Nope. Just saying that MacPherson didn't test bullets with a big-for-diameter meplat and his suggested work-around clearly doesn't work for a Keith bullet.Originally Posted by 44MAG#1
|
   
   
|
|
Nope. Just saying that MacPherson didn't test bullets with a big-for-diameter meplat and his suggested work-around clearly doesn't work for a Keith bullet.
"Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” --George Orwell
So, to put this country simple, if you were faced with a thug that was armed with a machete and he was intent to chop your head off and you had a 45 Auto with a choice of two bullet types 1. a FMJRN and 2. a FMJFP with a good diameter meplat and you had time to get off one shot which bullet type would you choose?
Is the round already chambered?
"Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” --George Orwell
That is a funny one there. I carry with an empty chamber, empty magazine and the ammo loose in my pocket. Ha Ha. It is good to have fun.
I take the metric of bullet over penetration very seriously. Say your shoot is fully justified but the slug you put in the bad guy makes it out and hit's a bystander. I guarantee the local prosecutor would file charges against you for the hit on the bystander. In a self defense situation we have to think not only about our own safety but also the safety of those around us.
Would that be worse than a miss hitting an innocent bystander? How would one regulate over penetration, enough penetration and underpenetration? With the varying thicknesses of people plus being slightly turned, facing broadside, standing with their side presented or weight 140 pounds 200 pounds or like my buddy used to weigh around 400 how would we get the correct bullet?
If memory serves, the FBI considers 12 - 18 inches of penetration in ballistic gel to be adequate. I generally carry a 44 spl so my loads attempt to match those specs.
My great uncle witnessed a “gunfight” in Fredericksburg, Texas in 1907, when he was 10 years old, and he was fond of telling the story in later years. He and his father were waiting in the barbershop when a skinny little fellow walked in and shot the local butcher in the stomach while he was getting a shave (both were seeing the same woman). My uncle said his father told him later that it was “a 38”. The butcher was a very fat man and the bullet stopped in his belly rolls. He got up from the barber chair and proceeded to beat the smaller man almost to death. After the sheriff came and hauled the broken gunman off to jail, the butcher sat down in the chair and had the barber dig out the slug. This was dropped into a mason jar, where it stayed for a few years.
Clearly a case of insufficient penetration…
That sounds more like a shooting to me than a gunfight.My great uncle witnessed a “gunfight” in Fredericksburg, Texas in 1907, when he was 10 years old, and he was fond of telling the story in later years. He and his father were waiting in the barbershop when a skinny little fellow walked in and shot the local butcher in the stomach while he was getting a shave (both were seeing the same woman). My uncle said his father told him later that it was “a 38”. The butcher was a very fat man and the bullet stopped in his belly rolls. He got up from the barber chair and proceeded to beat the smaller man almost to death. After the sheriff came and hauled the broken gunman off to jail, the butcher sat down in the chair and had the barber dig out the slug. This was dropped into a mason jar, where it stayed for a few years.
Clearly a case of insufficient penetration…
That's why I put it in "quotes"...
Re Post #17 - FBI .38 Load vs. GI Hardball. . .
The problem I have with the using the FBI Load as a yardstick is that it's making bare minimum of what the FBI now considers adequate penetration. It WORKS because it does make that adequate penetration number, but it doesn't solve your Michael Platt upper arm problem or intermediate barrier problems very well, PLUS, the .38 Special is known for HUGE performance variability based on what barrel length you shoot it out of. .45 Hardball WILL penetrate a human torso and any of its appendages in a pretty much straight line, making its effectiveness dependent on where the hit is - - it's going to transect anything vital in its path. The FBI Load has a much greater chance of not making it that far.
Your wound mass formulas just give a weight of tissue turned into goo, but they don't account for WHAT gets turned into goo. Short version - I WANT an exit wound with complete pass through along my line of sight. If the bullet falls to the ground six inches past or is caught by the skin or exit side clothing (as many current duty rounds often are), I'm OK with that, but I want depth over diameter.
