A too-small bullet for your revolver's chamber throats can work against you. The cast-bullet hand-loader has an advantage over his counterpart shooting jacketed bullets. If he casts the bullets himself or buys them "in the raw"--that is, not sized and lubed--he can size bullets to larger diameters than available in regular production orders. The advantage is that pressure stays up longer. With lead bullets up to 0.360 inch, it's nearly impossible to size the bullets large enough to cause severe problems in a .38 Spl.

If you know you want to load light and plan to stick with published starting loads, choose from the faster-burning propellants. That will keep the start pressures higher to help you avoid problems.

The accompanying chart shows how pressures required to produce 1,000 fps in a pressure barrel (a fairly light load for 110-grain bullets) will change with burn rate.

Testing
If you want to develop a light load, don't load up hundreds of cartridges before testing in the revolver you plan to use. Load a few and, if you have access to a chronograph, look for velocity variations.

Establish a base line by elevating the muzzle before each shot to put the powder at the primer. Then test again, depressing the muzzle before each shot. This puts the powder at the base of the bullet, an orientation most likely to show ignition and burning issues. The velocity will go down somewhat but should not drop more than about 50 to 75 fps in a good load.

Do this testing slowly so you can listen for a BIB. Any "off" sound should have you checking the bore. Once satisfied that the load is consistent in the firearm(s) for which it is intended, load the larger quantity.

Cases
The disadvantage to a century-old cartridge is the variation in cartridge case manufacture over that time. The big change since the mid-1980s has been a gradual thickening of the case wall near the case head. This changed case capacity, and using mixed cases will add more velocity variation. The old advice to segregate cases by brand needs to be extended to separating by headstamp and other factors like factory cannelures rolled into the case body.

Those rolled cannelures can control your choice of what bullet goes in what case. I have a lot of old Remington cases that have a very heavy cannelure near the case mouth. This cannelure seldom is completely ironed flat after firing and resizing. If I try to seat a jacketed bullet in the case, the hard wall of the bullet pushes the cannelure out and can create chambering problems. On the other hand, that pesky cannelure nicely snaps into the center of the big lube groove on the Lyman/Ideal No. 358429 cast bullet--the classic Keith design--so I save those cases for loading that bullet.

A person could experiment for years with the .38 Special and not find all its interesting abilities. It remains today an accurate and useful cartridge over 100 years after its introduction.