Testing some .38 S&W

[tinkerpearce]

I've been testing a lot of obsolete calibers lately with my new Caldwell Chronograph. It's been interesting. I started the tests using my S&W .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model and a Harrington and Richardson .38 Hammerless with a 3-1/4" barrel. The H&R turned out to be a 'slow gun,' consistently achieving lower velocities than the S&W, despite having a barrel twice as long.




For this series of tests I replaced the H&R with a S&W .38 Double Action 2nd Model with a 3-1/4" barrel, and this worked as you would expect, with the longer barrel yielding higher velocities.




We’ll start with listing the Winchester factory ammo for comparison.



Winchester 145gr. (modern) factory ammunition



S&W- 1-5/8″ barrel- 535 fps. 92 ft./lbs SD: 39



H&R- 3-1/4″ barrel- 478 fps. 74 ft./lbs SD: 42



Deeply unimpressive, and one of the reasons for this became plain when I pulled several of the bullets to try a different load under them. They are not .361″. They are not .357″. They average .352″! This was consistent across all fifteen bullets that I pulled, and may go a ways towards explaining the results of this first load-



Winchester 145gr RNL, 2.8gr. Unique, CCI500 primer



S&W 3-1/4″ barrel- 540 fps. 94 ft/lbs SD: 28



This performance is similar to the results for firing the factory ammo through the 1-5/8″ gun last time, and the bullets keyholed at 7 yards. I didn’t even bother to test them out of the shorter gun. Next…!



160gr. .361 LSWC, 2.7gr. Unique, CCI500 primer



S&W 3-1/4″ barrel- 754 fps. 202 ft./lbs SD: 24



S&W 1-5/8″ Barrel- 722 fps. 185 ft/lbs SD: 31



This load, while still considered safe for top-break revolvers, doubles the power of the factory load, and is my new defensive load for this caliber. I will restrict this to my S&Ws, though. They are of high enough quality to handle this load, but even they won’t be getting it as a steady diet; there’s simply no need to risk beating up an antique gun when practice and recreational shooting can be accomplished with milder loads.

This week I'll be testing some Triple-7 FFFg (a black powder substitute) loads intended to replicate the original performance of some old cartridges, including .38 S&W.  I've loaded a 145gr/.361 LRN over 7gr. (by weight) of powder; ought to be a fair approximation of the 1877 load.

 
All of these loads user Triple-7 FFFg and CCI500 primers (except the .450 Adams, as noted below.) .32 S&W, 88gr LRN over 3.5gr.,  .32 Colt Long, 88gr heel-base RNL over 6.8gr.,  .32 S&W Long, 98gr LRN over 9.0gr., .38 S&W (per above) 
I'm actually going the opposite direction with the .450 Adams shown; I've already done BP loads, now I am working on smokeless loads. This one is a 200gr. TCL over 4.5gr. of Unique. I'll be shooting it first in a .45 Colt revolver, and if velocity and recoil are OK I may try it in my Webley RIC.

[x101airborne]

I wish I could afford to buy you a pressure testing fixture.
Love reading your articles!

[bradshaw]

Tinkerpiece.... this installment of your episodic report on pocket pistols evokes memory of my first visit to Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. In hand of parents, probably six years old, fascinated with Abraham Lincoln, his death removed from the abstract of death once my eyes fell upon the assassin's Deringer. A percussion single shot----memory says 41 caliber----made in Philadelphia by Henry Deringer. In those days you were so close to the artifacts.... Washington, D.C. is a compact city; certainly then, with Ford’s Theater just a life-scale doll house, small. Access to the balcony where the President and First lady sat, a small space with stepped floor; architecture scaled to a shorter average height than now. And then, the rooming house across the street, another doll house. Up narrow steep stairs to shrunken room, the short bed they laid Lincoln diagonally, and still he was too long. Here he died.

Don’t remember whether the ball or conical fired into Lincoln’s head was on display. Vague memory of such; perhaps just a bullet that fit the gun. We were less squeamish in those days: exhibits of blood-soaked flak jackets, bullet hole through a pack of Lucky Strikes, a bullet hole through a bible. Siamese twins and chunks of syphilis floating in glass tanks of formaldehyde at the Smithsonian, along with, from Hiroshima, sand melted into glass, and other material, human and otherwise, burned to charcoal.

Looking up Deringer today, weapon used on Lincoln described as a “.44”. And the possibility of it having been stolen, ostensibly recovered and examined for authenticity by the FBI. And now called a forty-four. Incongruous, no?

To bring it home, have you a caplock of dimensions to approximate velocity of Henry Deringer’s popular pocket pistol? With conical and ball?
David Bradshaw

[coltnewservice45]

Some .38 S&W velocity data:

Velocity Data of Factory .38 S&W Loads vs. Cylinder Gap and Barrel length:

Firearm_________S&W 32-1__________Colt_______Ruger_____S&W Victory___Rook Rifle
Barrel length__________2”__________4”_________4”___________5”___________20”
Cyl.Gap____pass0.004/hold0.005__0.005/.006__.004/.005__.008/.009_____Solid bbl.
Ammunition_______________________________________________________
FN Mk2z___________577,8 Sd_______616, 10______618,19 ____571,22_____Bullet stuck in bbl!
Kynoch 146LRN_____623, 26 ________649, 31______650,22_____685, 22____848, 7
WRA 146LRN (WW2)__659, 10_______701, 13______727, 5_____681, 14____787, 14
Rem-UMC 146 LRN___668, 22_______768, 14_______765, 15____754, 10____920, 14
Fiocchi 146 LRN_____706, 12________809, 21______820, 23____709, 24____985, 9
R-P 146 LRN_______603, 14_________674, 12______697,18_____627,22____790,10
W-W 146 LRN______586, 18_________593, 36______662, 29____620, 19____801, 12

Column Mean_______631____________687__________705______664_______855