38 Spl +P with 125gr Hornady XTP

hi folks it feels great to be back in case you didn't notice I've been mostly absent for a couple weeks I've been out elk hunting I was lucky enough to get an elk last Sunday so we're back and it's time to get back to reloading and I thought what better way to get back to some reloading than to load up some 38 special + peas to try out in my ruder GP 100 match champion this guy here we haven't shot this nearly enough here on the channel and another thing that made me want to load for this is I got a package from the hot led zone fortune cookie 45 LC sent me a couple boxes of 125 grain Hornady xt peas which i appreciate very much and 125 grain hillary the xt peas i can't think of a better choice for some nice hot 38 specials so that's going to be the plan for today so to pick out some powders I hopped on first of all the Hodgson website they've got some plus P 38 special data and the highest velocity they show is with Hodgdon long shot so I thought that might be our best choice for a Hodgkin powder and over on the western load guide they've got some pretty decent numbers with ram shot silhouette so that's the way we're going with the ram shot option now the load data from both of the powder manufacturers uses Winchester small pistol primers standard small pistol primers that I don't have any on hand so I'm going to go with some federal small pistol primers these are the small pistol match primers from federal but you know whatever I figure they'll do just as good as any so for brass we are using some star line 38 special brass this is some nickel plated stuff that we've had we've shot a little bit of 38 special here on the channel but not a ton but this is the brass we've been using seems to be doing fine it is a bit short I'm still like 10,000 short of trim length which puts us about 20,000 short of the maximum case length and I was looking a little bit ago at our overall length Hodgson shows an overall length with this bullet of one point four five five and RAM shot load data shows one point four four five but even at one point four four five it's still a little bit shallow into that candle or you know the candle or is not quite down into the case as much as I'd like to see so it might need to go a little bit deeper maybe one point four four zero something like that so here on the screen is our load data so whatever that overall length says right now is what we ended up going with later and as far as charge weights so with long shot they show a maximum charge of seven grains so let's shoot a couple different charge you know let's let's shoot three different charge weights here let's go six point two six point six and then seven point zero grains they don't give a Mac there they don't give a starting load for there plus P data and they don't have this powder in standard pressure you know in the standard pressure load data so kind of making it up as we go here as far as a starting load goes but that's a little over ten percent lower than below max so I figured that'd be a decent place to start so six point two six point six and then the max of seven point zero on the RAM shot silhouette side I want to go five point eight six point two and six point seven and six point seven is what they show for their max and they show yeah whatever six point seven so we'll load up fifty rounds so I'll load five rounds of the lowest charge and then ten rounds of each of the higher charge so for each powder that'll make twenty five rounds should be a nice little trip to the range a nice way to ease back into this try and get back into the flow should make a nice little return from our elk hunt so if you haven't followed along I'm still pretty darn new at loading 38 special on 357 Magnum so let's go ahead and let's run through all the steps here and if you guys see me screwing something up let me know in the comment how about that as far as the eyes go I've got the lead deluxe pistol set here for 38 special in 357 Magnum got our lead number one shell holder turn on our press light there we go Reese resizing die is easy enough we screw it down until it touches and this is a carbide sizing die so we don't have to lube our cases or any of that crap let's go ahead and throw our expanding expand or die in there this guy's down until it touches and then out one full turn and then we adjust it from there but with these jacketed bullets shouldn't need a whole lot of flair I wouldn't think to get our bullets started so all right here's the first one resized and a little bit of flair and we've got a little bit of a nick on the case mouth let's see if we can see what we can sit a bullet down in here now hey not quite let's let's go a little bit farther that was maybe a an additional sixteenth of a turn still not quite you could get away with this like I said with a jacketed bullet you could get away with just jamming them down in there but I don't want to man I want to go ahead and get a little bit more flare nope one more oh now that's better all right now it just get it right down in there and it's ready to go and it still it doesn't look bad like you know it doesn't look like a freaking trumpet or anything but it's enough to get that bullet started straight which is important which is very important all right so I just need to run our 50 cases through here and we'll be ready for some primers tell you one thing I have noticed on these bullets which I've noticed it on Hornady hollow points before he just kind of popped in my mind because I had opened up the box to look there a lot of these get these little boogers in there in the hollow point leftovers from manufacturing process of some sort and sometimes they're like fully clogged yeah here's a good one look at this guy that's not good especially if you're in a situation where you need this guy to expand they're gonna pick it out of there with ya look at that so you know something to keep in mind something I noticed something I thought I should bring up [Music] [Music] oh man yes I just hand weight all all of our long shot charges I broke the hopper on my RCBS Uniflow powder measure so I've been yeah I'll tell you what if there's a finished recording miss I'm gonna call up RCBS and see if I can get a new hopper for my powder measure because the lis at least scoops work really well but yeah it's a whole lot faster to set