. Don t see no dead dog, said he. 16

5 VICKERMAN Inline Seating Die GMW, Inc. Tel: Target and Vintage Scope Repair Parsons Scope Service P.O. Box 192, Ross, OH Cleaning, reticles, complete restoration Please call for information Specialists in vintage scope repair since 1989 THUMLER S TUMBLER 18 But when I looked down the hole there he was doornail dead. With all the cool I could muster I said, Look here a minute. You could see a worried frown appear, but he ambled over and gazed down into the hole. You re one lucky suumbitch he drawled. It was more fun than you can imagine to wipe the smirk off his face. From that moment on, a tradition was born, and the Prairie Dog Gun has gone with me every time. Of course, I ve missed far more than I ve hit, but the witnesses who haven t seen it before are almost always impressed. Naturally I don t tell them about the hundreds of rounds I shoot in preparation. Nor do I tell them about the steel prairie dog at the range. Most people call it a pepper popper. It s about inches wide at the base with a 4 inch diameter round portion in the middle, tapers to 2 inches wide at the top, stands 13 inches tall and is 70 yards downrange. It is a great training aid, and hitting it two or three out of five shots is an accomplishment. More often than not, it s one for five or sometimes even none, but it is so demanding that 10 shots are about all the fun you want. Now I am not one to apply spe- BRASS MASTER ULTRA VIBE CASE CLEANERS Made of durable steel construction - heavy polyethylene bowl - heavyduty, sealed ballbearing motors - thermally protected - fast, quiet operation to gallon capacity - industrial and rotary models available. Send for our free brochure! TRU-SQUARE METAL PRODUCTS, INC. P.O. Box 585, Auburn, Washington TEL (253) or Toll Free 1-(800) FAX (253) Manufacturers of quality case cleaners, deburring and tumbling equipment since 1959 Greta Edwards loves the Prairie Dog Gun. cial powers to inanimate objects, but others have, and it would be unseemly of me to tell them otherwise. Nor am I the only one to benefit from this special pistol. More than a few have shot it and done well, and my friend Tim Burke, who owns guns that are surely its equal in accuracy, has used the word magic to describe it. One of my students, a lovely lady named Greta Edwards, who once cringed at the thought of shooting a.45 now gets a bit huffy if I don t bring it when we shoot. And she routinely hits the little, steel prairie dog much to the amazement and chagrin of the macho men who know better than to even try. Even though I pride myself on highly developed critical thinking skills and objectivity, I know this gun is special. It really isn t bragging to report on feats of marksmanship if they are witnessed by enough people. My only claim is to have been the intermediary when the gun spoke, but the thing that really started it all was an evil scheme by my shooting buddy Bob Bryant, who one day perched a golf ball on top of a pole 70 yards downrange. Hit that, he said. One shot... one kill. It doesn t get much better than that.

6 Mike s British military Enfield No. 2.38/200 is marked RAF (Royal Air Force) and dated Facing page: U.S. Fire Arms Model Super. Mike Venturino Photos by Yvonne Venturino Has a label on a set of reloading dies ever inspired a gun magazine article? That s exactly how this one came about. A few years back in a fit of affluence, I bought a very uncharacteristic handgun for myself. It is a British Enfield No. 2 chambered for what its military called the.38/200. Mostly it caught my fancy by its RAF (Royal Air Force) stamping and 1936 date. Having no experience with the.38/200 except knowing it was merely a variation on the.38 S&W, which had been around since the 1870s, no reloading dies for it were on my bench. Therefore, a Lyman set was ordered. When it arrived it was surprising to see that the label read thusly:.38 Super Auto/S&W. It is not surprising that one set of dies can reload.38 Auto and.38 Super; they are the same dimensionally but were loaded to different pressure and velocity levels. But the same dies for the.38 S&W? It is a revolver cartridge that differs significantly dimensionally, and both pressure- and velocity-wise from either the.38