WWJMBD?
In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.
What if one can have depth and diameter?
Would both be better than just one of them?
Well-stated, as usual, Bigslug. Let me react (as opposed to rebut) piece by piece...
I used the FBI load as a standard because Fackler's wound profile authoritatively established its expansion, its penetration, and its "exemplary ... reputation for effectiveness in the human target." My intent was not to sing the praises of the FBI load, but rather to suggest that a lightly loaded wadcutter load from a .44 Special snubby should be every bit as effective.The problem I have with the using the FBI Load as a yardstick is that it's making bare minimum of what the FBI now considers adequate penetration.
You left out the part about making just about as much wound mass as you can get out of a .38 in the process. After all, the .38 LRN has way more penetration with no such reputation for effectiveness.It WORKS because it does make that adequate penetration number...
The expansion shown in Fackler's wound profile is against bare gel -- no barriers, not even denim. But I'd guess most of the usual barriers would actually increase the penetration of the FBI load by "disarming" the hollow-point. I wouldn't expect that to improve effectiveness, but lack of penetration would not likely be a problem....but it doesn't solve your Michael Platt upper arm problem or intermediate barrier problems very well...
What do you mean by "performance?" Velocity, expansion, wound mass, or effectiveness? The FBI load achieved its reputation in spite of that and I think it's true that the FBI used it from its 3" model 13's.PLUS, the .38 Special is known for HUGE performance variability based on what barrel length you shoot it out of.
You could say pretty much the same thing for 9mm hardball or a hard-cast .38 Keith bullet..45 Hardball WILL penetrate a human torso and any of its appendages in a pretty much straight line, making its effectiveness dependent on where the hit is - - it's going to transect anything vital in its path.
Maybe. But you have to wonder just what the FBI was thinking when they settled on that 12" minimum. I know they meant 12" after barriers. But the FBI load is likely to penetrate more than 12" after most barriers.The FBI Load has a much greater chance of not making it that far.
I'd rather you said "MacPherson's wound mass formulas" rather than "your wound mass formulas." I didn't dream up the formulas -- I just advocate for them.Your wound mass formulas just give a weight of tissue turned into goo, but they don't account for WHAT gets turned into goo.
But either way, "WHAT gets turned into goo" can't be established before the shot is fired. It seems to me that a round that gives "adequate" penetration and makes 36 grams of goo, has a better chance of hitting something vital than a round that has "excessive" penetration and makes only 26 grams of goo.
I don't think we disagree on much -- except, maybe, the usefulness of MacPherson's "WTI" wound mass calculation. And that's probably because I haven't done a good job of explaining it. MacPherson's formula factors in both depth and diameter as well as bullet nose shape. But it stops counting after 18" of penetration on the assumption that after 18" the bullet has more than likely exited the target. The VIRGEL android app includes the "Big Game Wound Mass" for the entire penetration path.Short version - I WANT an exit wound with complete pass through along my line of sight. If the bullet falls to the ground six inches past or is caught by the skin or exit side clothing (as many current duty rounds often are), I'm OK with that, but I want depth over diameter.
Last edited by pettypace; 01-27-2022 at 09:28 PM.
"Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” --George Orwell
Absolutely, but we are in fact often painted into corners with SAAMI cartridge specs, what the shooter can handle, what the gun can handle, what the gun can generate (compactness or the compromise of short barreled .38's for example).
The current crop of 147 grain duty 9mms will finish up around .65-.70 caliber and often finish closer to the 18" limit of the FBI spec than the 12" and they've been doing very well for themselves out in the Wide World of Sports.
Pettypace's .44 wadcutter is going to mimic THAT wound channel a little more closely than the FBI load will, but really it's just the FBI load's lack of penetration that gives me pause. Otherwise, it profiles like a modern 9mm without the jacket.
WWJMBD?
In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.