up a powder measure all right so I've got our 25 long shot charges weighed out and it's time to set up our bullets eating die and our crimp die I'll tell you what while I got this bullets eating die in my hand let's have a look at the seeding stem in the lead eye and see how it how well it fits the Hornady XTP you can see it's a very shallow dish and that's what it looks like when it touches your bullet during bullets eating so not bad not not exactly like you know an intimate cradling fit or anything but it's at least halfway decent and should provide a little bit of alignment right cuz that's uh yeah it's not so much a thing here with with a 38 special or 357 but especially with rifle bullets you rely on that seeding stem to get that bullet straight during seeding and we get a little bit of that here but not so much and that's why another good reason why it's important to get that flaring die set riot to where your bullet sits down in there and you can kind of get it straight it doesn't need a whole lot of alignment help during seeding so I don't know how I got off on that subject but whatever alright this guy we screwed down till it touches and back it out three full turns and let's get it seated down somewhat close to the can lure and then we'll start measuring one point four five seven so the Hodgdon recommended overall length was one point four five five so this is pretty much it I'll tell you what I'll give it just the tiniest of tweaks that should be right about one point four five five ish yeah one point four five four but let's have a look at the candor yeah the case mouth is just barely man my camera is losing its marbles it's a little rusty too you know a couple weeks off and it doesn't know how to focus anymore but still a whole lot of Candler going on there so let's take it down ten thousandths - what Ram shot suggested at one point four four five and I went a little bit too far one point four four one you have it in that case now it looks a whole lot better than it did tell you I'm gonna give it the tiniest of tweaks here try to get to one point four four zero now this is this is not necessarily the smartest thing in the world because with both of these powders we're going all the way to maximum charge weight you know the maximum plus P charge weight and that one that one red one point four four two so just another little tweak and putting that bullet farther down in the case and reducing that effective case capacity is going to increase our pressures so we're already at max plus P and then we're going a little bit more not necessarily the smartest thing in the world bottom hoping we'll be okay so yeah that that looks pretty good there we go there's a little extra zoom in so that doesn't look bad okay moving on to our crimp die this guy gets screwed down until it touches and we lock it down and we take a completed and put it up inside of the die I've got the adjuster all the way out and then we screw it down until we feel it touch there it is and they say a half turn for a light crimp there's a half turn see what that looks like yeah it's tucked in there a little bit but it definitely is a little bit light still so let's go ahead and go that additional half turn they say one full turn for for heavy crimp so this is their heavy crimp setting whoo that was a little bit too much it felt super heavy and I think it's just a little bit too much let's come out like a quarter turn and try the next round yeah I backed out a little bit too much there we go that feels pretty good let's have a close-up look at that guy on the right is the one where we just went a little bit too far kind of has a little weird ring right at the case mouth yeah I think he just went a little bit too far but this guy here is about a quarter turn less than that and it's looking pretty good yeah looking real good so the other one that we went a little bit heavy with it's still fine I'm gonna go ahead and shoot it but I like that that slightly lighter setting a little bit better now before I go ahead and seat and crimp all the rest let's go ahead and grab our rooty-tooty point-and-shoot ii here and make sure these guys oh yeah feels nice easy in easy out looks like we're in good shape so I guess that's really all there is to it I just need to weigh out our 25 charges of ram shot silhouette seat those bullets and we'll be ready to hit the range hi folks we might be in for some ugly groups today because I'm shooting at 15 yards I normally keep it at 7 or 10 but I feel like a challenge today so we're stretching it out to 15 yards I've got my job caldwell ballistic precision chronograph out there to get velocity data and we are starting with 6.2 grains of longshot those are 1-inch dots down there so let's see if I can hold some groups tight enough to keep them on the paper alright here we go five shots with 6.2 grains a long shot it's 824 feet per second so nice and slow I'm pretty happy with that group that's very good for me at this distance this is a good shooting pistol I mean don't get me wrong I just I just really have to work at it at 15 yards so hopefully I can keep that up next group five shots of 6.6 screens alright so that was a nice bump in velocity average of 8 926 so last up is 7.0 grains we'll shoot a five shot group with these guys they ought to be pretty smoking fast so let's see if they'll group that was a significant jump in recoil I don't see anything weird going on with the brass no pressure signs that I can see so that's good but the velocity a little bit all over the place right I don't those standard deviation numbers are not terribly impressive with the long shot okay switching over to rim shot silhouette our first group is five point eight grains let's hope this powder gives us a little more consistent velocities here we go there are a couple good reasons for a grown man to cry right death and the family exceptionally sad movie stubbing your toe really bad you know there there are several but there is one that above all others completely justifies curling up in a ball and crying and that is spilling your ammo case and that is what has happened to me I had it sitting on the ground here beside me and I don't even know what I did but somehow I managed to tip this guy over and I have completely lost track of what's what so I took about a half hour break try and decide what to