7 S&W Obsolete but Not Overlooked Super Auto or.38 Super. So this set of dies gave me reason to use that new favorite word of mine conundrum. It was a puzzle to me how that single threedie set could load two such different rounds. Before getting into the results of my loading experiences however, let s take a look at these cartridges. As said the.38 S&W predated the two semiautomatic pistol rounds by decades. Sources vary as to the exact year of introduction, but it s safe to say that the Smith & Wesson Company brought out.38 S&W revolvers in the mid-1870s. Those were the Model No. 2 top-break versions that quickly and collectively gained the nickname of Baby Russians. Thereafter, untold thousands, perhaps even millions, of small frame revolvers of both excellent and shameful quality were chambered for the round. Smith & Wesson switched to side-swing cylinders in its newly introduced K- frame revolvers of the late 1890s. Also introduced was the significantly more powerful.38 Special for those handguns. Still the old.38 S&W was chambered in the same handguns as an option. According to Charles R. Suydam s book U.S. Cartridges and Their Handguns: , the.38 S&W originally used roundnose bullets weighing 145 to 150 grains over 14 to 15 grains of black powder. He goes on to say that when the transition was made to smokeless propellants, the powder charges were 2.1 to 2.3 grains of Bullseye. Another item in Suydam s coverage of this cartridge is that when it was loaded with a 200-grain roundnose bullet, it was given the name.38 Super Police. Another variation of it was termed the.38 Colt Police, and it differed only in having a flatnose bullet. It is difficult to pinpoint exact ballistics for those black powder and smokeless powder charges with the wide variety of bullet weights, but all would have fallen in the 600- to 700-fps range. August-September

8 .38 S&W.38 Super The.38 S&W originally used roundnose bullets weighing 145 to 150 grains over 14 to 15 grains of black powder. It was that particular 200-grain loading that caught the British military s fancy. In the 1920s after testing, they felt it would give the same results in combat as their.455 Webley with its 265-grain bullet at about 630 fps but would allow them to adopt much smaller, lighter handguns. An interesting tidbit, which I have not actually verified, is that when World War II began, the Brits were using their Enfield No. 2 revolvers with.38/200 loads featuring 200-grain lead bullets. That is a major no-no according to the Geneva Conventions, and the Germans said they would execute British officers taken prisoner with such loads on their persons. For that reason the Brits went to a full-metal-jacketed (FMJ) bullet, but that caused a reduction in bullet weight to 178 grains. Whether that story is true or not makes no difference. The fact remains that the World War II British military load does use an FMJ bullet instead of a lead one. (I found a single round of it at a gun show, but I m not about to pull it apart just to see what its bullet actually weighs.) About a quarter century after the.38 S&W s intro- For comparison a.380 Auto (far left) is shown with a 9mm Parabellum (second from left). At far right is the.38 Super next to a.38 Auto. It was the label on this box of Lyman reloading dies that piqued Mike s interest and got him to loading both.38 S&W and.38 Super. duction came America s first.38-caliber semiautomatic pistol cartridge. That was for the Browning designed Colt Models 1900 and Compared to the old.38 S&W, it was a mighty round with a 130-grain FMJ bullet zipping along at about 1,100 fps. Even with such ballistics, the Model 1902 s sales went nowhere. The problem was size. The.38 S&W was being chambered in an entire genre of pocket pistols, but the Colt.38 Automatic was a full-size handgun. Now fast forward nearly three decades, and somebody at Colt had a brainstorm. The Colt Government Model (aka Models 1911 and 1911A1) was a much superior pistol to the old Model It was also stronger. So in those days before an overabundance of lawyers, Colt in collaboration with the ammunition manufacturers developed the.38 Super. It was nothing more than the.38 Auto souped up to give 1,300 fps with the same 130-grain FMJ bullets fired from the same cartridge cases. The higher pressure of the.38 Super should never be subjected to the older Colt.38 Autos. Most likely Colt s management felt that gun buyers were smart enough to put the proper cartridges in their handguns, which has been proven not to be the case at all. Anyway, These three cartridges are variations of the.38 S&W. At left is a.38 Colt New Police. It differs from.38 S&W only in that it is loaded with a flatnose bullet. Center is a.38 S&W with a roundnose bullet. A British.38/200 FMJ military load is on the right. 72

