My reloading bench- a work in progress. I’ll be adding at least one shelf above the bench; I’ll certainly need more room when I start reloading shotgun shells.

I’ve always wanted to reload my own ammunition, but there was never room or other priorities were getting in the way. Then a couple of years ago two things happened; my workshop burned down and my wife got me addicted to S&W top-breaks.

Getting me addicted to the top-breaks meant I needed .38 and .32 S&W ammunition. These are not common and are quite expensive to shoot. Reloading was an obvious answer. I also inherited a 7.35mm Carcano rifle, and factory ammunition for that is pretty hard to come by. The shop burning down meant that I got to design my new shop, and I designed it to accommodate space for reloading.

Finances were tight, but eventually I traded for a used press with a set of .38/.357 dies, a buddy sent me four cans of Unique powder and Linda made sure that I got the other tools and sundries needed. I’ve now loaded 250 rounds of .38 S&W and shot 150 of them. Between .38 S&W and .38 Special I’ve now reloaded a total of 550 rounds. It’s been interesting, and 550 seems like a good benchmark to talk about this.

Among the sundries gotten for the purpose were 100 pieces of new Starline .38 S&W brass. For those that don’t know it .38 S&W is a shorter cartridge than .38 Special and it was the first centerfire ‘.38’ cartridge developed by S&W. This means it was originally a black powder cartridge, and of course when they were making the transition to smokeless powder the loads were formulated for revolvers originally intended to fire black powder cartridges. Contrary to the conventional wisdom most ‘black powder’ .38 S&W revolvers are perfectly safe to fire with modern factory ammunition. That being said any antique firearm should be examined by a knowledgable and competent gunsmith before firing.

.38 S&W being the most difficult to obtain and expensive .38 naturally I wanted to reload that first. Like all .38-caliber cartridges it isn’t actually .38 caliber of course- it’s .361. The more common .38 Special is actually .357. I’m not making this up! .361 diameter pistol bullets are a bit thin on the ground; generally one can get 147gr. round nosed lead and that’s pretty much it. This is a pretty unsatisfactory bullet design for defensive use, but fortunately there is an option- the .38/.357 148gr. Hollow-Based Wadcutter. In a .361 bore the pressure from the burning propellant will expand the base and cause it to ‘bump up’ to the larger bore diameter. These bullets have the added advantage that they can be loaded into .38 Special cartridges as well.

Hollow-base Wadcutters as typically loaded into .38 Special

While these will not be an ideal defensive round the are markedly better than a RNL bullet. I checked around for reloading data and found that 2.5 grains of Unique should be a safe and reasonably efficient load in my top-break S&W revolvers. Testing indicated that penetration and accuracy from these reloads is acceptable, and recoil is quite mild. Out of the 1-5/8″ barrels of our guns these rounds are probably going 580-600 fps.

I should note that I was using .38 Special dies for these loads, which does not apply the roll-crimp normally advised for revolver cartridges. The theory is that the heavy crimp is prudent because otherwise the bullets might be dislodged from the cartridges as they are subjected to the repeated recoil of other rounds in the cylinder being fired. Unfortunately .38 Special dies will not permit this in the much shorter .38 S&W cartridge. Given the mild recoil of this round that proved unnecessary; the taper-crimp imparted while seating the bullet is quite sufficient.

Being a ‘noob’ at reloading I tend to be excessively careful, visually verifying the primer and powder charge before seating a bullet. When loading the first 50 rounds I actually weighed every charge. This is completely unnecessary, of course. The Lee Perfect powder measure I am using is a well-proven product and performed flawlessly. After that I was more worried about a double-charge, but these cases are short enough that a double-charge of powder would be obvious a glance. So I glance always glance.

While wadcutters are typically loaded entirely or almost entirely inside the case the .38 S&W is too short for this, so I loaded them to an overall length of 1″, which leaves roughly 3/16″ of the bullet protruding from the case.

S&W .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model with reloaded .38 S&W wadcutter loads. Despite being a full wadcutter these load easily from a speed-strip.

This load is a keeper, so here is the load data. Note that this is not a max load, even for top-break revolvers, and while it ought to safe in any .38 S&W use this load at your own risk.

Hornady 148gr. HBSW, 2.5 grains of Unique and a CCI small pistol primer. Loaded to an overall length of 1.00″ with a taper-crimp.

Having fired 150 rounds of this load I am quite satisfied with them and went ahead and loaded the remaining 100 148gr. HBWCs before moving on to .38 Special loads… but that’s a whole ‘nuther blog post… and it looks like I’ll be branching out to .45 Colt in the near future as well.

Tinker Pearce, 10 April 2017

I don’t suppose it’s any secret that I have a ‘thing’ for percussion revolvers converted to fire cartridges. I also have a thing for Big-bore snub-nosed revolvers. Then I found out the Kirst makes drop-in conversions for a number of reproduction percussion revolvers. I was pretty happy to discover this for obvious reasons.

This brings us to the Colt Walker- the first commercially successful Colt revolver. This was a massive Horse-pistol built with the mission to be able to drop a horse with a single shot.

Reproduction Walker Colt

Originally designed to fire a conical Pickett Bullet on top of a charge of 60 grains of black powder. These bullets were fussy; they had very little bearing surface and if carelessly loaded they could tilt in the bore and accuracy when this happened was terrible. People took to loading them with ball or more conventional bullets. With the long barrel and heavy powder charge these were arguably the most powerful handgun available until the introduction of the .357 Magnum.

