What's an Acceptable ES?

[David2011]

If you want low extreme spreads load 3.5 grains of Bullseye or Titegroup under a 148 cast wadcutter. This is as good as it gets in the 38 Special, which is quite good indeed.

Still standard pressure. About 870-880 fps from a four inch revolver

Agreed. I tried SR475 instead of my usual Titegroup prior to an Area 2 USPSA match because it was supposed to make less smoke. The ES and SD had huge spreads. I chronographed the loads with a comfortable margin for USPSA Major Power when working up the loads, around a 170 power factor. At the chrono station at the match my first set of rounds failed to meet major and the second set they measured made major at 165.1 with a threshold of 165.0. I went back to Titegroup after that match and get solid, tight ES and SD measurements. That was with an autoloader, though.

I have no data on Bullseye because I only use it for light fun loads in .38 Special. The boolits make it all the way to the target and leave a hole so that's all I expect.

[Bimmer]

Now, you posted a ballistics table of drop, not trajectory. Since you are sighted at a distance beyond 0, the effect will be less on target.

Look more closely... It's a 10yd zero, so the 500fps load drops 1.4" more than the 700fps load in the 15yds between 10yds and 25yds.

By 50yds, the difference is 7+ inches!

I do believe you should increase your trail boss load to 4 grains...

Done... actually I'm making up a batch with 4.5gr of Trail Boss. I won't get to shoot them 'til next week, though.

[Forrest r]

In reality it will be more than 1.4", you can easily double that number due to the difference in the recoil/dwell time of the bullets. The shorter the bbl or lighter the firearm, the bigger the difference.

Most semi-auto's have sledge hammer fp hits, revolvers not so much. Between the poor man's trigger jobs, spring changes, tweaking, etc. Most revolvers have erratic ignition/poor ignition due to inconsistent fp hits right out of the box when new/strait from the factory. Add to the mix all the tweaking/fixing/lighter springs & more often then not the fp hits become more erratic.

Most reloaders don't test their firearms for function before they start testing loads. Myself I use a contender to test firearms chambered in 22lr/9mm/38spl/357/44spl/44mag/45acp. Center fire revolvers are either for target work or general use. Target revolvers get tested with federal primers & the general use revolvers get tested with several different primers. Testing the 38spl's consists of using a known load that has es's in the 20's when being shout out of the contender and testing the same loads in a revolver. You start seeing es's in the high 30's or above out of the revolver being tested, that's telling you the revolver has mechanical issues.

Don't think so? Do a simple test with a s&w revolver. Take the anvil out of a lp/lr primer and put the primer cup under the strain screw and tighten the strain screw all the way down. Run 20/30 shots of a quality/low es ammo over a chronograph. Then pull the primer out from under the strain screw and adjust the strain screw 2 full turns back and re-test. You'll find you have a lot smoother/lighter trigger at the expense of erratic ignition/high es's.

It's harder to see the results of consistent ignition with revolvers accuracy wise. A chronograph will pick up on it & at the end of the day consistency equals accuracy.

Years ago (1993/1994?) I bought a cz lux 22lr rifle. I tested it with low grade match ammo @ 25yds. It could do .25" 5-shot groups @ 25yds, but that's all it could do. That was more then acceptable to me seeing how the lux is in reality nothing more than a sporting rifle. A decade + later the cz line of rimfire rifles gained in popularity so I decided to pull the lux out and take a hard look at what it could do. I used a known lot of ammo that does high teen's in several different rimfire firearms. That lux failed badly having es's in the 40's with the test ammo. After doing a bunch of bolt work on the lux and 3 or 4 trips to the range for testing the end result was the lux had es's in the teen with the test ammo & the groups shrank +/-40%. Typical targets after the cz was worked on.
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When I know the revolver is right and tight I'll start testing loads. If I get es's in the 60+fps range for general range fodder/blammo ammo, I know I'm using the wrong bullet/powder/load combo.

I like to see the es's below 30fps in my target revolver and below 60fps for general use.

When I develop a load that has es's in the 20's/60's and I get a high es reading from a shot. It's telling me I did something wrong, could be under an sized bullet, bad bullet base, seated the bullet crooked, junk in flash hole, something.

Not trying to offend anyone but I see it all the time on this website. People stating you can't be getting es's like that with x/y/z powder because I can't. Or you can't be getting those velocities with that load. All's that's telling me there's something going on with there firearm, components, reloading skills.

Anyway if you're revolver isn't getting a good solid fp hit. It doesn't matter what you do.

[Forrest r]

Choosing a bullet to use is 1 thing, choosing the oal of that bullet is a lot more important. Same bullet with different oals.
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The top reload has a shorter oal. The bullet is not seated so that it sits in the leade of the cylinder. Anything under pressure will go to the least point of resistance. When you hit the loud button that bullet will more often than not go sideways 1st. The short oal will also cause the brass to use more pressure to seal the cylinders. This is where the variations in brass, neck tension, crimp get magnified causing higher es's. People see this all the time and really don't give it much thought. Do a search looking for "soot on brass" and you'll see a lot of people asking why they have soot on 1 side of their brass.