9 Mike used an assortment of components and powders in shooting and reloading for the.38 S&W and.38 Super. the.38 Super never set any sales records either, although it did gain some popularity in Spanishspeaking countries. Now let s examine some of the measurements of these two vastly different rounds, considering the.38 Auto and.38 Super as one and the.38 S&W as the other. The.38 S&W uses a rimmed case only.775 inch long with a rim diameter of.440 inch. Its nominal bullet diameter is variously given as.359 inch (Cartridges of the World 9th Edition),.360 inch (Speer Reloading Manual #14) and.361 inch (Lyman Reloading Handbook #49). Speer s book indicates the industry standard pressure is 13,000 CUP (copper units of pressure). The.38 Auto/Super case length For handloading the.38 S&W, Mike used Lyman , a roundnose/flatpoint, and Lyman , a roundnose. From 1-20 (tin-to-lead) alloy, they weighed 164 and 200 grains, respectively. is.90 inch. Industry standard bullet diameter is given as.356 inch, but we need to clarify that fact shortly. Originally the.38 Super case was made only as a semirimmed type, as opposed to the regular rimless case most popular for autoloading pistol cartridges. That means it has a small rim. Cartridge drawings from several reloading manuals nominally give rim diameter as.406 inch and case body diameter of.384 inch. For decades the.38 Super was plagued with a poor accuracy reputation, but brighter lights of more recent decades finally pinned down that such was due to the cartridge headspacing on that tiny rim. When pistol barrels were set up to headspace on the case mouth, the same as with the 9mm Parabellum or.45 Auto, then accuracy improved dramatically. My Winchester.38 Super cases actually measure.403 inch on their rims. To that end Starline began making.38 Super brass without the wide rim albeit not making it entirely rimless. Mine have a rim diameter of.385 inch. Now that would make the.38 Super cases Mike used four bullets in the.38 Super. From left to right (with respective loaded rounds): RCBS 9mm-12-RN, Sierra 125-grain JHC, Oregon Trail 145-grain roundnose and Speer 147-grain JHP. August-September

10 .38 S&W.38 Super The only thing the two.38s share is the same shellholder. In a bygone era, some surplus firearms distributors rechambered.38 S&W revolvers to.38 S&W Special just because that made them easier to sell never mind that.38 S&W Special cases fired in them bulged excessively or even split when fired. If memrimless, except that not one.38 Super case in my possession has a body diameter of.384 inch. Factory loads and those Starline cases all measure.379 inch at the case body immediately ahead of the extractor groove. Anyway, the Starline.38 Super cases carry the word comp along with the caliber stamp, meaning those cases are specifically made for competition. That brings us to an interesting division nowadays between the.38 S&W and.38 Super. Both rounds were originally developed for defensive purposes, with the.38 S&W in the guise of the British.38/200 version actually serving as standard military issue for a major power in a world war. Nowadays the.38 Super is primarily a competition cartridge among the IPSC shooters and other types of handgun speed shooting. Few handguns are being marketed for it toward the self/home defense sector. That said, it should be noted that some loads are still made with self-protection in mind. Two are included in the accompanying table. Conversely, the.38 S&W is nearly a dead deal, mostly of interest to historically minded shooters like myself. Mind you I said nearly not completely, because in a gun store here in Montana a few days before this writing, I did notice some Winchester brand.38 S&W factory loads of recent manufacture. Starline s.38 Super comp cases have a rim diameter of.385 inch. Winchester s.38 Super cases have a rim diameter of.403 inch. They were the traditional 146- grain lead roundnose type. At this point it must be stressed that despite their similar