I remember noting comments that 38 wadcutter brass was made with less of an inside tapper for the seating of wadcutters deep without damaging the bullet base. Are currently manufactured wad cutter loads using the same type of case. These are not available as empty brass I realized but a local dealer has a case of Remington loads setting in a unfrequented corner for some time. I prefer my own loads but if the price were right I would be interested for the access to the brass. Having found a 38 Officers Match in excellent condition I will load a lot of 38s soon to find out what the old target revolvers will do.
38 Special Wadcutter Brass
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- Last Post 12 December 2012
i don't know if remington does or ever did use straight sided cases. i know win and fed did. remington airc uses a hollow based wad cutter to work around it.
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I don't know if the .38 Special cases were any different for their wadcutter loads. I do know that the wadcutter loads generally had a roll crimp at the base of the bullets, as well as a roll crimp at the case mouth.
I do know that the expander plug in your die set is probably more important than trying to chase up some of the 'wadcutter' brass in the hope of some difference in inside profile.
I found that one die set that I owned has a long expander plug that nicely expands the full length of the wadcutter bullet. This prevents the bullet from getting swaged down in the case as it is being seated. Some expander plugs might have a different profile, such as shorter ones to suit short jacketed bullets. With the long expander plug I found it easy to seat the wadcutters and I get good accuracy (I have not done a side by side comparison with a short expander plug).
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A local gun store has a box of 50 empty Remington “Super Match” once-fired cases for sale. The crazy so&so want $10.00 for the box! He's had them for years. I looked them over, they do have a cannelure in the base below where the bullet base would have been. I'd give him a couple of bucks for them, but at this price, he's gonna have them until he dies.
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I just use whatever .38 Spl. brass i have on hand for my home cast wadcutter ammo. Never had a problem and as a matter of fact they outshoot the expensive Winchester .38 Spl. match grade wadcutter ammo, at least in my revolvers. Paul B.
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For what it's worth, I read in one of the gun mags. that .38Spl. wadcutter/target brass wasn't designed to stand up to many resizings or reloads. That matches (no pun intended) my experience with the Rem. target loads brass as I got many splits after 2 resizings. Btw, the Rem. HBWC's which runfiverun referred to in post #2 are superbly accurate if you can still purchase thme (Midway, et. al.?).
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For what it's worth, I read in one of the gun mags. that .38Spl. wadcutter/target brass wasn't designed to stand up to many resizings or reloads. That matches (no pun intended) my experience with the Rem. target loads brass as I got many splits after 2 resizings. Btw, the Rem. HBWC's which runfiverun referred to in post #2 are superbly accurate if you can still purchase thme (Midway, et. al.?).
I haven't had that problem with splitting using the Winchester match brass, at least so far. However, Federal match brass that I had a few years back would get longitudinal splits on the case body on the first reloads. I scrapped the whole darn pile. Never have used the Remington match brass though. With one exception, I've had issues with Federal brass for rifles for many years, usually because it's too soft last year I was given 1,100 rounds of once fired Federal Gold medal match .308 brass. Supposed to be good stuff right? from the first 100 rounds I tried to load, I rejected 60 percent because the primer pockets were way too loose. Some would not even hold the primer. :X I'm at the point in my life where you cannot run fast enough to give me Federal brass for any cartridge. The one exception? I needed some brass for my .300 Win. mag. and the gun shop was out of Winchester brass. They did have 100 rounds of federal brass so I bought those. Somebody at fedral must have screwed up because that brass has been reloaded 5 times and the primer pockets are still tight, the necks haven't split and the ammo is accurate. I'll probably anneal the necks to make sure they'll still be good for the next time I load them up. Paul B.
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Federal Gold Medal 223 ammo has the primers crimped in. I wonder why?
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Federal Gold Medal 223 ammo has the primers crimped in. I wonder why?
So the primers don't fall out. 8-)
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia
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Maven..I fire lots of wadcutter brass and it seems to last as good as any. I have stopped using carbide sizing dies and they size the case way to much. I have gone back to early 60's RCBS steel dies for 38 Special and 45 Colt. They size the brass much less and the brass has a longer life. In most cases they also fit the cylinder charge holes better.
Some reloading improvments make things faster, but not necessarily better.
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Maven..I fire lots of wadcutter brass and it seems to last as good as any. I have stopped using carbide sizing dies and they size the case way to much. I have gone back to early 60's RCBS steel dies for 38 Special and 45 Colt. They size the brass much less and the brass has a longer life. In most cases they also fit the cylinder charge holes better.
Some reloading improvments make things faster, but not necessarily better.
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Seems I recall reading an article in the Fouling Shot about a way to reload .38s without resizing at all. Deprime, load, hit it with a light crimp in a Lee Factory Crimp die. There's a lot more info about it here somewhere.
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