"Wonderful Wicked Wadcutters."

[wm]

I'm narrowing down the choice for this little Rossi. I almost have this puzzle figured out.

http://www.dynamicforceinstitute.com/DF ... utters.pdf

Leaning heavily towards HBWC loaded backwards …… but want to try some plated ones.

Wm

P.S. Just a refresher ….. the project is to find a place in this world for a lonely, orphan revolver. It's a Interarms 1970s era Rossi model 31 which is a fixed sight, 4" barreled, small frame 5 shot 38 spl revolver. Too big for concealed carry, too small for many uses, not really rated for +P. The project is to find a useful 'combat' load for the little gun so that it can be used for home defense as a 'stash' gun by my work bench in basement or garage. In the end I will settle on a load for this, load up 200 rounds and they will probably sit waiting for that day I hope never comes.

[flightsimmer]

I once shot a prowler with a 38 spl. loaded with hbwc bullets loaded backwards and it literally turned to shrapnel.

[Rusty]

Our Dept. armorer showed me how to load 148 gr HBWC backwards in about 1976. I used them in my snub BUG but stayed with Remington 158 gr JSP in my duty gun as long as I carried the .357. I later moved on to a .41 Mag but stayed with the same BUG.
In one of Jim Cirelo's books he talks about his partner that carried a 1911 .45 ACP. He carried the first round up the spout that was like a full wadcutter in .45. It wouldn't feed from the magazine so it was the first one up and had to be carefully chambered by hand.

[mikld]

I got different results. When I tried the BHBWCs (backward hollow based wadcutters). I shot them into wet newsprint at about 12'. Some just clogged and acted like solids. On some the skirt collapsed, and skewed sideways, and some did open up. But for me the performance was inconsistent. Now one of my house guns gets fed a DEWC cast of about 11-12 BHN, over a max. load of W231 (not +P)...

[Dave James]

The standard wadcutter today is to soft, they need to be hard cast, used to load them up in 38spl, never worried about them working.
At least the Rossi was a better built gun than the Taurus of that period