names, the.38 S&W and.38 S&W Special are in no way interchangeable. They are not just longer and shorter versions of the same theme. Besides, having a bullet nominally.002,.003 or.004 inch over the.38 Special s, depending on whose source you accept, the body of the.38 S&W case just ahead of the rim is.386 inch. The.38 Super never set any sales records. (Again, nominally that s another word I love!) The.38 S&W Special s measurement at that point is only.379 inch. However, if your.38 S&W Special revolver will accept.38 S&W rounds, then there is something wrong with it. And likewise if the.775-inch chamber of a.38 S&W will accept the 1.16 inch long.38 S&W Special case, there is something wrong with it. Table I.38 S&W Enfield No. 2 with 4-Inch Barrel bullet powder charge velocity variation comments (grains) (grains) (fps) (fps) 164 RCBS CM RN/FP Bullseye bullet impacts low with all charges Titegroup True Blue Lyman RN Bullseye bullet can duplicate British military ballistics with proper charges Titegroup will be using load from now on True Blue very low velocity 145 RN Remington factory load RN Winchester factory load Notes: All chronographing done with an Oehler Model 35P with start screen at approximately 6 feet. All handloads used Starline brass and Winchester Small Pistol primers. All bullets cast of 1-20 (tin-to-lead) alloy, sized to.359 inch and lubed with SPG. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. 74

11 .38 S&W.38 Super This 25-yard group with the Oregon Trail 145-grain cast roundnose was among the best groups fired with the USFA Model The Lyman , 200-grain cast roundnose produced some of the best groups with the Enfield No. 2.38/200 revolver. Simple Addition Now one Universal Charge Bar for lead shot, steel shot and bismuth! Add the Model C/CS or D/DS to your MEC shotshell reloader for just $31.95 and you won t have to spend the $300+ to buy 42 powder bushings and 23 standard charge bars. Each bar comes with a Powder & Shot Chart with 487 settings. Model C/CS works with MEC 600 Jr., Sizemaster 77, etc. Model D/DS works with MEC Grabber, MEC 650, etc. Models C/CS and D/DS Features & Benefits: Handles all gauges. Lead shot capacity: 1/2 oz to 2 1/4 oz. Steel shot capacity: 1/2 oz to 1 1/2 oz. Powder capacity: 12 grs. to 55 grs. 3-year guarantee...but it will last a lifetime! Available at major shooting sports distributors and gun dealers ory serves me correctly, in Dallas that day of the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald used such a rechambered S&W revolver to shoot Dallas police officer J.D. Tippet. Studying all these specifications finally caused me to realize why Lyman sells the same set of dies for both.38 S&W and.38 Super/ Auto. The nominal body diameters of the two cartridges are very close at.386 inch and.384 inch, respectively. Therefore on the surface, resizing the two rounds with one die diameter is feasible. Then reality rears its confused head. Despite the nominal dimensions in cartridge drawings, not one single.38 ACP or.38 Super case in my possession actually measures.384 inch Powder Baffle $7.95 Bar without Baffle $31.95 Bar with Baffle $34.95 Add one of these bars to your MEC Reloader and save more than $300! For more information on all our products ask your dealer or write to.. Multi-Scale Charge Ltd. Precision products that add up to big savings for you E. Robinson Road, P.M.B.#298 Amherst, New York Tel.: (905) chrony@shootingchrony.com at its body. They are uniformly.379 inch. Conundrum! And once full-length sized in the Lyman die, the.38 S&W case is squeezed down to.379 inch. They don t split when fired, so evidently there is no harm done at its very mild pressures. Evidently the same in reverse is not true, meaning firing.38 Special rounds in rechambered.38 S&W K-frame revolvers. Hence the warnings of bulged and split cases from doing so. To handle the case mouth expanding and belling chores, Lyman throws in two plugs for the M-Die supplied. With my set, the one for prepping.38 Super cases measures.352 inch, in order to give a tight grip on the.355-,.356- or.357-inch bullets, whichever ones.38 Super is meant for. For the.359-,.360- or.361-inch bullets that may be loaded in.38 S&W, Lyman s expander plug measures.355 inch. The only other concession to loading two different cartridges with the same set of dies is that two seating stems for differently shaped roundnose bullets are supplied. If the bullets one chooses to load in.38 S&W and.38 Super have similar profiles,

