Working on a HP load...'Barrel Lengths Matter'

[rintinglen]

Keep in mind 12" of penetration is a good MIMIMUM. The idea is to get to vitals from any reasonable angle on any reasonable size target. Slap a tape on your body from shoulder to center of your chest. It's barely 12" on the avg size man. A big guy will go 14-15". Any expanding bullet leaving the chest of a bad guy won't have much left to penetrate even drywall much less plywood. Over penetration never got anyone killed. Under penetration has cause many deaths in self defense shootings.

The first shooting the LASO had with their then-new Beretta's resulted in a dead pregnant woman killed by a 9mm which penetrated the robbery suspect the officers were trading shots with. Both the mother and her fetus died.

[fredj338]

The first shooting the LASO had with their then-new Beretta's resulted in a dead pregnant woman killed by a 9mm which penetrated the robbery suspect the officers were trading shots with. Both the mother and her fetus died.

Over penetrated what, arm, leg, neck? That is the point. More shots miss than hit in LE shootings. A shot through non COM is likely to exit. Shots leaving the thorax, JHP, not much left in terms of vel & energy. If your choice is more penetration or less, more is going to be better, within reason. Again, talking JHP, not solids.

[fredj338]

I shot this target through the chrony at 10 yards freehanded, no rest, 5 rounds each load and are 3.3g. of TiteGroup. Their respective mushrooming is in the immediate pictures above I did this morning and afternoon. It is a stainless Taurus .357 Mag. snubbie w/.006'' cylinder to barrel gap.

The ones marked with a slash at 12'O-clock ran at 654FPS w/ 37 variation and Powder to the Front.
The ones marked with a slash at 5'O-clock ran at 678FPS w/ 45 variation and Powder to the Rear.
The ones marked with a slash at 7'O-clock ran at 647FPS w/ 4 variation and Random Powder.




The Random powder placement was had by shaking the snubby side to side while holding it parallel to the ground.

If you are not getting above 700fps, you are going to need a wide/deep/soft lead HP to get reliable expansion in wetpack, IMO.

[OS OK]

I picked one of those three blade tips and ground it with the dremmel, made sharp outer edges and a slight taper to the shank to open the mouth a tad in hopes it would allow me to get it off the lube sizer once I pressed it in. I used a small allen wrench between the top shaft and the die hex nut to keep a constant depth when I pressed it in...it worked fine...yeah!
Theres the first test round of five with the initiator tip.



I started off with the 4.2g. load of Bullseye under this 155g. SWC-HP with the deep pin (for the .357") and that load blew all the wings off but 2 of them on the right.

I ran decreasing loads by .2'ths all the way down till I finally punted with the load below of 3.3g. and it still tore the wings off of most of them...This is all 5 BHN Pb.

I also trie 3 different loads of Bullseye...on 7.4 BHN deep pin casts I made last week...4.2g. - 4.0g. - 3.7g. They all tore off also but the interesting thing about those is all the wings tore off in smaller peices...in other words, to me, it looked as if they were too brittle.

I dunnoh...I think I'll wait for some input from you fellas before I go any further. I am satisfied though they did fragment...could be that is desirable especially since they frag in such big chunks.

Oh boy...see what you started yondering! And R5R...I swear I aint gonna sell my Harley just to tool up for swaging...I don't think.

[NavyVet1959]

Well, as long as you are testing, you might as well try the old split the nose crossways down to the driving band technique that people used to claim was good. It might be interesting to see how that would stack up to a hollow point with your current alloy and velocity. I seem to remember that they didn't always split apart, but maybe with a hollowpoint in the center, it would be different.

You're wanting a fragmenting bullet, right?

What about filling a mold up with steel BBs and then pouring lead on top of it to bind everything together?

