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357 fits in a j frame 38 Spl +P
- Thread starter MW surveyor
- Start date
MW surveyor
New member
For some reason, I can't figure out how to do quotes in this forum.
"Some idiot out there would likely try it with a full house .357 load and blow the thing up. "
In any event, the main reasons I'm sending it back is that I do not want to inadvertently or on purpose put a 357 into this pistol and then fire it, nor do I want anyone else to do so if I sell the gun or let someone else use it out of my control. Just not the moral thing to do. I'd really be upset if someone injured themselves.
"Some idiot out there would likely try it with a full house .357 load and blow the thing up. "
In any event, the main reasons I'm sending it back is that I do not want to inadvertently or on purpose put a 357 into this pistol and then fire it, nor do I want anyone else to do so if I sell the gun or let someone else use it out of my control. Just not the moral thing to do. I'd really be upset if someone injured themselves.
I don't think that there is any question that either a cylinder destined for a .357 revolver was misplaced onto the .38 assembly tables, or a .38 cylinder was accidentally bored to .357 dimensions. There may even have been a problem with the chambers bored out straight with no forcing cones.
Personally, I find no real issue owning a 38 that can chamber the magnum ammo. It is clearly marked .38, and a dilligent shooter should never find himself loading the wrong thing.
That said, I still think that whichever of the possible reasons given, it's still an accident, and a problem, and it MUST be looked at by S&W, and that cylinder should simply be replaced.
think back about the 5 round cylinder that had 7 flutes. I can't imagine how that happened, the machine would not have been able to index properly to cut them unless that process was really screwed up. it would have been easier to photoshop that picture than it would have been to get a mistake like that.
Bottom line, get it checked. If you eventually let some pinhead use it who blows it up with .357 ammunition, you will PROBABLY be held liable in court for damages. You knew that there was a safety hazard. You knowingly presented/gave/sold a defective weapon that you knew would possibly fail catastrophically. You and S&W might be co-defendants.
Personally, I find no real issue owning a 38 that can chamber the magnum ammo. It is clearly marked .38, and a dilligent shooter should never find himself loading the wrong thing.
That said, I still think that whichever of the possible reasons given, it's still an accident, and a problem, and it MUST be looked at by S&W, and that cylinder should simply be replaced.
think back about the 5 round cylinder that had 7 flutes. I can't imagine how that happened, the machine would not have been able to index properly to cut them unless that process was really screwed up. it would have been easier to photoshop that picture than it would have been to get a mistake like that.
Bottom line, get it checked. If you eventually let some pinhead use it who blows it up with .357 ammunition, you will PROBABLY be held liable in court for damages. You knew that there was a safety hazard. You knowingly presented/gave/sold a defective weapon that you knew would possibly fail catastrophically. You and S&W might be co-defendants.
back when the .357 was being developed, you had two problems.
first, they developed an ultra high pressure .38 special called the .38-44 that could be chambered in a .38 special. Not a good situation.
Second, many handguns of the time had no cylinder forcing cones, and no narrowing at the crimp. they were straight bored chambers. a .38 special cylinder would easily fit a .357 cartridge of the same OAL.
documentation showed that a buttload of guns were rendered unsafe because of the numerous people who assumed that fitting the chamber meant safe to fire in the chamber.
anyone who needs to be convinced that this is kind of a foolish thought needs to cram a handful of 20 gauge or 16 gauge shells into the magazine of his 12 gauge.
first, they developed an ultra high pressure .38 special called the .38-44 that could be chambered in a .38 special. Not a good situation.
Second, many handguns of the time had no cylinder forcing cones, and no narrowing at the crimp. they were straight bored chambers. a .38 special cylinder would easily fit a .357 cartridge of the same OAL.
documentation showed that a buttload of guns were rendered unsafe because of the numerous people who assumed that fitting the chamber meant safe to fire in the chamber.
anyone who needs to be convinced that this is kind of a foolish thought needs to cram a handful of 20 gauge or 16 gauge shells into the magazine of his 12 gauge.
MW surveyor
New member
Latest update
About 2 hours after I called I received an email from S&W saying that it was impossible to load a 357 into the 38 Special and close the cylinder. My reply was my photo with the 357 and the 38 side by side in the cylinder.
Reply to that email was........"The managers are waiting to see your gun"
About 2 hours after I called I received an email from S&W saying that it was impossible to load a 357 into the 38 Special and close the cylinder. My reply was my photo with the 357 and the 38 side by side in the cylinder.
Reply to that email was........"The managers are waiting to see your gun"
BerettaBuckeye
New member
MW surveyor said:About 2 hours after I called I received an email from S&W saying that it was impossible to load a 357 into the 38 Special and close the cylinder
See? It's not just here.
