Wise words.
I am not very smart, but I buy reloading manuals about every five years from all the major bullet, powder, or reloading companies. They are enjoyable to read and each has its own unique character. They are getting expensive, though.
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Well after viewing your picture of your manuals you previously fooled me into thinking you had no manuals. I am sure you did not mean to do this.
As far as wanting or needing a load for the .38 Special some of the Manuals even give the most accurate loads they have found which is a good starting point for your own testing. What shoots well in someone else's gun whether it be from Lyman testing or Internet chatter this many times will not be the most accurate load for your guns. Only your own time consuming and often expensive testing will show you what load you need to use.
Testing is a lifelong necessity. I recently was given a large amount of Red Dot Powder. Since gun powder now is out of this world with rip off prices and a friend of mine was ripped off by a gun store when they recently charged him $87.00 for a $35 can of Bullseye powder I knew I had better see if Red Dot would shoot as well as Bullseye as I cannot even get Bullseye right now for even $87.00 because it does not exist in my area.
Pouring through my manuals proved that there was an "absence" of plentiful loads for red dot in the 9mm but after searching both old and new manuals I found 2 manuals that had some Red Dot loads to use as a starting point. I surmised that since there was such a lack of information Red Dot must "not" be a very good powder for use in the 9mm but I decided to see if this was true with some load testing. Much to my pleasant surprise after a bit of experimenting I equaled the accuracy I got for years with Bullseye and now that I have 16 lbs of Red Dot I can wait until the powder rip of prices settle down to normal again. There is nothing like an economic down turn to do this and that is the time to buy up a good quantity of powder and primers. I also lived through two primer shortages because I had stockpiled them when they were plentiful and cheap at 2 cts apiece. The rip off of .13 cts a primer I refused to pay and slowly the prices have now come down and I have seen them for sale in my area now for half the price at 6 cents. An economic downturn will probably lower them back down to around 3 cts.
I might add that the one manual had mostly only weak anemic Red Dot Loads for the 9mm and the other Manual had loads I considered slightly insane they were so hot. I spit the difference and started out fairly low and worked up only a bit and when the weak ejection went away and become reliable and the loads not over the max loading of the anemic manual I knew I had found my optimum load and the bonus was it was a accurate load as well. Lesson learned I would never have been able to find all this out without a library of many loading manuals.
As far as .38 Special loads this cartridge is a forgiving one and will work great with a wide variety of powders. The old standby and probably still the best is a mild load of Bullseye Powder with the 148 grain wadcutter or 158 grain semi-wadcutter. If you want a rip roaring load that will blow over and or burn down fences and have a 20 foot muzzle fireball flash then using hot loads of bullseye is probably not going to give you want you want as a slower burning powder is best or higher velocities.. I have in the past used some warm loads with Unique powder.
Warning: Many people are afraid to use Bullseye because its just to easy to double charge a case and not see that you have done so as bullseye will often lie in the bottom of the long .38 special case and you will not notice a double charge. Bullseye does not create much volume for you to see. Many a revolver has blown up like a grenade with this very fast burning rate pistol powder from a double charge.
Bullseye pressure can jump radically with only 1 tenth or 2 tens of an increase in powder. When I was a kid I used a hot load of bullseye in the 9x19 and the cases swelled up to the point where they would not even go back into the shell holder. I never forgot that lesson.
I hope these warning do not discourage you from using Bullseye because it always has been one of my favorite pistol powders for the "smaller" pistol calibers. The bigger .41 Smith and .44 mag Smith work better with much slower powders and most revolvers in these big calibers will lead like heck when using "lead" bullets with bullseye or even Unique but "not" lead much at all with slower powders like 2400 and 4227.
