Quiet .38 loads

[Glen]

In another thread, I mentioned some work that Jim Taylor did a number of years ago to generate some quiet cast bullets handloads for vermin control around the ranch-house (e.g. fox in the henhouse, bunny in the vegetable garden, coyotes harassing the calves, etc.). He wanted these loads to be quiet, so as not to scare the sweet little old lady living across the highway from him, and also not to startle the stock in his barnyard. He also didn't want them to be overly powerful because he just wanted to kill the pest, and not damage out-buildings, tractors, etc. in the area. He had tried light charges of pistol powders, and not found a combination of accuracy and quiet that he was looking for (position sensitivity?). He knew he wanted a low pressure load (to keep it quiet), but he figured that he needed a case filling load to get the most uniform ignition (good accuracy). This led him to consider using powders that are normally considered "too slow" for the application. Key caveat here -- these powders MUST be easy to light in order to work well at these low pressures. These requirements led him to experiment with IMR 3031 with cast bullets in small capacity cartridges in his leverguns (e.g. .32-20, .38 Special). Basically, the idea was to fill the case to the bottom of the cast bullet. I just finished revisiting Jim's experiments, using the .38 Special case (I don't own a .32-20 levergun at the moment) and the H&G #51 160 grain SWC. 10.0 grains of 3031 fills the .38 Special case to the base of the H&G #51, which was then crimped firmly in place. From a 6.5" Ruger Blackhawk .357 Magnum, this load produced 425 fps; and from a Marlin 1894 levergun, it produced 460 fps. Qualitatively, I would say in both cases it was quieter than a .22 handgun or rifle, respectively (more of a pffft, than a crack!). In both guns, this load shot to the sights, and hitting walnut sized rocks at 15-20 yards was no problem, and required no sight corrections. Yes, there is a fair amount of unburnt powder (and with the levergun, I could actually see it coming out of the muzzle into the sight picture when firing the shot, weird!), but I don't see this as being a problem because this is not the sort of load that one is going to go out a burn through a large pile of in a plinking session, it is intended for a specific job and only a few shots would generally be fired at any given time. Anyway, I thought some of you might be interested in these results so I thought I'd share them with you.

 

[freebullet]

That is very interesting and, promising results.

I'd worked a light load for mom's 38 snubby's of 3gr of titegroup under the Lee 140. It's probably in the 600fps area. Could be worked backward for a rifle. It burns very clean and isn't sensitive for position or temp and, at the distances mentioned would likely be squirrel head accurate.

Thanks for sharing, always enjoy hearing others methods & experience.

 

[fiver]

4895 works in the 44/45colt.
4831 in the 30-30.
aa-2230 in the 25-20 and in the 357 maximum [with 250gr bullets] , it also works in the 357 magnum quite well.
the key is to burn just enough of the slow powder at a low enough pressure to expel the projectile.
you just don't want it doing it at over 950fps.
playing with primer brisance can make a huge difference in the performance of the round, and generally you want the case 100% full with some light compression when seating the bullet.

 

[358156 hp]

The older DuPont & IMR manuals used to have loading data for the faster extruded rifle powders in magnum handgun cartridges. I remember one of those internet spurts of interest on rifle powders for 44 mag, and 454 Casull a few years back. That was the last I'd thought about using fast rifle powders until now.

 

[300BLK]

Something that I've wanted to try was roundballs or very short conicals from a .357 carbine. I've done it with some other calibers, and the quietest I've tried that was accurate to 50 yards was a 32" barreled 38-55 with 37583s over 4gr Universal. It shot tiny groups, but all you could hear was the hammer fall and bullet impact. Roundballs in the 30-30 would shoot nickel sized groups at 25 yards but spread to clay bird sized at 50 yards and had a noticeable "pop". 32-20s with 3118s over 2gr of Bullseye or such shot quarter sized groups at 50 yards and were about as loud as the 30-30 load or subsonic 22 LR.

I've done some "urban varminting" with both the 30-30 and 32-20 with those loads, and woodchucks don't run away. My expectation would be that coyotes would run away with such loads, but if lung shot might never return.

 

[Glen]

I finally got a chance to put this quiet .38 Special load on paper -- from the Marlin 1894 levergun, they grouped into an inch at 25 yards (open sights), and from the OM Ruger Blackhawk they didn't do so well.

 

[S Mac]

I was intrigued with the 3031 load you mentioned, shooting them in my revolver they didn't group so well, They were quite though,

 

[KHornet]

300BLK, I also have done the RB over 1 1/2/2 gr of bullseye, and agree with you.

Paul

 

[358156 hp]

I used to use Lymans 358627 215 gr in 38 Spl cases with 3.5 gr of 700X for bowling pins. This load had very little recoil, but just impressed the bowling pins to no end. The pins would fly back about 3 ft, then simply drop. I have no idea what the velocities were, but it couldn't have been very high.