.356 TSW

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The .356 TSW (.356 Team Smith & Wesson) is a centerfire handgun cartridge that was designed by Smith & Wesson in 1994, and released commercially in 1995. The .356 TSW is very similar in size to a 9mm Luger, or a 9x21mm. It was designed to be used in IPSC shooting events, but rule changes addressing the use of the new cartridge made it obsolete almost immediately. As a result, it's mostly an obscurity, though ammo appears to still made (as of early 2021) by CorBon and Underwood.

Design & Origins

The .356 Team Smith & Wesson cartridge appears to have been largely developed for Major power IPSC competition. Essentially it allowed for the higher capacity of a 9mm handgun, while qualifying among more powerful higher-caliber handguns, offering a competitive advantage, mostly in magazine capacity. From Frank Barnes' Cartridges of the World, 14th Edition:

"The centerfire pistol cartridge was designed by Smith & Wesson in 1994 as an IPSC round. The .356 TSW fit in a 9mm magazine, and S&W convinced Federal to load it and submit it for SAAMI-spec approval, where it saw promise as a Limited-class competition round. However, because of a rules change, USPSA didn’t approve it for that class, and there were other rounds that were better choices for Open guns. S&W scrapped the project, effectively killing the .356 TSW. Federal case heads and the box were marked “356 TSW.” The load was a 147-grain FMJ Match product number GM356SW."

Additional comments by Frank Barnes:

"The TSW is simply a slightly longer 9mm case (9x21.5mm), and it uses ordinary 9mm bullets for reloading purposes. To meet IPSC’s major power factor back then, the TSW had to send a 124-grain 9mm bullet at about 1,450 fps. A .356 TSW performs on par with hot 9x21 IPSC loads or full-house .357 SIG loads, but it has an advantage over the .357 SIG. The SIG cartridge is a bottleneck round, a .40 S&W casing necked down to 9mm. The .356 TSW is a straight walled 9mm casing, thus, more .356 rounds can fit into a magazine. The .356 TSW was mainly chambered in 150 Smith & Wesson Model 3566 Performance Center .356 TSW pistols."

Ballistic Performance

Specifications

  • Bullet diameter: .355 in (9.0 mm)
  • Neck diameter: .380 in (9.7 mm)
  • Shoulder diameter: .3804 in (9.66 mm)
  • Base diameter: .3907 in (9.92 mm)
  • Rim diameter: .394 in (10.0 mm)
  • Case length: .850 in (21.6 mm)
  • Overall length: 1.160 in (29.5 mm)
  • Rifling twist: 1-10"

Ammunition Availability

Despite mostly being an obscurity, it appears that a number of ammunition manufacturers still produce .356 TSW ammo. Including:

Other Resources

".356 Team Smith & Wesson" SAAMI Specs (Archived) - Official SAAMI specs for the .356 TSW cartridge, archived on WayBackMachine.

.356 TSW (by Wiley Clapp) - A very brief article from American Rifleman, written by Wiley Clapp, discussing the .356 Team Smith & Wesson cartridge.