Not using crimp groove in .38 WC?

[John in WI]

I have a Lee 148gr full wadcutter mold for my .38. I've been casting a lot of range scrap and pretty wimpy target loads out of them. I was curious about loading some up a little hotter. I love Unique for the .38, and some reading makes it sound like 5gr is as high as you would want to go with a 148gr.

I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but when I seat them to the crimp groove I can't hear any sound of loose powder in there. I tried measuring the height of the powder and subtracting the distance from the crimp groove to the base of the boolit and it looks like there is very little if any room left.

Then I compared the heights of the WCs with some SWCs from a different Lee mold. It looks to me like if I seat the WCs in the first grease groove, the amount of bullet shank in the brass would be the same as the SWCs seated to the grease groove.

That would give me about an extra 2mm of space, and still leave 2 lube grooves. Is it ok to use 1 lube groove as a crimp groove?

[Forrest r]

I have loaded/crimped my wc's out further than the flush/crimp groove loading for decades.

59000

I used to cast/load the h&g #50 in the top lube groove, the part that got seated in the case was the same length as the Lyman 358477 swc boolit. I could use either boolit with the same powder charge & get the same accuracy, point of aim, boolit drop, ect.

[John in WI]

Thank you Forrest--that's exactly what I'm looking to do with mine. I think I'll load some up and see how they do.