38 spl DEWC and PMC brass

[Chuck59]

Learned something (again) today. I had never loaded the DEWC in 38, so picked up 500. I was doing pretty well, then noticed a bulge in a case. Uh oh.
Pulled the bullet..
2018-04-10_10-19-21 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr
took my small hole gauge and micrometer, and checked it. .375" down to an obviously thicker wall right where you see the bulge. Searched this site, and haven't seen anything about that. All I've seen is PMC is a little thicker than most. Used my small hole gauge and started going through my brass.
Looks like PMC isn't suitable for DEWCs.

 

[mdi]

Pull one of those deeeeep seated wadcutters to see if the case swaged the bullet down. When I first started casting DEWCs for my 38s and 357s I noticed the tapered interior would swage some of my softer bullets down, and to be honest I can't remember which brass was the worst. I either seated the bullets out so as to not squeeze the bullets so much (no need to seat flush for a revolver) and on some went with a slightly harder alloy, around 13-15 BHN...

I tried not F/L sizing, which helped a bit, as there is no need for a crimp with my light loads, but that wasn't much difference. On the other hand, one of my "house gun" loads is a DEWC (a bit harder at around 15-16) loaded to a near max. load of W231. I seat these out a bit, mebbe 1/8" to 3/16" because one of my mods for DEWC has a crimp groove...