Home Forums Reloading Handgun Reloading 3 Problems Loading .38 Special for the first time

Mirrors my experience also. Since jacketed bullets in a .38 are foreign to me I followed Hodgdon's recipe for lead 158 SWC's and started with 3.1 grains HP-38. Works fine. Groups tightly in my Colt Officer's Model and K-38, and rings steel and dances empty soda cans at the plinking range - so what if it's a super light load, I'm not shooting desperados or stopping bear charges here. Actually, the only reason I messed with HP-38 is because a can of it showed up from I-don't-know-where and figured I'd give it a whirl. A moot point as I'm sitting on a really swell amount of Bullseye, Red Dot, and Clays.

OP, try starting the bulleted case into your die ever so slightly, like, the bullet just barely starting into the case, then back up and spin the cartridge 180 degrees and then go back in to completely seat it. If the one-sided bulge goes away then, that'll tell you that you have concentricity issues somewhere in your setup. To sit here and diagnose your problem without seeing it is the height of folly.

You don’t need the M die…
Ive never had good luck with lee dies
Get a set of Redding or rcbs carbide
I think you’ll have better luck!

DO NOT USE THE LEE FCD IF YOU ARE LOADING LEAD BULLETS. Yes I am screaming, who the hell cares if i hurt your feelings. But, the fcd will swage the bullet too small and you will end up leading your barrel. The fcd is made for jacketed bullets only. The M-die is also a waste of money and is not needed. Get your expansion die set right and you will not have a problem. If you send your seater plug into LEE with a few of the bullets you plan to use they will make a seater plug to the bullet you are using. Or you can do it yourself with epoxy.

I see people are still answering so I thought I'd give a status update:

1) Squibs and jackets left in the barrel
I decided to go with 4.2 grains in case my Lee Perfect Powder Measure threw light sometimes. I found that the measure is accurate to about .2 grains, but the "off" charges were always high, so my charges are 4.2 - 4.4 grains. HOWEVER, after throwing 20 charges my hopper cut off and I threw an empty charge. What happened is that I must have accidentally bumped the feed on/off slide. This is, of course, extremely dangerous so I taped the slide in place. Also keeping my eye on the tape.

2) Cocked bullets. Yeah, I do the 180 swivel to get the bullets as close to straight up as possible, but I'm still having problems. The bullet seating stem looks like it fits these bullets. Anyway, I'm giving up on the XTPs and will wait for the Missouri bullets. I'm having to start over, pulling all bullets, dumping all loads, and resizing. I found a Lyman M Die at Natchez and ordered it and will see if it helps. If it works, then I'm done, if it doesn't then I'll send some of both type bullets off to Lee to get custom seating stems made.

That Lyman M-die will fix most of your problems. If you are still having problems with bullets seating crooked then there is something wrong with your seating die setup. If you really want to eliminate the runout invest in a Redding Competition seating die. They are probably worth every dime they cost. But thankfully they are often on sale either at Midway or Amazon. Once I got one , I had to have one for every handgun caliber I own that they make one for. Come to think of it I did the same with M-dies. Both really make it much easier to make excellent arrow straight handloads.

yep

money well spent

I bought a Lyman M die. To me it looks exactly like my gray box RCBS die.
Case expanding becomes more critical using lead bullets. If you don’t bell enough you will be shaving lead off the bullets.
Powder measures are great but every now and then they will throw a lite charge.
This works for me and is a lot faster than you might think. Hasbeen

well I never use a Lee factory crimp die on revolver ammo , but I have used it on thousands up on thousands of rounds of a 45 ACP & 9mm with lead bullets I've never had an issue. but then again one has to have enough gray matter in the brain to read the instructions and learn not to set it up to squeeze the bullet..

I run cast bullets from Rim Rock in my 9's.....10's and 45 autos

Use the FCD every load w/o any issues

I load my .38s with a Lee 4 die set. I am very surprised to hear of your issues, especially #1 and #3.

#2 I highly suspect your powder thrower. You get what you pay for here, and without absolute quality you need to measure every charge. I ditched a Hornady Load and Load charge dispenser as I was getting inconsistent results too many times. Purchased a RCBS Matchmaster and have had excellent results for both pistol and rifle loads.
You have to push XTPs faster than what you are doing definitely. I looked at Lee 2nd edition book, it shows same data as you do - 3.8 min, 4.3 max for HP-38. That is mouse fart speed for an XTP in a regular .38 special. No sense using that bullet going that slow, it will never expand.