FrankenMauser
New member
It's the same cylinder. They just ream them separately for .38 Spcl or .357 Mag. They are dimensionally identical. Being the same cylinder, the center pin is also the same.What do you suppose the odds are that they mistakenly put a 640 cyl. in your 638, Both are stainless although I am not familiar enough with either to know if the center pins are the same.?
Even if the cylinder is heat treated for .357 Magnum ammunition, only .38 Special or .38 Special +P should be fired in this particular gun due to its aluminum alloy frame. Neither S&W nor any other revolver manufacturer that I am aware of has ever produced a .357 Magnum revolver with an aluminum frame because frame stretching and excessive flame cutting of the topstrap would occur in short order. The only way to make aluminum strong enough for the frame of a .357 Magnum revolver is to alloy it with exotic metal such as scandium as S&W does with their lightweight magnum models.
Scandium makes up less than 1% of the alloy. It is still, definitively, an Aluminum alloy.
The yield strength is different, but the base metal is not.
Walklightly
Moderator
I wouldn't want that gun either in that form. I shoot .357s and .38s at the same time.
Funny story, I was shooting my newer Rossi 461 .357, I decided even though it was a .357 I was only going to shoot .38spl out of it. Without thinking, I accidentally put a Corbon .357 in it, rendering the gun unshootable after it banged. The gun had to be replaced, but not before I went out and bought Ruger SP101.
TBS, I did that with my S&W 638 +P too, again by accident, didn't fit.
Funny story, I was shooting my newer Rossi 461 .357, I decided even though it was a .357 I was only going to shoot .38spl out of it. Without thinking, I accidentally put a Corbon .357 in it, rendering the gun unshootable after it banged. The gun had to be replaced, but not before I went out and bought Ruger SP101.
TBS, I did that with my S&W 638 +P too, again by accident, didn't fit.
Quote:
Even if the cylinder is heat treated for .357 Magnum ammunition, only .38 Special or .38 Special +P should be fired in this particular gun due to its aluminum alloy frame. Neither S&W nor any other revolver manufacturer that I am aware of has ever produced a .357 Magnum revolver with an aluminum frame because frame stretching and excessive flame cutting of the topstrap would occur in short order. The only way to make aluminum strong enough for the frame of a .357 Magnum revolver is to alloy it with exotic metal such as scandium as S&W does with their lightweight magnum models.
Scandium makes up less than 1% of the alloy. It is still, definitively, an Aluminum alloy.
The yield strength is different, but the base metal is not.
Granted, however it does not change the fact that the aluminum used in the frame of .38 Special only airweights is not as strong as that used in .357 Magnum models nor would it be safe to fire .357 Magnum ammo in the OP's gun regardless of the heat treatment of the cylinder.
Also, there are other differences between the .38 Special and .357 Magnum frames beyond the alloy used. The aluminum-scandium alloy frames of the models 360 and 340 also incorporate a steel blast shield above the barrel-cylinder gap in order to prevent excessive flame cutting of the topstrap while aluminum frames of the 637, 638, and 642, to my knowledge, do not have this feature.
There are lots of ways to spoof those photos, without using photoshop. But the question is why would anyone bother? He said he was contacting S&W, so faking the photos would be a waste of time.
Lots of possibilities, mis-marked, wrong cylinder, right cylinder cut wrong, etc...
I found it hopeful that you were told "the directors are waiting to see your gun", rather than "send it in, we'll look at it"...
Sounds like someone(s) are seriously interested....
so are we,....
Lots of possibilities, mis-marked, wrong cylinder, right cylinder cut wrong, etc...
I found it hopeful that you were told "the directors are waiting to see your gun", rather than "send it in, we'll look at it"...
Sounds like someone(s) are seriously interested....
so are we,....
Lost Sheep
New member
Your'e welcome
The Lee Funnel is sized to precisely fit into the Lee die.
Lost Sheep
You don't have to use the automatic powder drop. Just take the measure off the die and use the regular bushing (and a funnel) to drop measured charges into the case. You do not have to give up the speed of continuous processing to have individually measured powder charges.MW surveyor said:p.s. your posts on using a Lee turret press convinced me to buy one when I was looking to up my pistol round output from the single stage press that I was using. Had I known at the time that I bought the single stage about the advantages of the turret, I would have gone with the turret first! However, still use the single stage mainly for the loading of the 357 rounds as I measure each charge and don't like to use the auto powder drop with the loads that I use.
The Lee Funnel is sized to precisely fit into the Lee die.
Lost Sheep
Lost Sheep
New member
How to do quotes.
