38 Once Fired WC Brass - Resize Or Not for Cast WC

[chajohnson]

I've read that when preparing 38 target wadcutter ammo with wadcutter brass, the cases should not be resized before loading. Back in the day when I was a peace officer I shot a lot of PPC competition. I used Remington & Federal 148 gr match wadcutters for competition, but practiced with 148gr Remington wadcutters handloaded in once fired wadcutters cases. These cases were full length sized when loading. As I recall, testing the loads in a Ransom Rest, showed only a very sight increase in accuracy with the factory fodder. I'm retired now and no longer eligible to compete in PPC, so I've started shooting in bullseye matches at our local club. Also found that my custom PPC S&W revolver does very well in bullseye. (Albeit I seem not to be able to do as well.) My only problem now is I can neither find factory match grad wadcutter ammunition nor factory hollow based wadcutters bullets. However I did acquire a Lee six banger that throws a decent looking wad cutter boolit at about 152 grains and .359 from the mold. My cylinder throats measure .358 on the Smith and my bore diameter is .357. My question is , should I size the 2,500 rounds of wadcutter brass or not. Unsized, some of the boolits fit loosely in the case.

[dverna]

I always resize pistol brass. It lasts for decades so their is little "working" of the brass as occurs in rifle brass.

You must be able to hold the bullet so a loose fit is not good.

Don Verna

[gwpercle]

Since these were not fired in your gun and, like you noticed, some of the boolits fit loosely in the unsized fired cases...I am afraid full length resizing would be the proper thing to do.

Get a Lee Hand Press , sit in your easy chair and resize away...that's how I do it.

Gary

[dondiego]

I would size at least the length of the bullet to get consistent bullet pull. I have a Dillon 650, but I size and load more ammo on my $25 Lee hand press now than any other. It's just easy.

[Scharfschuetze]

During my LE days I too shot beaucoup PPC. I bought my first Dillon 450 to keep up with the ammo demands that exceeded my department's generous issue of 38 Special ammo. I always just full length sized my brass and didn't give it too much thought as my PPC revolver would always hold the 10 ring with it at 50 yards if I did my part and my Model 19 S&W or Python (for the service pistol class) did pretty well with the FL sized cases and the ammo would interchange between the revolvers.

I kind 'a miss shooting the old PPC course of fire also. Breaking 1480 on the full course was always a treat.

[Char-Gar]

I've read that when preparing 38 target wadcutter ammo with wadcutter brass, the cases should not be resized before loading. Back in the day when I was a peace officer I shot a lot of PPC competition. I used Remington & Federal 148 gr match wadcutters for competition, but practiced with 148gr Remington wadcutters handloaded in once fired wadcutters cases. These cases were full length sized when loading. As I recall, testing the loads in a Ransom Rest, showed only a very sight increase in accuracy with the factory fodder. I'm retired now and no longer eligible to compete in PPC, so I've started shooting in bullseye matches at our local club. Also found that my custom PPC S&W revolver does very well in bullseye. (Albeit I seem not to be able to do as well.) My only problem now is I can neither find factory match grad wadcutter ammunition nor factory hollow based wadcutters bullets. However I did acquire a Lee six banger that throws a decent looking wad cutter boolit at about 152 grains and .359 from the mold. My cylinder throats measure .358 on the Smith and my bore diameter is .357. My question is , should I size the 2,500 rounds of wadcutter brass or not. Unsized, some of the boolits fit loosely in the case.

Sure you size the brass. I do use and older RCBS steel sizer as it works the brass less than a carbide die and wad cutter brass is golden.

At one time, but no longer, RCBS made a special long .3585 expanding plug for this brass to open it up for HB wadcutters so the skirt didn't get crushed in the seating. Here is a pic of a lineup of RCBS expanders and the special long .3585 is on the far right.

[45 2.1]

Do yourself a favor. Buy a carbide 38 Super or 38 S&W sizer. They size a case slightly larger in body diameter and allow easy seating of the loaded round in the cylinder. Depending on the wall thickness of the brass, anything under 0.359" boolit is usually a friction fit in the sized case most of the time. With larger sized boolits, this usually helps accuracy.

[Shiloh]

Size them. The boolit slides into an unsized case way to easy. There could be issues with the boolit moving around even under target load recoil.

Shiloh

[Ia.redneck]

I acquired a S&W 52 last year and have been working on building an accurate load for it.
Came here last fall for answers and got lots of good advice. What helped me the most was wadcutter brass and got a .359 expander from RCBS. The wadcutters slide right in with thumb pressure. It shoots them REAL well now! Thanks again guys for the help.


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[chajohnson]

Guys, thanks for the replies. Scarf, I too really miss PPC. 45 2.1, would a 9 mm carbide sizer die work? SAMMI specs for that case are .380 OD like the 38 Super and the 38 S&W.

[45 2.1]

45 2.1, would a 9 mm carbide sizer die work? SAMMI specs for that case are .380 OD like the 38 Super and the 38 S&W.

The 38 is 0.379", the 9mm is 0.380", the 38 Super is 0.384". An improvement, but may not work well.... try it and see.

[SniderBoomer]

Educate me guys, never heard of Wadcutter brass.

[Char-Gar]

Educate me guys, never heard of Wadcutter brass.

