I test fired the Glock 27 with my new Bar-Sto 357Sig barrel recently. I would like to share the results with you. I'll describe some of the details first and then give you my perceptions of the shooting session. I'll even throw in a tidbit about the 357Sig's big frame cousin, the 400 Cor-Bon.
You don't have to worry about mixing up the Glock 40s&w and Bar-Sto 357Sig barrels. The Bar-Sto barrel is a shiny-silver, stainless steel and has the Bar-Sto 357Sig stamp on it.
Another noticeable difference between the two barrels is that the barrel wall thickness on the Bar-Sto barrel looks like it is about twice as thick as the Glock barrel, which is necessary so the barrel will fit correctly into a 40s&w gun. The chamber of the 357Sig is approximately the same as the 40s&w chamber, except it accepts a bottlenecked case. The 357Sig case is beefed up a bit more than the 40s&w to handle the standard 40,000 psi limit, although some 40s&w rounds, such as the Hornady 155 grain load, have been rated from a FBI test at 37,400 psi, which is approaching the standard 357Sig pressure. My calipers measured the Glock barrel wall thickness to aprox .1" and the Bar-Sto to aprox .124". If nothing else, the thick 357Sig barrel looks impressive.
The next big difference is that the Bar-Sto barrel fits snugly into position, while the Glock barrel can wriggle around just slightly. The Bar-Sto rifling has a left twist which is just the opposite of the hexagonal Glock rifling. Possibly the best part of the Bar-Sto barrel is that it was free. Bar-Sto borrowed my Glock 27 for 2 1/2 months as payment, while they set up support for the Glock 27.
The Bar-Sto chamber appears to be somewhat in the middle between the Glock chamber and a Jarvis full-competition chamber. What I mean is that someone recently posted that the Jarvis barrels have fully supported chambers to guarantee no case bulge. But there was a concern that street reliability may not be as good as the Glock chambering system. Well, the Bar-Sto barrel exposes less than half as much brass webbing at the six-O'Clock position as the Glock chamber. The difference being that the exposed webbing on the Bar-Sto barrel is the toughest part of the brass webbing, while the Glock barrel appears to expose some of the thinner part of the brass as well.
You might recall that I posted lower-brass expansion measurements recently, because of concerns in lower case bulge. General specs after resizing fired 40s&w brass is .424:
| .422 | new factory cartridge or new brass. |
| .428-.429 | Sig229 expanded brass. I considered this excellent. |
| .432-.434 | Glock 27. I considered this OK to the verge of "watch out". |
| .426-.428 | This totally amazed me. AND, zero case bulge, even with maximum full-power loads. |
The next interesting item is fired brass length. Aprox 50% of the G27 Sig357 brass expanded in length just beyond the maximum of .865. The other 50% was just under the max. This surprised me because I have shot the exact same ammo in a Sig 229 and all the brass stayed below the maximum length. If anyone has the answer to this one, please tell. NOW, this is applicable mostly to the full-power Federal 125 grain 1350 fps round only. I noticed that Speer concurred with my findings, after re-reading their reloading brochure. Speer stated that when full-power loads are used, you MUST check case length so you can find the ones that need to be trimmed and chamfered. I also test fired two moderate power loads, and the fired brass measured well below the maximum case length, so trimming was not necessary. For bottlenecked cases, you have to always check for trim length and also lube the brass before reloading; this is generally blasphemy for straight-walled reloaders, but a true art form for the initiated.
There appears to be a discrepancy between the new Sierra Reloading Manual and the Speer Reloading Brochure, regarding the trim-to-length measurement. Cross-referencing reloading manuals is a good thing.
| .850 | Speer |
| .860 | Sierra |
I used three types of 357Sig ammo and one type of 40s&w ammo as a comparison. I did not have access to a chronograph, so I instead used my intuitive chronograph and subtracted 40-80 fps from the following rounds to compensate for the shorter 3.5" G27 barrel (Hey, I'm not a professional gun tester so I can do anything I want):
| 40s&w | Cor-Bon 135 grain jhp | 1240 fps aprox. |
| 357Sig | Federal 125 grain jhp | 1260 fps aprox. |
| 357Sig | Reload: 115 gr Rem. jhp | 1220 fps aprox. (moderate load; 8.3gr N350) |
| 357Sig | Reload: 147 gr Rem. jhp | 1020 fps aprox. (moderate load; 6.4gr N350) |
I put the standard 40s&w barrel in first and shot a few rounds of the famous 135 grain Cor-Bon ammo. The typical muzzle blast and loud roar signified that I was definitely shooting a supersonic round. The recoil was very manageable. I must state that I personally find little difference between the G26 and G27 recoil, while other shooter friends claim that the G27 is too vicious. I noticed a little more perceived recoil with the Cor-Bon round but it was still quite manageable.
I then put in the 357Sig barrel and loaded it with the full-power Federal 125 grain ammo. I shot the first round and was very surprised. The roar seemed to be slightly louder than the 40s&w Cor-Bon round. The perceived recoil was also slightly more of a jolt, but still manageable. These differences may be related to the psi of the two calibers: the Cor-Bon 40s&w 135 grain load is 35,000 psi and the Federal 357Sig 125 grain load is rated 39,200 psi, based on a FBI test report -- just an educated guess though.
After I shot four rounds I stopped to pick up the brass to examine them. Some people from several lanes away came over to see what kind of cannon I was shooting. One person's chin almost hit the floor when he saw the baby G27, and especially when he quickly looked at the 1.5" pattern in the 21 ft away target. They asked what caliber I was shooting so I told them. They just quietly walked away.
I had fun mixing my reloaded transonic and supersonic rounds into one magazine. I then emptied the magazine. It was very easy to tell when a supersonic round was launched from the louder report and muzzle flash. The accuracy was so good that during the 8th shot, a supersonic round hit the target and blew a hole the size of a silver dollar; Very impressive sight, watching little tiny pieces of paper floating to the ground.