The reload with the longer oal has the bullet out into the leade of the cylinder. Doing this causes the bullet to have resistance quicker which it turn raises the short start pressure sealing the cylinders faster using less pressure along with causing a better powder burn/more complete powder burn. The end result is lower es's for the same load.

With the 38spl target loads use a long bodied bullet that takes up large amounts of case volume to let lower es's. With standard bullets a reloader can lower es's by seating the bullet out into the leade.

The mihec 640's (158gr) are sized to .358" and crimped in the bottom crimp groove/longer oal. The h&g #50's (150gr) are sized to 357" and loaded llloooooonnnnggg. I'm sure they look funny/odd
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Same h&g #50's sized to .358", note that the h&g #50's sized to .358" are seated/crimped in the top lube grove. While the h&g #50's that are sized to .357" are seated/crimped in the middle lube groove.
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While the accuracy of those loads is nothing to write home about, the es's are in the 40's. Typical 6-shot groups @ 50ft.
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Same revolver shooting those 110gr wc's sized to .357" on the left seated in the crimp groove loaded in 357 brass.
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Didn't matter what I did powder wise, high es's and poor accuracy.
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Took a hard look at the 357 cases and threw 90%+ of a 5 gallon bullet of them out. Split ends, shot so much the nickel was starting to wear off of them, etc. Bought 2000 new pieces of starling 357 brass and re-tested. Low es's and back to shooting bugholes.

Give your reloads a chance by making sure you're using quality brass. Then make the oals so that you get the most out of that brass.

[Forrest r]

A couple years back I did a little testing with a snubnosed 38spl. Don't like them, never wanted 1. But the misses wanted 1 so I ended up picking up a ca undercover. Took 6 or 7 trips to the range with that undercover comparing it to the contender and working on it to get it to have consistent ignition. After that I started testing bullets/loads to get an idea of what that ca undercover could do.

Thought it might be interesting to start with a simple test of 3 or 4 different powders and a bunch of different bullets just to get an idea of what kind of velocities to expect from the 2" bbl. At the end of the day I ended up using 5 different powders (bullseye/BE-86/unique/2400/power pistol) and 10 different bullets. I only loaded 5 test rounds of each but the big picture was that I tested 250 rounds. Figured that would give me a general idea of what to expect from that revolver giving me a baseline to work with. But it also showed me which bullet design was good/bad along with having a 250 round test bed for es's.

The bullets used for the test were:
h&g #51 hp
cramer hunter hp
cramer #26 hp
lyman 358439 hp
lyman 358165 hp
mihec 640 hp
cast 148gr hbwc turned backwards
home swaged 150gr jacketed hp made from 380acp cases
lyman 358431 hb swc that was hp'd with a forster hp tool
raphine hb fn that was hp'd with a forster hp tool

Bullseye 10 bullets/5 shots each 50 shots total. The highest es was 59fps with the h&g # 51. The lowest es was 27fps with the hbwc turned backward. The hunter/358156/cramer 26 had es's in the low 30fps.

Be-86 10 bullets/5 shots each 50 shots total. None of the 50 shots had a es higher than 45fps with the cramer hunter bullet having the lowest es, 22fps.

Unique ( I love unique) did what unique normally does having the highest es's of the 5 powders. The highest es was 84fps with the h&g #51. The lowest es was with the 358439, 40fps.

2400 isn't the best choice for a 38spl load but it will point out bullet designs that designed to seal fast creating excellent short start pressures/better more complete powder burn. The highest es was with the H&g #51, 93fps. The lowest es was 39fps with the mihec 640.

Power pistol is a high energy powder like titegroup. It smacks the bullet rather than pushing it compared to powders like ww231. PP just like 2400 will bring out flaws in bullet designs along with flaws in the bullets themselves.
H&G #51 es 45fps
cramer hunter es 38fps
cramer #26 es 30fps
358439 es 48fps
358156 es 31fps
mihec 640 es 32fps
mihec hbwc es 14fps
jacketed/swaged hp es 31fps
358431 es 40fps
raphine es 13fps

Of those 10 different bullets tested 4 of them consistently had the highest velocities and low es's.

That ca undercover is mechanically sound, the weak link is my bullets & me the shooter. I had that undercover in the down position, loaded it, brought it up and shot the 5-shot strings. I was using 2 hands standing with the chronograph 10" from the muzzle. Testing loads this way isn't the best thing to do. The shots will be at different angles making larger variations in the velocities because the bullet is not going over the sky screens the same distance shot after shot.

Anyway, why all this???
Because it isn't hard to make reloads with low es's and sd's. I can't even count the # of times I've seen threads on the different websites with people asking about a powder because they have a bunch of it. Then they try to pair it with a bullet that would be 1 of the last choices for the combo. The end result is that they end up with 1000's of rounds of blammo ammo for countless hours of quality range time.

Don't know what was going on with that h&g #51 bullet, never did get any real consistency out of it and ended up selling the mold. If I were to take the other 9 bullets and 5 powders (225 total shots) the highest es would be the unique mihec 640 load with an es of 62fps.

That's what you should be looking at with your snubnosed 38spl 9 different bullets, 5 different powders, 225 shots with an es of 62fps.