Colt .38 Super

ballous dad

Fell in love the other day with a 1911 .38 Super in nickel. A friend of mine, an old bullseye shooter, told me to avoid them as they are not shooters. He said something about the difference in headspacing on the rim vs. the mouth makes for poor accuracy in the Colt made Super barrels. However, he says, there is a replacement barrel that is headspaced like a regular 1911 that makes them shoot like they oughta.

Is he full of crap? Are we splitting hairs here? This ain't microsurgery, it's just handgunning.

Appreciate any opinions here, guys.[:)] Thanks.

perry shooter

Hello he is correct if you want to shoot this in Bulls-Eye match shooting we shoot at 50 yards in the slowfire stage and the 10 ring is slightly over 3 inches . Barsto does make a barrel that has a chamber to shoot good groups but then only with hand loads. You did not state what serial range your gun is but many of the older colts in 38 super"if" all orginial bring big bucks.. Hand loads need to be on the mild to normal range and not ones that push the upper limit . Now if you want a fun gun and not serious about match shooting buy this pistol and enjoy it.

mpolans

He's sort of correct. The 1911 was designed to function with a round that headspaces based on the mouth of the cartridge. The problem with the .38 super is that it is a semi-rimmed cartridge. The problem occurs when you have a barrel with a chamber cut in such a manner that rounds are headspacing alternately on the rim and the mouth. This doesn't always occur, and there are very accurate .38 supers out there, especially with match barrels that are very particular about chamber dimensions. For example, I had a gun that would shoot 1.5" inches at 50 yards. However, one of the downsides was that it was very picky about brass so I had to chamber check all of my ammo for best reliability (pull the barrel out, drop each round into the chamber, see if it fits, repeat).
One way to avoid alot of the disadvantages of the .38 super cartridge is to use .38 supercomp brass. It's basically rimless .38 super. The load data is very similar, and it can usually be used interchangibly with just a little tweaking of the extractor.

fire for effect

Get the Barsto Barrel, you will not regret it. I have a Barsto Barrel in mine, and I can hit a steel silouette at three hundred yards off hand with it.