[OS OK]

Naw Navy...I really had imagined having a big 3 wing turbo prop looking thing. These deep cavities make for long petals if I can just keep them hanging on...on second choice though if they were to fragment in large peices leaving the core/base to penetrate further...well, that doesn't seem so bad either.
I wouldn't want to get shot with one of these things as they are.
BB's...oh yeah, I got time to start fooling around with that...it ain't that bad of an idea though, soft lead would prolly make a frag round like a mini hand grenade. Don't think you could put much pressure behind it though. I have found a couple of these HP's that had some BB size cavities between the end of the 'cold' pin and the drive band...pressure blew it out the side in the lube groove...strange looking.

[NavyVet1959]

Just remember, if it spreads out too much, you could just end up with nasty shallow wound.

[Blackwater]

That shallow wound is what bothers me about seeking expansion at lower velocity levels. And modifying the noses makes me concerned for accuracy. Up close they'd be fine, but you never really know what you might run into, and I like to have all the accuracy I can get, as well as all the power I can get. Snubbies really make it hard to settle on "what's the best load for SD?" I'm taking everything in this thread in as deeply as I know how.

And thanks to .35 for the followup info. I think some of those things you cite are at least a significant part of what makes finding a really good load for .38's such a trying proposition. Personally, I think I'm gonna' go with a solid bullet so I can be SURE I get sufficient penetration, even on a really big antagonist. Snubby .38's are nice and compact, and conceal well, and can be fired while still inside a pocket, but the big question of what they'll do when a bullet hits an offender is always the final arbiter, and we can never truly know about that until the after shooting results are plain to see, and that could include OUR bodies lying there beside the bad guy! All a gun can do is give us a fighting chance. It's no guarantee. Within those perameters, I think I'll stick with the solids with FP's. But I'm certainly not averse to learning something new!

This is a great thread, mainly because of the experimentation and reports on other experiments. Nothing like proving things out, before settling on a method, especially when our lives might be at stake one day.

[NavyVet1959]

Home Defense? 12-gauge pump... Disagreements with 12-gauges tend to get solved fairly quickly.

BB-shot size would be the absolute smallest I would even consider. I've seen bird shot bounce off armadillos, but BBs punch through. Personally, I keep mine loaded with OOO-buck though...

[yondering]

Naw Navy...I really had imagined having a big 3 wing turbo prop looking thing. These deep cavities make for long petals if I can just keep them hanging on...on second choice though if they were to fragment in large peices leaving the core/base to penetrate further...well, that doesn't seem so bad either.
I wouldn't want to get shot with one of these things as they are.
BB's...oh yeah, I got time to start fooling around with that...it ain't that bad of an idea though, soft lead would prolly make a frag round like a mini hand grenade. Don't think you could put much pressure behind it though. I have found a couple of these HP's that had some BB size cavities between the end of the 'cold' pin and the drive band...pressure blew it out the side in the lube groove...strange looking.

You're on the right track now. You'll find that with that deep and non-tapered hollow point design, they'll tend to either open up all the way, or not much at all, no in between.

You could try some of those in wetpack as-is, and will probably get pretty good results. Even if those big petals come off, they'll just add to the trauma.

I suggest trying a round punch as well though, to open up the hollow point without splitting the nose into petals. I think that will give you a better shot at the large expansion you're looking for.

[runfiverun]

try an un slit steel shot wad with 1-1/4 oz's of number-4's at 1400 fps.
slit the wad only 1/3rd of the way down.
armadillo's won't shrug that off.

[Blackwater]

OK, Run, I've got to take that bait. I've heard of unslit wads becoming "slugs," but what does it do to slit it only 1/3 of the way down? That's some stuff I've never done or even seen done here.

[OS OK]

Well this is it for the turbo prop idea...moving on to just flaring out the hole and using the initiator tip.

This picture is the 5 BHN again with the deep hole but loaded over 2.9 Bullseye (.1'th over minimum)...just cant get the wide petals and keep them intact.
If I had to choose, I'd go with the 3 wingers but using 4 or 4.2g. of Bullseye to get max expansion and max penetration for what that's worth at 747 FPS or thereabouts.