12 Table II.38 Super U.S. Fire Arms Model 1911 with 5-Inch Barrel bullet powder charge velocity variation comments (grains) (grains) (fps) (fps) 124 cast RCBS 9mm-124-RN VV-3N , Silhouette 6.0 1, Unique 6.0 1, two failures to eject 125 Sierra JHP VV-3N , Silhouette 6.5 1, Unique 6.0 1, best jacketed load 145 Oregon Trail cast roundnose VV-3N , Silhouette 6.0 1, Unique 5.0 1, all-around best load for this handgun 147 Speer JHP VV-3N Silhouette 6.0 1, one failure to eject Unique 5.0 1, Silvertip Winchester factory load 1, JHP Cor-Bon factory load 1, duplicates original ballistics 130 FMJ Old Western.38 Auto factory load Notes: Chronographing done with an Oehler Model 35P with start screen at approximately 6 feet. All handloads used Starline brass and Winchester Small Pistol primers. RCBS bullet 9mm-124-RN was cast of Linotype, sized.357 inch and lubed with SPG. Oregon Trail 145-grain cast bullet were sized.356 inch. Jacketed bullets were.355 inch. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. then only one of the stems might be needed. At this point I know someone is asking, What about crimp? If the.38 Super is going to be handloaded so that the cartridge headspaces on its rim, then it can be roll crimped just as with a revolver cartridge. However, if one chooses to handload it in rimless brass like that offered by Starline, then no roll crimp should be applied. Perhaps a taper crimp die might be obtained, although that is not absolutely necessary. It is possible by careful die adjustment to just roll crimp the case mouth back so it is parallel with the sides of the bullet instead of turning it into a crimping groove. With.38 S&W just adjust the seating/crimping die to roll crimp on the bullet as usual with revolver cartridges. Perhaps all the above information would have been moot personally, except that awhile back I also obtained a.38 Super pistol. It is one of those beautiful recreations of the Colt 1911 made by U.S. Fire Arms Mfg. Co. So now I had a reason to put the dual-purpose Lyman.38 Super/.38 S&W dies to the test. In summation they worked perfectly. Because I d had no reloading experience with either.38, considerable time was spent consulting various reloading manuals, both old and new. From that reading four bullets and three powders were chosen for the.38 Super and three powders and two bullets for the.38 S&W. For the autoloader the powders were Alliant Unique, Vihtavuori 3N37 and Western Powder s Silhouette. For the little Enfield, they were Alliant Bullseye, Hodgdon s Titegroup and Western s True Blue. As said earlier sources vary as to what specific bullet diameters are correct for both these.38s. On one hand were.355-inch jacketed hollowpoints (JHPs) weighing 125 and 147 grains: Sierra and Speer brands, respectively. Also some of Oregon Trails.356-inch, 145-grain roundnoses were here. Finally RCBS bullet 9mm-124-RN August-September

13 78 S&W.38 Super for a 124-grain gas check roundnose is my favorite for autoloaders of this bore size. Mine were cast of straight Linotype and sized.357 inch. Shooting expanding type jacketed bullets in the.38 S&W would be a waste. They certainly wouldn t expand at 600 fps and would likely just stick in the revolver s barrel, which raises the question as to why British military loads didn t stick bullets. My guess without pulling apart my single round of such is that the bullet s bearing surface is lead and the nose is capped with a jacket. That s the way U.S. military.38 Special FMJ loads are built. I have pulled those apart in the past. Therefore two cast bullets poured of 1-20 (tin-to-lead) alloy were tried in the little Enfield. The light one was Lyman , a roundnose/flatpoint ostensibly made for the cowboy action shooters. It weighed 164 grains of 1-20 alloy. The heavyweight was Lyman s , a roundnose nominally meant to weigh 195 grains of its No. 2 alloy formula. Mine weighed right at 200 grains of 1-20 alloy. What about the.38 S&W s rather odd nominal bullet size? On my bench is a Lyman cast bullet sizing die labeled.358 inch. It has been with me since 1966 and has sized several hundred thousand bullets, so now they emerge from it as.359 inch. That had to do for the little British