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Too Hot for an Old Smith and Wesson?
allen griggs
Member Posts: 35,692 ✭✭✭✭
My brother recently inherited a 1905 .38 Special, made in 1922.
It is hard to find ammo. He just bought a box of 25 rounds.
This is a weird load to me. It is "Hornady Critical Defense Lite." A little 90 grain FTX bullet at 1,200 fps. This seems like a hot load to me. Is this load too hot for this pistol?
It is hard to find ammo. He just bought a box of 25 rounds.
This is a weird load to me. It is "Hornady Critical Defense Lite." A little 90 grain FTX bullet at 1,200 fps. This seems like a hot load to me. Is this load too hot for this pistol?
Comments
If he has nothing else to feed it, and he needs it for personal protection? Let him use it. If he just want's it for plinking, on the other hand. Have him wait till more .38 Special with standard loadings, show up on the market.
How good of shape is the pistol in? Lock up tight, not loose in the crane, forcing cone still good.
They don't say +P, a good condition K frame should be capable of handling them even an old one. A buck something a pop I wouldn't be shooting many
My brother recently inherited a 1905 .38 Special, made in 1922.
It is hard to find ammo. He just bought a box of 25 rounds.
This is a weird load to me. It is "Hornady Critical Defense Lite." A little 90 grain FTX bullet at 1,200 fps. This seems like a hot load to me. Is this load too hot for this pistol?
That is a little bit of a unusual load, but its intended specifically as a low-recoil defense load. I think the pink ballistic tip is a "hint" that the round is being marketed specifically towards women.
Anyway, as mentioned above, its not classified as a +P round, and therefore has to be loaded to ordinary SAAMI pressure specs for .38 special.
I don't see why a 1922 vintage Smith and Wesson in good condition. . .which should be OK with any standard pressure .38 special. . . wouldn't handle that ammo perfectly fine. The gun isn't going to "blow up" or get knocked out of time, or anything like that.
The "1200 fps" number looks a bit scary like .357 magnum velocity, but that because the bullet is much lighter than the usual 125 or 158 grain .38 special rounds.
As some basis for comparison, the 90 grain .380 ACP rounds get about 1000 fps when shot from a 4" bbl. This one goes about 20% faster from the same barrel length, which seems about right to me for a .38 special vs a .380. One would hope that a full sized medium frame revolver would be able to handle rounds only slightly more powerful than a .380 ACP!
If you wanted to compare to actual magnum rounds, Smith and Wesson used to market some 90 grain .357 magnums for a short time a long time ago, and claimed that these would get 2000 (!!!) fps. A little more realistically the current 80 grain .357 magnum Glaser safety slugs are billed at 1600 fps. Also, the Grizzly company currently markets a 90 grain 357 SIG at a smoking 1850 fps. Again, compared to those, 1200 fps from a 90 grain .38 special doesn't seem particularly "hot".
I have only two real concerns with these: With a fixed sight gun using way lighter than normal weight bullets, point of impact may be off from point of aim. That won't make any difference whatsover with a snubnose at 5 yards, but at a target range at 15-25 yards it might.
Second thing has to do with bullet LENGTH. I don't know the overall cartridge specs (Hornady doesn't list them), but lighter bullets are typically shorter in overall length than regular weight ones. If the overall cartridge length is shorter, the bullet has longer to jump between the cartridge and barrel throat. In this case, the ogive of the lighter bullet appears to be steeper than a usual .38 bullet, again, allowing more travel space between being seated in the cartridge and engaging the rifling on shooting.
This extra jump can lead to decreased accuracy (though I doubt that will be of any significance here), but more important, somewhat increased wear to the barrel throat and topstrap behind the barrel. The latter is considered a real issue with .357 magnum rounds, though those are burning a LOT more powder and making a much harder "smack" against the forcing cone.
In this case, four cylinderfuls of "puny" .38s probably aren't going to cause any real issue, ssue, but I'd be hesitant to run a steady diet of thousands of these through an older gun.
