.38 Special vs Long Colt

[breamfisher]

The .38 Special is supposedly more powerful than the .38 Long Colt. Gun mags say so in their articles. And it is with +P loadings, buuuuuut...

If you compare the original loads, one launches a 150 grn. LRN at 777 fps, the other a 158 grn. LRN at.... 755 fps.

Wow. Huge step up in power.

[Elk Creek]

It’s the heavier bullet that makes up the difference…

[JunkCollector]

The .38 Special is supposedly more powerful than the .38 Long Colt. Gun mags say so in their articles. And it is with +P loadings, buuuuuut...

If you compare the original loads, one launches a 150 grn. LRN at 777 fps, the other a 158 grn. LRN at.... 755 fps.

Wow. Huge step up in power.

I generally consider you pretty well informed/up on things
Where are you getting your data from on this ?

38 special is a longer case designed for higher pressure.
Heck in the 30's it was even loaded to near 357 magnum power levels for the smith heavy duty and outdoorsman

[Bigslug]

You've got to remember that these rounds are coming from the barely-out-of-black-powder era of the pretty darn cheesy Colt Model 1892 and the very earliest editions of the S&W K-frame/M&P's. A couple decades later, Elmer Keith was loading extra-toasty 173 grain Special loads for the pre-.357 .38 Heavy Duty out of Smith N-frames - - loads which tended to destroy the older, weaker guns and is the reason why we had to invent the .357-length case in the first place.

No different than the need for 3 categories of load data for the .45-70, or "Ruger Only" loads for .45 Colt - - the guns got better.

[breamfisher]

The .38 Special is supposedly more powerful than the .38 Long Colt. Gun mags say so in their articles. And it is with +P loadings, buuuuuut...

If you compare the original loads, one launches a 150 grn. LRN at 777 fps, the other a 158 grn. LRN at.... 755 fps.

Wow. Huge step up in power.

I generally consider you pretty well informed/up on things
Where are you getting your data from on this ?

38 special is a longer case designed for higher pressure.
Heck in the 30's it was even loaded to near 357 magnum power levels for the smith heavy duty and outdoorsman

Wikipedia and other sources. Factory data on the special. Notice I said "original loads." Not modern stuff. Modern stuff is hotter. Early stuff and a lot of standard lead loads? Not so much.

https://ballistics101.com/38_special.php

https://gunsmagazine.com/gear/38-long-colt/

[CPJ 2.0]

#RIF

[JunkCollector]

We'll disagree on this one
The special since inception waa made specifically to do 800-850

[Zee]

Hell, I don’t even like the .38 Spl, so I have no dog in this fight.

[CPJ 2.0]

We'll disagree on this one
The special since inception waa made specifically to do 800-850

Where are you getting your data from on this?

[JunkCollector]

Where do you want it from ?
Since you believe in wiki
Click on history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.38_Special#

It started of as a BP round

[CPJ 2.0]

Yes, and it says exactly what bream said.
(Comparing the original loads)

10.24 g (158 gr) LRN 755 ft/s (230 m/s)


Not sure how much more pressure it was meant to hold, since it started as a BP round. With 3 grains more the 38 long cold. Pressure would be similar, I’d guess. More powder heavier bullet, but still BP none the less.

What was done in the 20’s 30’s etc etc…wasn’t the topic of discussion.


Similar to what the 45 long colt WAS, to what it’s loaded to NOW.

[JunkCollector]

The .38 Special held a minimum of 21 grains of black powder, 3 grains more than the then-current .38 Long Colt, and muzzle velocity (with a 158 grain bullet) was 100–150 feet per second greater

Must have missed this then
Totally contradicts what he said

I'll stick with the larger case with more powder being faster

[CPJ 2.0]

The .38 Special held a minimum of 21 grains of black powder, 3 grains more than the then-current .38 Long Colt, and muzzle velocity (with a 158 grain bullet) was 100–150 feet per second greater

Must have missed this then
Totally contradicts what he said

I'll stick with the larger case with more powder being faster

Well the article contradicts itself, so….

