Less recoil than .38 Special

I load a "powder puff" round for my wife to practice with her .38spcl LCR. A full power load hurts her hand after a few rounds and since this is the firearm she chooses to carry, I prefer her to practice with it.

I'm using Trail Boss and 148g DEWC's from MBC, non coated.

You will have to find the load that works the best with your handgun but this load is not only accurate, but the recoil is light. About like a .22WMR out of the same size revolver.

She can shoot it all day without bruising her palm.
 
Try Titegroup, I use it a lot and have found even though the volume is low it's not position sensitive. I use it in .38, .357, and 9mm in both pistols and even matching rifles/carbines with excellent results.
 
I've loaded many thousands of rounds or .38 Short Colt for my revolvers. For competition it's the way to go, but for the hobby shooter I'd stick with .38 Special. Less problems and more load data available.

Trail Boss is the perfect powder for really light loads. It almost fills the case and gives complete burn of the powder.

For really light loads I'd use 148 grain full wadcutters. You should be able to stack the bullets on top of each other and have no recoil to mention.
 
The standard .38 Special target (as in accurate and soft-shooting) load for decades has been 2.7 or 2.8 gr of Bullseye under a 148 gr flush-seated wadcutter. I've probably shot several thousand of them through my .38 revolvers with never an issue. I put the same load in .357 cases for my .357 Mag revolvers, again with no problems in thousands fired (purists often add .1 or .2 gr for the longer case - I've never bothered). That said, I agree with others that you'd need to shoot a steady diet of hot .357 loads for a long time to "wear out" that Model 19.
 
Well I found a load and case length that seems to work pretty well. I trimmed about 270 .38 special cases down to 0.860". Mainly because that was the shortest my trimmer would go. And it wasn't that much of a pain to trim either, I hooked my trimmer up to my cordless drill and was able to trim one per 10-15 seconds. Between screwing around trying to set up the drill and finding a way that was fast and worked well the trimming operation took me about 2 hours total.

I tested different cases and I found that only brass that was headstamped Winchester or Federal was thin enough near the case head to reliably accept a 0.357" bullet without bulging so much it wouldn't fit the chamber. Aguila and PPU brass was the thickest and bulged the most. RP and W-W brass was in between. Brass with a headstamp of "CBC" was also in between thickness, but it wouldn't trim properly and mostly just crumbled while I was trimming it, like it was made of compressed powder or something. I don't know who makes CBC brass but it seems pretty low quality.

Throughout this I used 125gr LFP bullets. I originally tried to use 2.4 grains of Win 231, because its what I had on hand, but was getting FPS readings very low and inconsistent and had a LOT of unburned powder left over. The absolute lowest FPS reading I got was 151 fps with 2.2gr of Win 231 and an OAL of 1.118". I decided the powder was the issue so I ran to the store to get some Titegroup. After some testing I settled on a load:
1.9gr Titegroup, OAL 1.093", 125gr cast LFP bullets, CCI 500 primers with medium crimp.
Results in fps:
527
496
486
524 Average: 509 fps
526 Standard Deviation: 14
512 Spread: 41
508
511
517
489

I even managed to set up my chronograph so i could point the gun straight down and fire and the variation was minimal still:
442
439
456

This load is more consistent, lower power, and way more accurate than my low velocity .38 special load, so I'm content with it. Also, since this is technically a "wildcat", I need a name for it. I was thinking ".38 Wimpy"?
 

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Up your charge and try to get 750 fps. It's still a light load but you will b e sure the bullets will leave the barrel. At your speed you may get one stuck in the barrel. Not something you want to happen.

If you miss that squib because recoil is so light and you may not hear it and you could fire a second shot ending up blowing your gun up or at least bulging the barrel.

If you want the lightest safe load try Trail Boss powder. Very low recoil and very accurate.
 
Im in the same boat as others, if it were me I would find a bulkier powder to fill the cases so 38spl cases would run well. All the work to make smaller cases seams silly to me. I make 44mag ammo that are powder puffs, pretty much a weak 44special in a mag case, the key is a powder that doesnt care.

I see no harm nor foul in making bunny fart loads, nothing wrong with wanting to keep jer runninh for a long time. That being said end shake is pretty easy to clear up, midwayUSA has both the shims you need as well as a nifty video on how to install them on a smith.
 
If they are consistently clearing the barrel at consistent velocities then what makes you think a bullet could get stuck in the barrel? Just because 500fps "feels" too light? I appreciate your concern.
 
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