Note- If you're waiting for the book reviews I mentioned I would try and have up don't hold your breath the weather turned nice early this year and I've started a full time job so reading time has been curtailed. Right on with what we're here for.
I had a chance this weekend to try out some of the .38 Short colt loads I made up last week in my 77 Bolt action. First observation was not all my magazines wanted to actually load all 5 rounds, Something about the helical design of the magazine and the short stubby cases made the magazine jam after loading 3 rounds. However the magazine will pretty reliably load 3 rounds. The second observation was the short case has feeding issues if the bolt is not cycled smartly. The resulting jam is the bullet partially falls into the void in front of the next round in the magazine and catching on the rim. Easy to clear but annoying to say the least. When I shot the first magazine I was impressed with the odd noise these loads made, Not really a snap or pop like one is used to but more like a too large paper bag being popped nearby, doesn't really make an impressive pop but just kind of makes a noise as it bursts. Not a clue what velocity was,although I think its safe to say this was a max load (3.5gr of red dot under a 92gr cast round nose) I'll try lighter loads of red dot and eventaully bullseye and see what accuracy is. At 50 yards I had 5 shot groups that were fist size easily. Just for fun I tried a few shots at 200 yards, the drop at that range is around 25 feet best I could tell. I did not get a chance to try these out of a revolver of any sort much to my regret as I'm curious what the report would have been like from those. I have brass primed and ready to load and everything is still set up to load these so I'll load them up again and make a hard metal note to test in a wheel gun. Hopefully another long range session with a chronograph is around the corner as I have many test loads waiting to be fired through the 77/357 and GP100 combination.
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