[JunkCollector]

Yeah.....and ?
Not my chosen source
So Which aspect do you choose to believe.then ?

I know which one I do and apparently it differs from Breams.

As my calendar does not say 04/01

[breamfisher]

I also used manufacturer's data. They list a 158 gr. LRN at 750 fps or so. The Ballostics 101 has a nice range of data, but anyway.

Federal American Eagle at 770 fps. Spicy
https://www.federalpremium.com/handgun/ ... AE38B.html
⁸
Remington UMC. 755 fps
https://www.remington.com/handgun/umc-h ... 23724.html

Winchester at 755 fps
https://outdoorlimited.com/38-special-a ... 50-rounds/

Blazer also makes a 755 fps load
https://www.cci-ammunition.com/handgun/ ... -3522.html

[JunkCollector]

By your own criteria
Aren't we supposed to be going by the original rounds ?
Which were BP ones

It's ok if you want to write for a gun mag
I'm just not buying the 38 LC

Next

[Bigslug]

The .38 Special is supposedly more powerful than the .38 Long Colt. Gun mags say so in their articles. And it is with +P loadings, buuuuuut...

If you compare the original loads, one launches a 150 grn. LRN at 777 fps, the other a 158 grn. LRN at.... 755 fps.

Wow. Huge step up in power.

I suppose this could be just another entry in what I might call my "'Innovation' that isn't" journal of cartridge development.

Black powder military cartridges: .45-70, .450-577 Martini-Henry, .43 Mauser / Spanish / Egyptian, 11mm Gras. . . When it came to mass and speed, everybody was shooting a narrowed 12 gauge magnum slug and there wasn't a whit of practical difference between them.

Black powder handgun cartridges: You could arguably break them down into "those that start with the number 3" and "those that start with the number 4", but within their small number of sub-categories, no practical difference.

Exactly the same story once we went smokeless. A few of the firearm MECHANISMS stood above the rest, but if all the little handguns had been .32 ACP's, the big handguns .38ACP, and the rifles and MG's 8x57, history probably wouldn't have changed at all.

There's a whole lot of Kool Aid that got sold, and drunk, and it was usually down to nationalism ("It's better because it was invented in our homeland") or commercial marketing ("you're gonna buy it because WE TELL YOU it's awesome"). But really, when everyone is faced with the same nail, they invent pretty much the same hammer.

If we're gonna boil that down to .38 LC vs. .38 Special. . . At least with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the .38 LC is gone because (1.) the most famous handgun that chambered it SUCKED, and (2.) S&W played one-upsmanship in that any gun that shoots the Special can also burn up any .38 LC you happen to have laying around. I don't think anybody was chomping at the bit (or at least shouldn't have been) to get a Special in 1905 specifically because it was some Hammer of Thor, but then again, slick marketing, gullible customers, and just sometimes, a logistics edge turn the wheels of capitalism.

Even if there was never a .38 Special, the .38 LC would have still run into the problems of Elmer Keith hotrodding it in newer guns and creating something that would have been unsafe in the old guns. We'd have probably gotten something like the .357 Magnum regardless. Had Keith done his tinkering in the Colt case, it's entirely possible the "Magnum" would have been created by stretching the Colt to what we think of as the Special dimensions, rather than by stretching the Special further.

[breamfisher]

I used to shoot IDPA with a guy who ran a GP-100. Instead of using 125 gr. .38 Specials he ran hot loaded 125 gr. .38 Long Colts. Claimed he got lower standard deviations due to the smaller case (probably true but of dubious utility) and a cleaner burn with better case sealing in the cylinder (I did observe that.) So yeah, if Elmer had hot loaded. 38 LC, the magnum may have been different.

[JunkCollector]

Smokeless vs Black the options abound