38 Special case resizing

[Petrol & Powder]

If case mouth wall is thicker than 0.011" consider a .3575" pilot, because if outside turning cut is enough to clean up the full circumference of the case mouth, you will get some relief of residual hoop stress in the case wall. Also depends upon sized outside diameter produced by of your sizing die and state of work hardening if you are not using unfired virgin brass!

OK, that makes sense. Based on Char-Gar's measurements from post #6, it looks like most commercial 38 Special brass runs .009" - .011". That makes a pretty good argument for your .010" Starline case wall thickness and a .357" pilot for the outside trimmer. Char-Gar reported he had LC brass that was running .014" but that military stuff seemed to be the exception.

I've learned more from reading these 42 posts than I have from some reloading manuals that I've practically memorized over the years.

Gentlemen, THANKS AGAIN.

[Outpost75]

My mentor, LTC Ellis Lea (USA, Ret.) was former XO of the Army Shooting Team and a contemporary of Joe Benner. He coached the USA shooting team at the 40th World Championships, and later was a firearms instructor with the Office of Public Safety for USAID, which is where I met him. He and Homer Culver figured all this out in the 1960s when trying to obtain uniform results with .38 Super National Match pistols converted to .38 wadcutter. Nothing new here, we have only re-discovered the wheel and learned how to build fire...

[Char-Gar]

My mentor, LTC Ellis Lea (USA, Ret.) was former XO of the Army Shooting Team and a contemporary of Joe Benner. He coached the USA shooting team at the 40th World Championships, and later was a firearms instructor with the Office of Public Safety for USAID, which is where I met him. He and Homer Culver figured all this out in the 1960s when trying to obtain uniform results with .38 Super National Match pistols converted to .38 wadcutter. Nothing new here, we have only re-discovered the wheel and learned how to build fire...

Yes, nothing new at all. This is all stuff I have known for well over 50 years. At times, if amazes me how much of what was once common knowledge, now seems like new and/or esoteric stuff. I attribute this to a generation of reloaders and shooters that were suckled on the internet. On the other hand, I learned most of what I know from men who kept the road hot from South Texas to Camp Perry before WWII. Knowledge and experience was passed down from one generation to the next. That is not the case anymore, and much knowledge seems to have evaporated in the digital universe.