9mm Federal (rimmed)

[Bergeron]

There have certainly been many more less-useful cartridges that have made re-appearances, and I'd be very interested in this one.

I'm not up on my revolver-cartridge-cyliner interfaces, but I'd most like to be able to choose between shooting the Federal and clipped 9x19 in the same gun.

I could see some of the very lightweight J-frames, as well as something like a 3" lightweight K-frame.

We could use all these fabulous new .355" bullet designs, but I don't know how(if?) the current state of the ammo industry could spare the time and production capacity to spin up a new line like that.

[Scal]

Seems like the simplest thing to do would be to load up .38 short colts with .355 bullets and 9mm equivalent powder loads and possibly just change the headstamp to help prevent the risk of blowing up an old gun. .38 MSC, for modern Short Colt, maybe?

The overall length of the .38 short colt cases is near identical to 9mm, so assuming that modern solid head .38 short colt cases can contain the pressure, which I think they can, it would be a way to get something equivalent to 9mm federal for relatively little effort.

This assumes that one isn’t interested in using moon clips gun, though.

[revolvergeek]

.38 S&w brass is probably a closer fit due to the taper, and is available new from Starline. Ed Harris has written about shooting .38 S&w in his 940 with just a very minor change to the chamber throats.

[Rock185]

Yes, I do remember this one. At the time, it seemed like a poorly thought out effort to me. If 9MM performance in a small revolver was the goal, use of common 9X19MM seemed much more logical to me than creating a new cartridge. Having chronographed regular 9X19MM in a couple small revolvers, I could agree that 9MM performance might be a worthy goal. The 9MM in short revolver barrels seems pretty efficient, closer to .357 than .38 +P in some loadings.

If I ever come across a box of 9MM Federal, I'd like to try it, and chronograph some, in my short barreled S&W and Ruger 9MM revolvers....