Okay, 38 Special revolver guys, some newly-compiled data has cleared up a question for us: Whose lead is softer in the FBI Load, Winchester's or Remington's? Two of our best gurus, who are usually right about everything, have issued conflicting opinions.
Here's what the late Stephen A. Camp wrote: "The bullet at the left is from Remington and is softer than the deformed, flattened one on the right, which is from Winchester." He showed pictures of Remington SWCHP bullets that had deformed more than had their Winchester counterparts fired from the same gun into the same medium.
link: http://hipowersandhandguns.com/38%20...r%20LSWCHP.htm
But here's what Larry Gibson wrote: "I have pulled several Winchester bullets and they are dead soft at 5.5-6 BHN."
link: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-quot-Hardness
Who's right?
If the Winchester bullet is dead soft lead, the Remington bullet couldn't be softer. But Camp had found the Remington bullet deformed more readily.
So, for the past few years, I have wondered what the truth is. Anybody else wonder about that?
Recently I found the answer in the gold mine of data recently published by LuckyGunner.
link: http://www.luckygunner.com/labs/revo...cs-test/#38spl
Their tests, all shot through heavy clothing into gel, show that the Remington bullets expanded at 824 fps and above, but not at 818 fps and below. The Winchester bullets expanded at velocities of 814 fps and above, but not at 784 fps and below. When you line up two of those data points, you see this:
818 fps - Remington does not expand
814 fps - Winchester does expand
So, Gibson is proven correct about Winchester being softer. But Camp was right about the Remington bullet expanding more readily. It wasn't due to the alloy, though, but the velocity. The reason Camp thought that the Remington bullet was softer is that he assumed the two loads had similar velocities, which they do not. He was testing expansion from 2" and 4" barrels without knowing the velocities generated by the two different loads. Here it is from the LuckyGunner data:
2" Winchester 750 fps average
2" Remington 802 fps average
4" Winchester 839 fps average
4" Remington 921 fps average
By the way, Massad Ayoob was tricked into the same wrong conclusion as Stephen Camp was. He wrote this:
"When I ran across rare failures to expand, it tended to be the relatively hard Winchester bullet, which was hardened to eliminate complaints about excessive leading. On the other end of the scale, the Remington brand -- used for many years by DEA in the backup guns of its agents and the hideout guns of its undercover operatives -- always seemed to open even when fired from snubbies, DEA instructors told me . . ."
So, our own Larry Gibson was right---the Winchester bullet is dead soft, and expands at a lower velocity than the Remington bullet. BUT, the Remington load, including its present "HTP" iteration, apparently, is significantly faster, and so expands better in snubbys.
HEY, WINCHESTER, PUT SOME MORE GUN POWDER IN THE CASE, AND WE'LL BUY YOUR AMMO!
HEY, REMINGTON, TAKE THE ANTIMONY OUT OF YOUR ALLOY, AND WE'LL BUY YOURS, TOO!
Do you think they heard me?