I recently went shooting with a bunch of 38 Special chambered guns. Years ago a friend who has since died gave me some homemade "voodoo" reloads as he called them and said that the loads were too stiffly recoiling for his J frame Smith & Wesson revolver. I though that I would shoot them out of a 357 at some later date and empty the cases on firing. I should have pulled them apart. I stored the loads and promptly forgot about them. Last week I "found" those loads and decided to get rid of them. I have a Miroku Winchester Model 1873 in 357 Magnum as well as a several revolvers in that caliber. I brought the loads to the range with a 357 revolver and the Model 1873. The load's weren't seated tightly and were backing out in the revolver so I decided to shoot them in the rifle. They were definitely overloaded for a 38 charge. I shot several out of the rifle then the problem occurred. I worked the lever of the 1873 and the round wouldn't go all the way into the chamber. I just tried to re-chamber the cartridge with a little more force and that's when the cartridge with only the lead bullet head chambered but otherwise not chambered cartridge blew up peppering my under arm with bits of debris. I had loads of pin prick cuts that were bleeding. That's when it finally smartened up and realize I should have just pull the cases apart and also there had been a stuck case separation in the 1873's chamber. That's is why the following round wouldn't chamber.
The case was truly stuck and all of my lame efforts hook it out couldn't remove it from the rifle. I search the internet for a stuck case remover for 38's and found that they are scare as hen's teeth. I found one source eventually Boogie Gun Work ( https://sbgwllc.myshopify.com/ ). What a wonderful little tool. I immediately bought their broken brass extractor ( https://sbgwllc.myshopify.com/search?q=broken ) and received it on Monday. The extractor feature a mushroom style head that will expand and clip on the front of the cartridge. The body of the extracted is slotted lengthwise so it will compress as it feeds though the stuck case. The extractor also has a lengthwise hole drilled through it body. I fed the extractor into the chamber and it did grab the case but kept loosing it's hold and failed to extract the case. I seated the extract once again but this time I used a tapered steel pin seated in the the extractor's drilled though hole to set the mushroom head more firmly. I have a punch set with tapered bodies. That did the trick and the case came out once I drop a full length cleaning rod down barrel. The moral of the story is don't accept someone else's junk reloads for you lever guns. If you do as I did, think of Boogie Gun Works. They have extractors for 38's and 45's and they work like a top.