Viss,
Congratulations! You are paying close attention to detail and that is very good! I believe that is the single most important factor to safe and successful reloading!
The extra weight in E.K.'s 170 gr. SWC has more to do with his desire to come up with the best-designed .357" SWC bullet than it does with that extra 12gr. of weight. He wanted his design to have a long forward truncated cone, a wide driving band, a single wide square-bottom grease groove, and a wide base band - and to accomodate all that, his bullet design ended up weighing ~170gr. when cast of #2 alloy. (BTW, Linotype is just another alloy mixture like #2 alloy, wheelweights, 50/50, etc. and has more antimony in it than the others - and bullets cast of linotype end up weighing a little less.)
E.K. designed the perfect SWC bullet for the .38 Sp. and .357 Mag., but the ammo manufacturers all modified his design so it would still weigh 158 gr. - and I haven't any idea just why they were stuck on that 158gr. weight instead of a nice round 160 or 170 gr. :? The original RN bullet for .38 Sp. was 158 gr. because some ballisticians had determined that the optimum bullet length for that bore diameter and rate of twist would weigh exactly 158 gr. After shooting billions of rounds in .38 Special revolvers for 110 years, shooters have figured out that this versatile cartridge is very successful at shooting a wide range of bullet weights from 110gr.-200gr.
In all reality, when you are loading low pressure plinking or target loads, a slight difference in bullet weights won't matter much as the pressure increase of the extra 12 gr. will still be well below the SAAMI maximum pressure ceiling of 17000psi for .38 Special rounds. You would need to be much more concerned with this extra 12 gr. if you were loading a maximum +P load. Nonetheless, you should always gradually work up all your load from a safe starting point as you are doing here. Any major change you make in a component should be a signal to back off and work up again.
Be sure to write down what you have done in your loading manual (Mine are full of my scribblings.), so you don't have to repeat the experiment - and don't forget to label each container of your reloads with exactly what is in there.
xtm
Congratulations! You are paying close attention to detail and that is very good! I believe that is the single most important factor to safe and successful reloading!
The extra weight in E.K.'s 170 gr. SWC has more to do with his desire to come up with the best-designed .357" SWC bullet than it does with that extra 12gr. of weight. He wanted his design to have a long forward truncated cone, a wide driving band, a single wide square-bottom grease groove, and a wide base band - and to accomodate all that, his bullet design ended up weighing ~170gr. when cast of #2 alloy. (BTW, Linotype is just another alloy mixture like #2 alloy, wheelweights, 50/50, etc. and has more antimony in it than the others - and bullets cast of linotype end up weighing a little less.)
E.K. designed the perfect SWC bullet for the .38 Sp. and .357 Mag., but the ammo manufacturers all modified his design so it would still weigh 158 gr. - and I haven't any idea just why they were stuck on that 158gr. weight instead of a nice round 160 or 170 gr. :? The original RN bullet for .38 Sp. was 158 gr. because some ballisticians had determined that the optimum bullet length for that bore diameter and rate of twist would weigh exactly 158 gr. After shooting billions of rounds in .38 Special revolvers for 110 years, shooters have figured out that this versatile cartridge is very successful at shooting a wide range of bullet weights from 110gr.-200gr.
In all reality, when you are loading low pressure plinking or target loads, a slight difference in bullet weights won't matter much as the pressure increase of the extra 12 gr. will still be well below the SAAMI maximum pressure ceiling of 17000psi for .38 Special rounds. You would need to be much more concerned with this extra 12 gr. if you were loading a maximum +P load. Nonetheless, you should always gradually work up all your load from a safe starting point as you are doing here. Any major change you make in a component should be a signal to back off and work up again.
Be sure to write down what you have done in your loading manual (Mine are full of my scribblings.), so you don't have to repeat the experiment - and don't forget to label each container of your reloads with exactly what is in there.
xtm
