Smith and Wesson 357 mag

[Thehowler]

Wife and I went out looking for a gun to keep in our home for home protection, and a concealed carry while we are on vacation. We decided on the model 60-14 lady Smith. I know we can run 38 specials in this gun, but we want to load a manageable magnum charge, that she can practice shooting with.
I am ordering  up a set of reloading dies today.
Been reading up online and found a few powders that might work with the 2.125" barrel, Unique, and power pistol.
What about bullets? Read about people loading everything,weight wise, under the sun.
Sounds like maybe keeping fps around 1100? Don't know yet. Trying to save some money and time here.
Want to hear from the real hunters, shooters on this sight that have experience with magnum snubs.
I do own a chronograph.

[Bean Counter]

CorBon DPX. They're the best that I've read about on for snubby CCW revolvers. Something about the shorter barrel not imparting a lot of rifiling on the bullet before it leaves the gun and the design of the DPX really makes up for it as far as expansion goes. If I wasn't carrying those I'd probably chose between either Hornaday Critical Defense or Gold Dots by Speer.

We've owned and shot many Smiths over the years including the 60. its a great gun but I've largely turned my nose to Smith with those Gawd awful internal locks  One of our election-year acquisitions was a three inch SP101 by Ruger and after 5 minutes of easy internal polishing, a spring swap, and a few hundred dry fires on snap caps we like it better than any factory Smith we've ever owned or shot. 

[theleo]

In my experience "manageable" and "magnum" don't go together when you're talking model 60's. For my 3" model 60 I called it good with 7.5gr of BE-86 behind a 160gr WFN bullet. Over the Chrono it gives me 1,100 fps and I can stand about 20 rounds before I want to switch to something else closer to the 700-800 fps mark.

[jdb]

I also have 3" model 60 and it's quite a hand full with magnums. I put about 10 rounds a year through it. With .38s it's a *censored*cat. Statistically speaking the 125 grain hollow points are the best man stoppers. I'd find a good factory load like mentioned above then work up a reduced load that shoots to a similar poi. I do love my model 60 it would be the last handgun I'd ever part with god forbid  if we could only own one

[Thehowler]

Thanks for the comments!

[Bofire]

just use some bad ass factory load for defense, reload for practice. You won't shoot many full power loads anyway. Any good 125 grain hollow point, magnum or Plus P 38 special will do the job.
Carl

[Bean Counter]

Oh yeah, +1 for .38+p > .357 mag. I'm not exactly recoil shy to begin with, and even though my heavier 4" GP100 can handle .357 mag much better than a larger small frame revolver like the S&W60 or Ruger Sp101, the increased muzzle rise after recoil means more time to get back on target. Odds are a defensive gun use will at least end at bad breath range, if not start there, and I'd rather feel more confident that I'll put all six rounds of .38+p into him than possibly only 3 or 4 of the .357 mag.