Factory 38 Special target/match ammo was loaded with hollow base wadcutter bullets in brass that was different from other 38 Special brass. The difference was the walls of the case did not start to taper in thickness until much closer to the case head. This provided two benefits as it related to the match ammo with contributed to the accuracy of the ammo.

1. The long parallel sides of the case gave uniform tension/grip on the longer deep seated HB wadcutter.
2. The long parallel sides allowed the deeper seating of the HB wadcutter without crushing the fragile skirt.

In the long ago past, this wadcutter brass could be purchased unloaded, but today the only way to get it is to purchase new match ammo or fired cases of the type.

Winchester - Western and Remington - Peters wadcutter brass is easy to identify because it has a dual canilure on the case. The Federal has but one such canilure.

Those of us into serious accuracy with the 38 Special wadcutter, treat these cases as if they were made out of gold.

[SniderBoomer]

Ah.. thanks for pointing to a GREAT article.

...and thousands of miles away over the sea, I have some of that double-canilure brass in ma' stash...always wondered about it

[Cherokee]

9mm is a tapered case, I don't think you can size the 38WC brass in that with good results. 38 Super works for sizing with less working of the brass but I never tried loading/shooting any sized that way. BTW, I have about 40 38WC cases if anybody is interested. I don't use it now that I know people are specifically interested in it, I have plenty of the standard cases.

[Char-Gar]

Wahhhh! Share the wealth Charles!!!

Not going to do any such thing! . A few years ago I put out a WTB 38 wadcutter brass on this site and that is what showed up, all once fired brass in the original boxes. This is my reserve stash as I am still working on the 1,000 I had. If I don't use it, you can contact my widow with an offer.

Charles

[fcvan]

25 years ago, there were several guys on our rangemaster staff who were avid PPC shooters. Our department STILL uses the S&W M10 as the primary duty weapon but we are slowly transitioning to the Glock 22. All of our practice ammo was factory wad cutter ammo (Winchester or Remington) but now we have to practice and qualify with duty ammo.

Anyway, back to the wad cutter ammo and PPC race guns. These guys would occasionally bring their competition guns for use between range sessions. The weapons were highly customized and very slick. Both guns started out life as tapered barrel duty weapons that were picked up as surplus when we switched to bull barrel M10s. Stripped down, rebuilt, custom lock work, custom barrel, and refinished to a beautiful deep blue or dark matte black. Things of beauty and very accurate.

With factory loads the only excuse for a miss was the shooter. With handloads they were one-holers from a ransom rest. Two of the guys were street cops in the late 60s/early 70s, and had been shooting PPC a long time. Doug, an avid caster and Reloader, had dies and molds cut to provide optimum performance in factory guns, and extreme performance in the race guns. Between the red loading dies sizing to fit the chamber properly, and the boolits sized to provided consistent tension in the case, his ammo was very consistent. The best way I can describe it is he loaded his wad cutter ammo like a bench rest shooter. As a result, he was responsible for loading all the ammo for his first agency's shooting team.

I never shot PPC but enjoyed shooting their competition guns. I shot steel plates using a RN boolit (Lee 356-125 2R) as the round nose with speed loaders was slick and quick. Of late, I've been using the Lee 356-120 TC for banging steel. Those loads were between 950 to 1000 fps, which over time took all of my double cannelure brass and turned it into basically straight walled brass.

Recently, I've been mulling over getting a wad cutter mold and working up some tack drivers like my buddies used to shoot. I have a friend who wants to trade a bucket of once fired wad cutter brass for 9mm brass. His stuff is all same lot brass he got from the sheriffs office he started out with and has been sitting for 30 years.

The idea of making up a bunch of loads with bullseye, with the kind of precision the wad cutter loads are capable of producing is intriguing. These will be a compromise load in my M13 because of the longer .357 chamber. I intend to pick up a surplus M10 (or 2) when my agency finally transitions fully to the G22. The surplus gun will be sent in for a factory refurb or to one of the gunsmiths that still builds PPC guns. It would be nice to finally have a competition gun like the ones I was allowed to try back in the day. Good fun!

[Char-Gar]

Swap for the WC brass. What you don't use you can sell here.

[Scharfschuetze]

FCVAN,

I wouldn't worry too much about charge hole length for accuracy. On my department's pistol team, we had officers build PPC revolvers on both Model 13s and Model 10s. One officer even had a Model 586 built up with the front of its cylinder shaved to only accept flush seated 148 grain wadcutters. The barrel extended right back to the cylinder face and the bullet had hardly any jump at all when it hit the rifling. I never did see much accuracy difference between the three different lengths of chambers when the revolvers were compared side by side using the same ammo at 50 yards.

Of course that ammo featured the 148 grain WCs and the double knurled brass was preferred, although I did use Federal 38 Special standard brass (bulk order and I'm still using it) with equally good results when shooting over the course. Perhaps a Ransom Rest would have shown a difference between the revolvers, but when shooting from the prone position at 50 yards all the revolvers on the team would hold the 10 ring with a high percentage of hits in the X ring on the B-27 target.

As I don't shoot PPC any longer, I wish that I would have had this Model 15 built up on a Model 13 or Model 19 .357 for more flexibility.

You know after all this talk about 38s and PPC, I think I'll go out and shoot this revolver on the old B-27 target this afternoon!