I then loaded a magazine with the hot Federal 125 grain ammo. I proceeded to rapid-fire the gun as fast as I could pull the trigger. The gun was still controllable and all the shots hit their mark, although the pattern was more than twice as large as from my Glock 24C. The feeding reliability of the 357Sig seems to be absolutely perfect. The full-power loads threw the spent brass as far away as four to five lanes; I couldn't even find some of the brass. The moderate reloads on the other hand, dropped the brass in the usual same lane or one over.
The 357Sig round once again shot more accurately than the 40s&w 135 grain round. This result also duplicated testing of both calibers with the Sig 229. A recent article of a FBI test regarding the 357Sig stated that the patterns of the 357Sig were tighter (1.89" at 25 yards), compared with a 155 grain 40 s&w round (3.49"). It should be noted that the FBI test barrels, (not pistols), of the 357Sig and 40s&w ammo produced patterns respectively of 1.14" and 1.06", which implies that the accuracy between the two calibers should be similar.
At the end of the shooting session, the lower part of my palm was just starting to get a little sore from the lower part of the G27 grip digging in. Maybe I'll experiment with the Pierce extender to see if that would help at all. But I actually like the small grip for concealment. Besides, if I start adding grip extenders, longer barrels, etc, it's not a pocket pistol anymore; it becomes a G23 which is another excellent Glock model.
I have to add here that if you are recoil sensitive, you may indeed shoot worse with a full-power 357Sig caliber or a Cor-Bon 135 grain 40s&w round, because you would be more concerned about the after-effect as opposed to the matter at hand. On the other hand, both of my moderate power reloaded rounds, the 115 grain supersonic and the 147 grain transonic, had a perceived recoil very similar to regular G27 rounds --- very mellow and pleasant to shoot. I personally believe that the perceived recoil in the hotter rounds of a G26 feels about the same as a G27.
Just to show you how subjective perceived recoil is between people, I thought the Sig229 had a slightly sharper perceived recoil with the 357Sig round, when compared to the 40s&w 135 Cor-Bon round, although I had to shoot several rounds to make sure. When I recently talked with a Glock service person who was testing the 357Sig round in a Sig 229, (temporarily until he could get a Glock 357Sig barrel of course), he felt that the 357Sig round kicked less than the 40s&w ammo.
Obviously, the larger Sig229 was a bit more mellow to shoot than the small sub-compact G27, while shooting the same full-power 357Sig ammo --- the price of smallness. But, the 357Sig can easily be used in a sub-compact Glock 27 or in a longer barreled duty and/or sport pistol (4" - 6"). The longer barrel can put the 357Sig into the IPSC Major category. Speer, Cor-Bon, and Hornady make hot factory rounds that would make IPSC Major in the proper barrel length pistol; Even the Sig229 with its 3.86" barrel comes within 10 - 60 fps of making Major with the above mentioned ammo. Now we just have to convince the USPSA to allow the 357Sig to officially shoot in the Major class, just like its revolver cousin, the awesome 357 Magnum.
I sincerely believe that the 357Sig is an excellent maximum caliber round for SMALL to MEDIUM size guns --- a very big market share out there. The 357Sig can push bullets from the subsonic range of 950 fps to higher supersonic speeds of 1600 fps and beyond, not even including the faster exotic rounds such as the 2230 fps MagSafe Defender which produces 707 ft lbs of energy.
And from what little bit I've read about the new 400 Cor-Bon, this round should give the BIG frame .45 caliber guns increased performance and improved feeding reliability, just as the 357Sig does for the 40s&w guns. These two new bottlenecked cartridges might just be the wave of the future, and fit nicely into two very important camps: the SMALL/MEDIUM size pistol frames (.40s&w/9mm), and the LARGE pistol frames (.45ACP/10mm). If I could only pick one of these two new calibers, I would of course pick the 357Sig, because of being able to carry it easily in high firepower sub-compacts and also being able to use the 357Sig for duty and/or IPSC sporting competitions.
The bottom line: Yahoo! Yippy! Wow! Awesome! Pretty Cool! Lots of fun! Very accurate! Nice ego/crowd pleaser! I like it. It's loud when you want it to be; it's quiet when you want it to be. And it's always accurate.
Now for a surprise announcement that is very exciting. A Glock representative I talked with said they are in the process of testing the 357Sig. He was currently using a Sig229 until Austria ships him some 357Sig drop-in barrels. He also was in contact with Bar-Sto a few weeks ago and said that there is no way in heck that Bar-Sto can keep up with the 357Sig barrel demand. Jarvis has also started making 357Sig barrels. He believes that Glock may come out with the option to buy 40s&w and/or 357Sig barrels for their Glocks. He also mentioned that some of their key Glock Sales and Marketing types were at first unimpressed with the 357Sig and assumed it would die quickly -- Not. I don't believe that Glock likes the idea of losing market share to a number of agencies using the 357Sig caliber in a SigArms pistol instead of a Glock pistol. I received a further confirmation by a letter from Glock Austria stating that they are indeed investigating the 357Sig and will be making a decision soon.
In Summary:
"The 357Sig cartridge is the way to go if you are interested in a SUPERIOR FEEDING AUTOPISTOL with high firepower, deep penetration and excellent subsequent expansion, high +P+ energy, flat trajectory, manageable recoil, high velocity, and extreme accuracy in a concealable, shootable handgun, that can be easily mated with virtually all of the popular 40S&W guns, and is politically correct for agencies". (quoted from '357Sig Benefits' which is located in the rec.guns web page, and which states twelve important points why the 357Sig is worth considering as a next generation cartridge.)