I load 95% of my .38s and 100% of .32 S&W long with Missouri Bullet Company Hi-Tek coated cast bullets. I use the 158 grain .38 Match-GL bullet. I believe the Hi-Tek coating makes a big difference, lowers the friction compared to an uncoated lead bullet.

#1 - I use the Lee powder dispenser die to expand the case mouth slightly. I plunk test all loaded rounds using a Lyman case gauge block and have yet to have one fail.

I use the Lee FCD die 100% of the time. I get EXACTLY what I want from the slightest kiss on .32 S&W long rounds to a solid crimp on full house 240grain .44mag hunting loads. Why someone thinks a single die performing two operations at the same time (seating and crimping) will do better makes no sense to me. Sure it is faster, but better?

I loaded some "mouse fart" loads for my friend who wants his mother to practice with a model 36 2" barrel .38 special. Load data was 3.1 to 3.7gr for 158 cast bullet, I loaded them at 3.4gr and specially labeled them for just that pistol. I wouldn't shoot that load in my 6" model 14 in the winter for example, I would be concerned with it not exiting 100% of the time. Your loads are barely above that with a XTP bullet which I wouldn't trust at all.

I use the Redding 3BR powder measure

Works well with all powders

But especially well with ball/sperical powders

Knew a guy with the Lee powder measure...just didn't look/feel quality


https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1012961815?pid=246394

Probably the first time I have heard of someone worried about runout on pistol cartridges........interesting!

Everything I load for handgun is a SWC or TC profile I cast myself. When I began my journey I noticed slivers of lead at the case mouth after seating, so I paid stricter attention to how much flaring I applied. I saw improvement, but still a few tiny slivers of lead after seating so I bought extra seater dies so I could seat and then crimp in separate steps (I leave lockrings alone once a die is set up). Then I noticed unevenly bulged cases where the bullet shank is concealed in the case and at that point I modified my seating technique: I raise the ram slowly until I feel the bullet touching the seating stem and very lightly tap it a couple of times, then seat the bullet just a bit deeper in two or three steps until it's fully seated. The bulge is still there (as it SHOULD be), but now it'll be nice and even all the way around. Any crimp I apply is just enough to remove any taper for cartridges that headspace on the case mouth, and roll crimp is applied as needed for revolver cartridges. The grip that the case has on a bullet should be established by the sizing die alone.

I have two Lee die sets for 38. I keep one set adjusted for 357 Mags and the other set for 38s. I’ve loaded thousands of rounds of each with nary a problem. I wish I could see your setup because I can’t picture in my head what is going on.

Contrary to what others will tell you, I’ve always seated and crimped in one pull. You just have to adjust the seating die correctly and it works great.

Semi jacket bullets can not be "downloaded". Start at at least the " starting load". I go midway between starting and max for half or semi jacketed bullets.

The Lyman M-Die fixed the crooked rounds problem. The ID of the cases before was .349" and the M-Die enlarges it to .354" for the first 1/16" below the flare. This allows me to balance the bullets more straight up. The .349" could be due to an out-of-spec sizing die or thicker than normal case walls but the M-Die fixes that, whatever the cause. I'm still using the FCD to separate the seating from the crimping steps.

All rounds now fit in my revolver with the smallest chambers.

In hindsight, I wish I had bought Redding steel dies and the Redding competition seating die.

I'm still waiting for the Missouri bullets, so I loaded the XTP bullets behind 4.4 grains of HP-38, checking all rounds with a scale, and will test them tomorrow.

I ran into this same issue with Lee 9mm dies. I bought the Redding expander die to fix it. I keep forgetting to look for the M die which I found out about later.

I hope that (44grs) of HP 38 is a typo.

The carbide ring on the FCD is the reason you never use it on cast bullet loads. It swages the bullet smaller which leads to leading in the barrel. If it does not then you must have a tighter barrel spec than what is normal. If you follow any of the actual cast bullet forums it is not recommended by anyone. Powder coated bullets are less likely to have problems being under sized. They only need to be exactly bore and groove size. You don't need to be 0.001"-0.002" larger prevent leading.

Oops!