do whether to just scrap this video and start over and I think I'm gonna go I'm gonna try to move forward I think I might have got the rounds back in the rows they belong so I want to go ahead and just shoot them and I'm hoping that you know that there's enough velocity differences between our different charge weights to where even if I get one or two mixed up in there we can sort it out later and get good valid velocity data and stuff like that so that's that's where we stand everything's screwed up and yeah whatever we're just going to keep on shooting so I think these next rounds more than likely are 6.2 grains of ram shot silhouette let's hope what really makes me mad as man that first group with silhouette looked so good and the velocity numbers were good and all that stuff huh so aggravating that shot was much louder and much faster so yeah definitely got some got some mixed up here I I think these five shots this is from the last row and if there's any row that I should have been able to get back into the box where they belong it's the last ones right the ones that were on the very end of the pile so I'm hoping this is six point seven grains of silhouette let's see how they do so the hottest ones from here on this side of the box seem to be around that 875 feet per second mark so we didn't quite get as much velocity as we did with with longshot but the groups are definitely tighter so here's five more I'm going to shoot him at that same that same third dot I had five more I thought these were six point two grains so back to the center dot tell you what I'll shoot these double action I back up the top row these are some more that I think are six point six grains of longshot let's uh let's continue our double action practice here I'll shoot at the center dot all right several of that last group were right up around the upper nine hundred feet per second range almost a thousand feet per second so that was clearly not what I thought it was what freaking mess here's the last five shots I have no idea what the hell they are will continue shooting at that center dot all right so it ended up being a complete mess but it was a lot of fun I really haven't shot this gun a whole lot so this was this was an excellent practice so let's get back to the bench all right so even though this video is a bit of a mess I think there are a couple things we can learn for one silhouette just shot shot better it just did and I think it had to do with the more consistent velocity we were seeing I wasn't able to dig through the weeds and separate all the shots and get standard deviation numbers four six point two and six point seven grains but at least the five point eight grain silhouette standard deviation number we got was good was ten point three I think you know a little bit faster burning powder silhouettes about faster powder than long shot I think we were just getting a better burn because another major thing I noticed with the first few shots or actually you know as I was shooting long shot I was getting unburned powder everywhere the key that was in the cases it was on the table it was just everywhere so although long shot gave us good velocities it just wasn't quite getting that burn we were looking for and that we need for consistent velocity numbers I think is basically what was going on and silhouette on the other hand I think we were getting a good burn we were getting better groups but it's just a faster powder right so we weren't able to get the velocities we we saw with long shot I don't maybe maybe with long shot maybe a Magnum primer could help I don't know but I mean yeah regardless of the problems it was a fun little test I've got plenty of these bullets like I said fortune cookie 45 Elsie sent me a bunch and I already had a few on hand in my stockpile so we've got a ton of these if any of you guys are interested or you know give me some information about what's your favorite powder for 125 green + P 38 specials I've got most of the powder in this you know in this region of the burn rate chart like well if longshot was was too slow to get the burn we were looking for I don't know what 2400 work when 38 special I mean of course it works awesome in 357 magnum but maybe that's worth a shot or accurate number 7 or blue dot CFE pistol auto comp HS 6 so we've got a bunch of powders that are probably going to be good ones for this application or maybe even up to unique so I would definitely welcome your feedback on powder selections here so I think that's pretty much it it's not a whole lot more to talk about here I don't think like I said I'm back so you guys better carb up I'm hoping to you know start rolling out some videos here in a pretty regular fashion through November and December if you'd like to help support the channel come to patreon.com/scishow ting it gets you access to these videos a couple days early because you know I have to go through the monetization review process with these videos most of them so supporters over on patreon get access a couple days early another great way to support the channel that doesn't cost you a dime is pretty much every single video I'll have links down in the description for the main components that we used and their affiliate links so if you click on them and go shopping and make a purchase I'll get a couple pennies on the dollar and eventually it adds up and it's you know big retailers that I definitely vouch for like Brownells Amazon and notch a shooters supplies I've ordered from multiple times and always had good service from them so yeah check out the affiliate links and you don't necessarily have to buy what I've linked I include you know generic links to go to Brownells or Amazon or natchez and then you just do your shopping and there's nothing like creepy like I don't get I don't get your personal information or anything weird like that I get to see what was purchased but I have no way of figuring out who in the world did it so no worries there so that's pretty much it assuming I don't have some major problem should be another video tomorrow so I will see you guys next time

Channel: Johnny's Reloading Bench

Views: 34,970

Rating: 4.939394 out of 5

Keywords: guns, shooting, reloading, .38 Special, .357 Magnum, Ruger GP100

Id: 7NxSDmBmRrI

Length: 29min 29sec (1769 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 05 2017