sixgun, and in truth it did. The results of all the load combinations tried can be viewed in the accompanying tables, but the following is an overview. First some factory loads were tried with each handgun to set a base line. That was interesting in itself. For instance, the Winchester 125- grain Silvertip factory load was clocked at 1,165 fps, which is no- where near the 1,300 fps billed for the.38 Super. Instead it is almost down to the earlier.38 Auto ballistics. Conversely the Cor-Bon.38 Super loads hit right at original ballistics. Some old.38 Auto factory loads with 130-grain fullmetal-jacket bullets headstamped Western.38 Auto were fired. They were traveling 942 fps. As pertains to handloads, the.38 Super did reasonably well with all powders and bullets, but for a standard load, henceforth I ll rely on that 145-grain cast roundnose by Oregon Trail. It shot well with all three powders, running close to 1,100 fps, but gave its best accuracy with 5.0 grains of good, old Unique. My only complaint about that fine looking USFA Model 1911 was that with most loads it ejected the empty cases right at my head. That is not conducive to good trigger pulls. The reason the 5.0 grains of Unique load became so favored is that the USFA then tossed empty cases somewhere else. Although I ve owned the British Enfield No. 2 for several years, this was the first time it had been shot with anything resembling seriousness. Both Remington and Winchester factory loads with 145- and 146-grain roundnoses were tried. They gave 640 and 627 fps, respectively. What surprised me most about the handloads was the difficulty in getting HOCH CUSTOM BULLET MOULDS Tool room quality, nose-pour, most standard or custom designs made to order. Cylindrical (straight) or tapered. Rifle & pistol designs available. COLORADO SHOOTER S SUPPLY Shop Home N. Delaware Roswell, NM davefarmer@hochmoulds.com

14 a 200-grain bullet up to 600 fps even with powder charges rated as maximum by some manuals. In fact, only with Titegroup did that happen, using a maximum charge of 1.7 grains according to Lyman Reloading Handbook #49. The maximum charge of 1.6 grains of Bullseye only went 582 fps. The Lyman manual indicated fine results with True Blue powder 603 fps with 2.6 grains under the 195-grain bullet. I tried that maximum charge with the 200-grain roundnoses and got only 453 fps. On my own, I decided to up the Bullseye powder charge ever so slightly.2 grain to 1.8 and then to 2.0 grains. Those charges gave me 612 and 636 fps, respectively. Do not do this on your own without some knowledge of the strength of your.38 S&W revolver! I think I ll just stick with the 1.7 grains of Titegroup under the 200-grain bullet. Nowadays the.38 Super is primarily a competition cartridge. volver s front sight. A minor conundrum for you: From a sandbag rest even the 200-grain/1.7-grain Titegroup load impacts a few inches low of aiming point. However, standing up and shooting it two handed from 50 feet, it s right on for elevation. That I can understand. Here s the conundrum. From sandbags it hits about 2 to 3 inches right of point of aim and does likewise when Someone at this point has to be asking, What? No mention of the 164-grain RN/FP? The reason is simple. The Brits regulated the Enfield No. 2 for 200-grain bullets. Mine shoots about a foot low at 25 yards with the 164-grain design. That makes the lighter bullets virtually useless, and I m not about to go filing on this refired single action from standing, but fired double action, it hits right at point of aim. With its very short and smooth double-action trigger pull and very light recoil, the Enfield No. 2 is a sweetheart for double-action work. You might find this funny. I have a few old U.S. Army steel helmets lying about, so one was put on a fence post and plugged with the Enfield.38 from about 30 feet. The helmet barely wobbled and the dent of the 200-grain bullet s impact was barely discernible. My curiosity is now satisfied as to whether one set of dies can actually be used to handload two such different cartridges as the.38 Super and.38 S&W. They can, and in so doing I ve gained a bit of respect for both rounds, especially the little Enfield No. 2 revolver. I already knew that 1911 autoloaders were fun guns to shoot, but now I also know the little Brit revolver is too. August-September