Obviously this would be a ludicrous candidate to be turned into a snubby, but a shorter, handier version might be neat… especially with a Kirst conversion to .45 Colt.

.45 Walker reproduction with a Kirst gated cartridge conversion.

But this is such a large gun that the cylinder is quite long for .45 Colt. Considering that significantly smaller and handier guns can be converted to this cartridge it seemed silly to convert a Walker to fire it.

The .45 Colt fired a conical bullet on top of a charge of 40 grains of Black powder… but the Walker fired a bullet on top of 60 grains of Black Powder… 50% more powerful. But given how long the cylinder is what if one bored the cylinder out for a longer cartridge- a .45-60 as it were?

Concept of a ‘long cylinder’ cartridge conversion with a 5-1/2″barrel

The Walker revolver could take a 60-grain charge of black powder and it’s cylinder was iron. Modern reproductions are made of steel and are significantly tougher. It ought to work…

It does, and someone beat me to it. It’s called the .45 BPM (Black Powder Magnum.)

Colt Walker conversion with .45 BPM and .45 Colt for comparison

With various loads this cartridge develops 500-600 ft.lbs. of energy at the muzzle. It’s is loaded into .460 S&W Magnum brass. The Kirst cylinder has to be reamed out for the extra length and the rim recesses have to be enlarged to accommodate the larger-diameter rims of the .460.  I immediately cringed at the thought of some idiot sticking a .460 Magnum shell in the gun… which would explode when fired. But factory .460 ammunition would actually stick out of the front of the cylinder and prevent the gun from functioning.

My dream of a Walker Cartridge Conversion in a worthy cartridge seemed much more realistic. But not without issues… this cartridge was designed to be fired from a 9″ barrel, and with some loads there isn’t much point in going beyond 50-52 Grains of black powder. There’s a point of diminishing returns where adding more powder just means more smoke and fire, and that point would be at an even lower threshold with a 5 to 5-1/2″ barrel. Essentially the power of the .45 BPM would be wasted in the shorter gun.

OK, but there should till be room for improvement over .45 Colt. Suppose one shortened the .460 brass to a length between .460 and .454 Casull? Turned down the rim to the same diameter as .45 Colt instead on enlarging the rim recesses? .460 would not longer chamber at all. Stoke this with 50 grains of black powder behind a 250 grain bullet with proper compression of the powder and while it wouldn’t be as powerful as the .45 BPM it would see significant gains over .45 Colt. This could also be loaded with Red Dot smokeless powder (in a much, much smaller quantity) as this powder mimics the chamber and down-bore pressure curves of Black Powder. Certainly the local indoor ranges would be happier with me if I did this…

So all I have to do is buy the gun, buy the Kirst converter, modify it and invent a new cartridge. Uh, sure. Of course I could just go buy a .45 Colt Ruger Super Blackhawk and load it up to loads just as powerful. But that wouldn’t be nearly as cool, would it?

No. No it would not. Stay tuned- this could happen…

Tinker Pearce, 03 April 2017

With a fresh batch of 100 .38 S&W reloads Mrs.Tinker and I went off to the range this morning. Having adjusted the height of the front sight on her gun I was eager to see if it was hitting closer to point-of-aim. The stars of today’s show-

Our ‘Steampunk Snubbies,’ both S&W .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model, with shortened barrels and improved ergonomics. Linda’s is the nickel gun with the Mother of Pearl grips.

The load we were using in these is a Hornady 148gr. HBWC over 2.5 grains of Unique with CCI small pistol primers.

I fired Linda’s gun first and determined that the lowered front sight provided a decent 6 o’clock hold. We ran a full-torso target out to 7 yards and it was Linda’s turn. “Aim center-mass,” I told her. She nodded and fired. Bam bam bam bam bam. Reload. Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam.

“Um, you’re hitting him in the face…”

“Isn’t that better?” she asked brightly.

I had to allow that it was, but she needed to adjust her grip because she was pulling left. I showed her how and she was ready to go. I told her this time I really wanted her to aim center mass.

More Bams. Good, now she was placing them center-mass. Even more bams.

“So now you are shooting him in the throat?” I asked.

“It’s a compromise,” she said.

OK then. I tried some 7 yard rapid-fire with my gun.

A couple of fliers but I am not really dismayed with the result. Given the tiny, hard-to-see sights and 2-1/4″ sight radius of these DAO guns I pretty OK with our shooting today.

The S&W M1902 .38 Hand Ejector was also trotted out.

Linda had to adjust her grip a bit to get comfortable but was shortly producing decent groups at 7 yards. We were shooting Freedom Munitions 158gr CPHPs, and until she found her grip she found them a bit unpleasant; she is quite recoil-sensitive. Come to that she isn’t in love with the grip on her own .38, but she does love the Mother of Pearl so she’ll put up with it.

Speaking of grips I really like the new grips and grip adapter on the 1902. Very comfortable and secure, easy to index and point. Plus I like the overall vintage appearance.

I’m finding something odd with the M1902. My 7 yard groups are only OK when shooting Double Action, but double the range and the DA group remains the same size. Run it out to 25 yards and the DA group is only about 50% larger. I guess I need more practice. Uh, darn?

Overall a very nice morning at the range, and Linda was very pleased with her shooting. She’s established that she really does like revolvers best and finds them easiest to shoot. Myself I am liking my little top-break more and more.

It was also a real treat to have Linda accompany me; she’s missed the last several outings. Today she rediscovered her love of shooting, so I expect her presence at the range will be less rare in the future.

Tinker Pearce, 02 April 2017