I know many of you disagree with the development of this so called in house load and you keep on about penetration but from what I've discovered thus far...I'll bet none of you would want to be on the receiving end of any of these, some of them might not get 1/2 way through but the trauma is going to be over the top as far as tissue is concerned.

Next, prolly next week, I'll fashion an expander tip for use in the lube sizer and we'll have another go at it.

[runfiverun]

it still lets go of the shot but further down range.
wad petal manipulation will affect the pattern of your trap loads too.
an 8 petal wad versus a 4 petal wad or a stiffer plastic all affects the pattern at distance.
but back to the stiff wad with short slits.
at say 30 yards 90% of the shot is still in the cup and the 10% that aint isn't spreading yet.
it's basically clustered up in front of the wad.
when the whole thing hits a solid object the slits open up and dumps all of the shot into the target.
after about 40 yds the petals slow down the wad and frees the shot [you need a felt in the bottom to let it all go] this extends the distance you have a tight pattern, shortens the shot string and keeps more pellets on target.
it also allows the higher velocity without blowing out the pattern.

performance shot shell loading is as fascinating and fun as this cast boolit stuff is.
I probably have at least 12 different 12ga. loads kicking around the place for different things
right now.
one gun one choke 12 different results.

back to the scheduled programming.

what do those petals weigh?
if it's anything over 50grs. they weight more than 00 buckshot.
at 25 yds that's enough speed and weight to create secondary wound effects.
just the opening of them before they shear off will create a large internal wound, a hit in the arm would be damn painful.
and if they tear off unevenly they will contribute towards the projectile tumbling.
mushrooms don't have to be pretty to be effective.

I have a couple of perfectly mushroomed bullets here I took out of deer.
I personally would call them a failure because they didn't exit.
yep I took them out of completely dead animals.
but without the exit wound I had no way to track the animal if it had walked/run off.

[OS OK]

That's a good question about the petal weight.

They weigh from 11 to 26 grains...(I weight them at random, didn't look for the biggest or smallest, just random).

At 750 FPM (of course the round is slowing as it expands...) they enter the meat at 33,750 RPM...say they were to slow to 1/2 speed before the petals were to let go, they would be rotating like little propellers at 16,875 RPM...that oughta be enough energy to sling them off at almost a right angle to the entry wound.

I suppose I should send some of these to a fella to shoot into the jell, if he would agree. (Elvis Ammo, we talk a lot on the You-Tube about his experiments) Could be that they might travel out several inches in the initial large wound cavity?

That's a pretty good observation on your part...something to chew on anyway. If I made a punch that cut the HP in only 2 pieces...they would be even larger...dang, this is getting deep here in this rabbit hole!

charlie

[NavyVet1959]

Well, just to take you further down the rabbit hole, you could make the hollow point a lot deeper and put a gas check on the base to keep from getting a blowout of the base while also cutting deep score marks in the sides of the bullet.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Boy, I hope you are doing all the reloading of these rounds at the range with one of my Hand Presses?

This ongoing experiment would be the perfect application for the tool.

Note the entire Reloading Kit in the Green Cabela's duffle bag.

The bag just so happens to be on sale right now for $9.95! at Cabela's.com

Randy

[runfiverun]

that's a pretty nice bag.


dang it Randy...

[JakeBlanton]

Boy, I hope you are doing all the reloading of these rounds at the range with one of my Hand Presses? This ongoing experiment would be the perfect application for the tool. Note the entire Reloading Kit in the Green Cabela's duffle bag. The bag just so happens to be on sale right now for $9.95! at Cabela's.com Randy

So, your press comes with a casting pot, powder coating system, and a way to reform noses? I'm impressed!

[WilliamDahl]

So, your press comes with a casting pot, powder coating system, and a way to reform noses? I'm impressed!

LMAO! I will have to admit though, his press does look like it would exercise an entirely different set of muscles than what I normally use while reloading. Now, if he could just get Suzanne Summers to advertise it for him, he would make MILLIONS!