Edit; Responding to below:
quote:My reasoning is, that most all, if not all, major commercial ammunition manufacturer's, manufacture their ammunition to SAAMI specifications.
Not only do I agree, but I think every major American commercial ammo maker is absolutely obligated to stick to SAAMI pressure specs for liability reasons. SAAMI specs are the universally accepted industry standards for ammo (dimensions and operating pressures). If any ammo maker chooses to violate the standards, and ANYTHING happens to anyone secondary to round malfunction (even with a worn gun) its "bend over and write the check" type liability for them.
Put differently, there is no good reason why any mainstream ammo manufacturer would want to exceed SAAMI specs for any of their products. There are a few "niche" makers (eg Buffalo Bore) that put out overpressure ammo that exceed SAAMI specs for given loads (eg the .45LC "+P" loads that approximate .44 magnum ballsitics), but these are basically "special cases" that only apply to certain types of ammo, and when they do this, they plaster both the ad copy AND the ammo boxes with warnings about overpressure risk.
For conventional ammo makers, if they want to market something as "super duper" they can (and do) just do that with their ordinary +P ammo. A few used to have "+P+" "law enforcement only" type rounds, that may or may not actually have been more powerful than ordinary +P rounds, but I think most of them have gotten away from this now.
In the case of this particular gun, that wasn't really the question, but I also agree with you that even .38+P rounds would still be safe to fire here. . .they're only loaded about 10-15% hotter than regular loads, and a K frame in good shape should hold up to these, at least in reasonable quantity. These aren't going to "blow up" the gun, etc.
The issue here with +P rounds is that we're talking about a nearly 100 year old gun that was built in the "pre-magnum" era. The steel likely wasn't heat treated for max tensile strength, and it legitimately may not be as tough as more recent guns. So especially compared to more recent manufacture revolvers, +P rounds probably will put more wear on the gun here, and lots of +Ps probably would make it "shoot loose" sooner than a more recently build gun. Still, in the unlikely case that this were the only gun I had for defense, I'd keep it loaded with +P rounds and not think twice about it. In a life or death situation, I'll trade off anticipated increased wear and tear on the gun for anticipated increased wear and tear on the target!
quote:That's only 290 ft-lbs. That's not so high. probably achievable without +P pressure.Should be.
In absolute terms 290 ft-lbs of kinetic energy isn't much, but it is a bit more than "ordinary" .38s which typically only get about 200-220 ft-lbs. The issue here is a trick of the energy calcuation. Because kinetic energy is a product of the SQUARE of velocity, lighter faster moving bullets carry more energy than slower heavier ones. In this case a 290 ft-lb 90 grain bullet at 1200fps probably isn't really more effective, than say a 210 ft-lb 158 grain bullet at just under 800fps, which although slower probably offers better penetration because of the heavier bullet.
Let me first start by saying that I mostly agree with Beantownshootah, on this subject.
My reasoning is, that most all, if not all, major commercial ammunition manufacturer's, manufacture their ammunition to SAAMI specifications. That said, these Hornady Critical Defense 90 grain, 38 Special loads, are not +P rated. Even if they were, they can still be fired in ANY 38 Special chambered revolver, in good working condition...event he ones with alloy frames and cylinder's.
Yes, a steady diet of these +P's will wear your gun out sooner, rather than later, but such is the life cycle of anything, including us humanoids.
Best
As beanetc said, it is not likely to shoot to the sights.
The lite is marketed towards female CCW for use in lightweight small frame revolvers, as the load has just enough zip to generate respectable power numbers with the lighter than standard bullet. While I have not done protocol type tests with that particular load, if Hornady engineered it as well as their Critical Duty and Critical Defense loads I have protocol tested, it will be a devastating round on a human target.
Apparently the "pink" deal is a nod towards breast cancer research, as a portion of the cost is donated for it.