Will this harm a barrel

[TXGunNut]

When I was a police officer and we carried S&W 686's, we qualified with .38 Special ammo. We fired hundreds upon hundreds of rounds over the years with no problems.

My PPC gun was a bit odd in that it was a 586, most were built using 38 Spl cylinders. That gun had approximately 200,000 rounds thru it and the cylinder was cleaned after every match. The ring at the end of the 38 case is visible but a 357 cartridge will easily chamber.

[Char-Gar]

No, it won't harm your barrel. It will crud up the chamber and require cleaning from time to time.

[Texas by God]

My wife's Rossi .357carbine was a cowboy action gun in it's first life. We usually shoot .38 specials in it as well because it feeds them better. In short it has had thousands more .38s than .357s. I clean it yearly if it needs it or not- no problems! Shoot those .38 specials.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

No one is quite certain of how the 7X53 cartridge case came about, but when the Boers were desperate for 7mm Mauser ammunition a large quantity of 7X53mm ammunition was palmed off on them.
The Boers called it the "Kortnek" for short neck cartridge.
It may have been a early incarnation of the 7mm Mauser based on the 7.65X53 Belgian Mauser case, the later 7X57 superceeding it, or unscruplous arms dealers may have made these from 7.65X53 cases they had on hand when the 57mm cases got hard to obtain.
The difference in case length , about .16",was a bit more than the difference between the .38 Special and the .357.

The cases were indeed said to have been supplied from Belgian stocks by a contractor. But I believe they were loaded in the state munitions factory in Pretoria, the former Begbie's foundry, which was more accustomed to industrial explosives. While swelling of the bullet may have been responsible, it isn't the only possibility.

The factory had previously depended heavily on British management, and the Transvaal brought in Italian, Austrian and French workers instead. Deneys Reitz was far from alone in serving as a teenaged Boer guerrilla in 1899 - 1902 and colonel of the Royal Scots Fusiliers in France in 1917-18, and he told of meeting an African employee who was quite alarmed at the casual practices of the Italians, who apparently didn't come up to African standards. There followed a massive explosion with about 17 killed, and a sabotage scare, with Mr. Begbie and others arrested. But there had been worries about dangerous practices, and it is unlikely that the explosion was due to anything else. Reitz certainly didn't think so. The rifle accidents may well have been due to quality control too, for they did make smokeless powder locally, and that was notoriously difficult to do consistently in those days. Winchester, in 1899, supplied their own smokeless cartridges, but recommended against reloading with it for this reason.

If the Transvaal government had the choice whether to blame the deceased or someone who placed government contracts, what would they do?

http://www.angloboerwar.com/forum/11...ion-april-1900

What people mostly worry about with shorter pistol-calibre rounds is gas erosion of the chamber wall, which will cause bad extraction when the longer round is used again. The cases I have found convincing are the use of full-powered Magnum cartridges in the Maximum chamber - or even more than full, which people have loaded on the basis that smaller must be safer, right? It seem improbable with conventional .38 Special loads, i.e. at a level intended for just about any .38 Special revolver. Also if something is being deposited on that exposed chamber and lingering between shots, it seems unlikely that anything can be eroding that same steel.

Still if it worries you, and you really want to get through those 4,500 rounds (which do sound a bit much to waste), you could remove the extractor for about every 500th shot, and poke out the case with a cleaning rod. I think you would notice the first traces of increased adherence long before it got too much for the extractor to cope with.

[tazman]

I have had issues with a 357 revolver chamber building up a layer of crud in front of the 38 special case which was very difficult to remove. While the crud was there, a magnum case could not be loaded in the chamber. Simply cleaning the gun or changing to a better lube will cure the issue.
My chambers have never suffered erosion due to 38 special use and I have fired 10s of thousands of 38 special loads in my revolvers.