When making a reply, in the gray area above the rectangle in which you are composing your reply, there is a series of icons, the last (on the right) three of which look like a picture of a mountain, a thought ballon and a number sign "#".
If you mouse over to the thought balloon and left click on it, there should be some text appear wherever your cursor is.
[ Q U O T E ] [ / Q U O T E ]
(without the spaces)
and your cursor will be in the middle. Whatever you type (or paste) will be in the "quotes" box of your reply. In this way, you can cut and paste other members' text.
Second method: Highlight the text you want to have appear in the quote box (as if you are intending to copy it) and click the thought balloon icon. The quotes markers will appear, bracketing your highlighted text.
With either method, you can get the original author's name to appear by inserting an equals sign "=" and the name in the first marker:
[ Q U O T E = Author Name ]
(Again, without the spaces embedded in the text.
Good Luck.
Lost Sheep
Quotes are fairly easy.MW surveyor said:For some reason, I can't figure out how to do quotes in this forum.
When making a reply, in the gray area above the rectangle in which you are composing your reply, there is a series of icons, the last (on the right) three of which look like a picture of a mountain, a thought ballon and a number sign "#".
If you mouse over to the thought balloon and left click on it, there should be some text appear wherever your cursor is.
[ Q U O T E ] [ / Q U O T E ]
(without the spaces)
and your cursor will be in the middle. Whatever you type (or paste) will be in the "quotes" box of your reply. In this way, you can cut and paste other members' text.
Second method: Highlight the text you want to have appear in the quote box (as if you are intending to copy it) and click the thought balloon icon. The quotes markers will appear, bracketing your highlighted text.
With either method, you can get the original author's name to appear by inserting an equals sign "=" and the name in the first marker:
[ Q U O T E = Author Name ]
(Again, without the spaces embedded in the text.
Good Luck.
Lost Sheep
ScottRiqui
New member
Thanks for that, Lost Sheep! I knew how to quote text, but I'd been doing the attribution manually, not knowing that you could insert the original poster's name in the opening quote tag.
MW surveyor
New member
Lost Sheep - Thanks for the info both on the powder drop and the away to do the quotes. Knew about using the funnel but for some strange reason expand and drop the powder on my single stage and then put the round back on the turret to set and crimp.
On the telephone I got "send it in we'll look at it". When they got the photo, I think that that raised some eyebrows!
On the telephone I got "send it in we'll look at it". When they got the photo, I think that that raised some eyebrows!
HuntAndFish
New member
MW surveyor said:Reply to that email was........"The managers are waiting to yell at somebody."
Probably what they were thinking.
Lost Sheep
New member
Yell at whom?
When I buy clothing, oftentimes there is a slip of paper in the pocket saying "Inspected by # 37" or something like that. Was there anything like that in your revolver's box?
Just a thougth prompted by HuntandFish's post.
Lost Sheep
When I buy clothing, oftentimes there is a slip of paper in the pocket saying "Inspected by # 37" or something like that. Was there anything like that in your revolver's box?
Just a thougth prompted by HuntandFish's post.
Lost Sheep
With the gun to check, and company records, S&W ought to be able to figure out who signed off QC on it, and maybe who assembled it, or other data.
In my industry, a similar level of mistake would ensure a serious investigation, more than a little detailed analysis and a seriously agressive "lessons learned" to fix the conditions that allowed this to happen.
I would expect no less from S&W, although they will probably be very closed mouth about the details, I'm sure, preferring to keep them "in house".
Lets wait and see what happens, shall we?
In my industry, a similar level of mistake would ensure a serious investigation, more than a little detailed analysis and a seriously agressive "lessons learned" to fix the conditions that allowed this to happen.
I would expect no less from S&W, although they will probably be very closed mouth about the details, I'm sure, preferring to keep them "in house".
Lets wait and see what happens, shall we?
; said:About 2 hours after I called I received an email from S&W saying that it was impossible to load a 357 into the 38 Special and close the cylinder. My reply was my photo with the 357 and the 38 side by side in the cylinder.
Reply to that email was........"The managers are waiting to see your gun"
If that's true, they gave you a .357 that was accidentally marked .38 + P .
If they are saying that you CANNOT close the cylinder with .357 ammunition in it, then it's not a .38.
Might be worth keeping .... LOL. Maybe you should ask them for a pic back of a .357 bullet on a .38 gun like you did... and compare the photos.
S&W has sure seemed to have a lot of mess ups lately, and getting thru their quality control.
Last edited:
thibaultfelix40
New member
I find this so intriqueing I am replying just to keep posted. BTW I believe you. Does s&w have to use the same cylinders? If Taurus sells a boat load of those 0.380 revolvers maybe we will see some unstretched J frames.