.38 Special in .357 Max

[Scrounger]

I know we have a lot of .357 Max fans here. Does anyone have any experience shooting .38 Specials, SWC or wadcutters in the Max? What kind of accuracy could I expect from a .38 wadcutter at about 800 fps? OK, how about that same bullet in a Max case with a powder charge that I would hope gives me 800 fps?

[wiljen]

I have a factory TC 14" 357 Max and it is absolutely awful with cast bullets of any variety regardless of case length. It is one of a very few guns that I have no cast loads for. It shoots pretty well with 180gr Jacketed, but no luck even casting to .362 to try to fill that throat.

[Ben]

Wiljen:

What do you figure the problem is with that barrel ?

Ben

[357maximum]

Scrounger

I use 4.5 grains of IMR-PB under a copy of the lyman 358446 in max brass and a sp primer. This load is durn accurate and I carry a few in my pocket while deer hunting just in case a small edible critter gets too close or I get bored..or both. At 25yards it will hit into the sights with my deer load, but after that it is falling like a rock.....quiet load though. I have never chronoed it but I would guess 6-700fps

In my tight chambered 15 inch custom I can get only decent accuracy with 38 brass if I go to a 200+ boolit...i gave up, and just use my max cases that are on their last leg for such a load.


Ben

I.M.N.S.H.O

The problem with the factory TC barrels is the shotgun like forcing cone that TC still cannot/willnot accept is a worthles PO$, that and the fact the bullet portion of the chamber on the ones I have seen measures about .370....their max barrels are set up for failure straight from the get go. That is why I went to MGM when I had my peestol barrel made. TC really needs to fix their rectal cranial inversion on some of their chambers. I looked at a brand new 44mag encore pistol barrel that was exactly the same loose overblown shotgun chamber as described above.

[BABore]

I have a factory TC 14" 357 Max and it is absolutely awful with cast bullets of any variety regardless of case length. It is one of a very few guns that I have no cast loads for. It shoots pretty well with 180gr Jacketed, but no luck even casting to .362 to try to fill that throat.

Do a chamber cast of your chamber/throat and you'll see why. It's not necessarily the large diameter (even though that's bad enough), but the length. Most all of the factory T/C straight walled chambers, and some of the bottlenecks have throats up to 0.400" long. Worse yet is alot of them don't even taper, but are straight or cylindrical. This all leads to a hell of a long run where the boolit has some velocity going into the rifling. Guaranteed to skid and strip.

Loading 38 specials into a normal (good) max chamber has the same effect. In a T/C max chamber you now have almost an inch of running room.