Ricochet
Member
This is Miss Nicole, my slightly late Christmas present to myself. Since I was a youngster I've admired and hankered for a .38 Super, and always thought bright nickel 1911s were mighty pretty. Ended up getting a blue .45 40 years ago. Rock Island Armory still offers the .38 Super in nickel, but for quite some time Google couldn't find a new one available for sale anywhere, so when this one turned up I grabbed it. Put on these phony abalone grips, I like the look. Haven't bought or fired a factory cartridge. Got some .38 Super Comp brass from Starline and loaded some of my as-cast TL-356-125-TCs that I had on hand and have had very good service with in 9mm Luger. To my chagrin, they just don't work at their .358-.359" diameter. "Plunk" fitting isn't possible. Letting the slide push the cartridge into battery will seat them as long as the OAL is 1.28" or less. The shoulder of the bullet touches the leade slightly beyond that. Extracting a cartridge slam-fitted that way shows that the bullet has been shaved down to .355" by the headspacing shoulder at the end of the chamber. And the groove diameter of the bore turns out to be .3505"! The barrel is plated inside and out with what appears to be matte nickel. It could be hard chrome. It had already been made with normal bore and chamber dimensions and then plated, making for a very tight bore and chamber. I got a Lee sizing kit for .356" and also a die for their 358-125-RF bullet, which I've seen highly recommended. Those bullets sized to .356" fit nicely and will "plunk" even though they're .001" larger than I'd measured on the force-fitted .358" tumble lube bullets. They shoot well when grease lubed. I encountered a big problem right away with the tumble lubed bullets, both of the TL, TC style and the conventionally grooved ones. I've been used to coating them pretty heavily with Alox and leaving them that way. I do encounter problems with Alox buildup in seating dies but never had a problem shooting them until now. The tight, sharp shoulder at the end of the chamber scrapes the Alox off of the bullet nose and clogs it between the case mouth and chamber shoulder, preventing the slide from going into battery! The greased bullets don't have this problem, and I expect that wiping the Alox off of the bullet noses will solve it as well. I'm using a load of my lot of WC820 that's just a bit slower than Accurate #9. It is rather compressed, burns cleanly, shows no sign of high pressure, and gives a muzzle velocity right at 1300 FPS. The cases were getting flung quite far, so I thought I'd try a stouter recoil spring. I had a Wolf 18 1/2 pounder lying around. I thought it might be too stiff, but I tried it and it works well. The cases still eject with alacrity, but only about 20 feet behind and to the right. The momentum of a 125 grain bullet at 1300 FPS is 82% of that of a 230 grain at 850 FPS and just about the same as a typical .45 200 grain target load, and the heavier powder charge I'm using in the Super adds to the recoil. It definitely doesn't need a lighter spring than the standard .45 one. I'm going to have a lot of fun with Miss Nicole, I'm sure! 
Hmmm, several attempts to link a picture haven't worked. Maybe if I just paste the URL here it will come up as a clickable link:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BDjISGHtK9S/
Hmmm, several attempts to link a picture haven't worked. Maybe if I just paste the URL here it will come up as a clickable link:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BDjISGHtK9S/
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