Saami spec, what one can handle, what the person can handle and what the barrel length produces is what it is.
We all know all those have a part in making up the links in the chain of stopping power on the intended target be it animal or human or something of another world.
We who have studied and read know a wadcutter is formidable. As far a penetration it would be no great deal to insure penetration if one just has the understanding.
Pettypace, the reasoning behind the FBI's minimum penetration standard of 12" isn't hard to comprehend. Measure the distance from the outside of an average male's upper arm to the center of his chest. Odds are, it's pretty close to 12". The reason that's the MINIMUM is that it can work very well if everything goes right, such as a textbook perfect frontal shot. In those cases, the rapid opening / big diameter options can be impressive.
The 18" standard (personally, I'd be more comfortable with 24") is for when everything goes wrong. In that regard, we can can probably label Michael Platt as one of the most useful murdering buttholes in the history of gunfighting. From a marksmanship perspective, the shot that ultimately killed him was perfect, but while it was on a beeline straight to his heart, it stopped about an inch short because its designers were fixated on diameter and "energy dump" over penetration. Platt took something like two minutes to finally keel over due to blood loss from a clipped brachial artery in his upper arm, and dealt effective damage to the good guys after taking that hit. In that engagement, a 9mm FMJ of any standard weight, .45 hardball, or even the much maligned 158 grain .38 round nose would likely have rendered Platt dead on the ground in less than 10 seconds, because it would have made it to the vitals that a 115 grain Silvertip did not.
I say again, extra diameter is not a bad thing, but in handgun arena we're discussing, our full range is usually .35" at an unexpanded minimum to about an inch for the most gonzo pancaking .45 you can think of. The biggest thing you can therefore deliver in a duty handgun power level will give you an extra .32" of radius / .65" diameter with which to nick something on it's way past. Useful? Maybe, but dialing back to a still useful diameter that severs everything in a direct line through the entire torso will be more of a sure thing than a bullet the coroner will have to go digging to find.
I think we are splitting hairs over rendering the threat STOPPED vs. rendering the threat DEAD, but effectively generating the former will very often result in the latter. The threat gets stopped most rapidly by either catastrophic nerve damage to the spine or making a hole in one of the major arteries that is a large percentage of the inside diameter of that artery - both of which take reliable penetration. If either of those things is achieved, turning the surrounding tissue to pulp is entirely irrelevant. Remember that Platt kept fighting after taking a bullet that was designed to do that.
As 44MAG#1 brings up, it would be good to have penetration AND diameter. Veral Smith's book Jacketed Performance with Cast Bullets has some GREAT practical field observations on. We do, HOWEVER, need to take it with a grain of salt, which is that is that he is dealing mostly with large caliber magnums well above the ken of what practical carry, tactics, and realistic training for the masses hint at what is useful.
Somewhere within the bowels of this forum is a link to gel testing one of the notable writers did with the black powder revolvers of the middle 19th Century. What stood out to me in that was that the round ball out of the .44 Colt 1860 Army was delivering a wound track that looked A LOT like either a modern 9mm duty load or Pettypace's .44 wadcutter. Apparently, we HAD a good understanding of what was necessary, which we have managed to come back around to after the misguided forays of the 1980's
WWJMBD?
In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.
I try to understand these types of posts but sometime I think someone runs across the Fairbairn and Sykes and Fackler experiment and think the are new or something to that effect. Stopping Power discussions and wound channel size and penetration isn't anything new. But, it serves to give a subject that some like to over think about.
Whether this is good or bad is up for grabs.
I was at a gun shop in Peoria IL a number of years ago. Probably around 1994. There was a Peoria police officer working there part time who had been on the force for quite a few years at that point. Several of the patrons and the owners (two of whom were retired officers) were having much the same discussion as we are having here.
That officer stated that, while he like the capacity of the 9mm, he would rather have a bullet that had sharper edges on it like a wadcutter or SWC.
He claimed hollow points and FMJ bruised their way through flesh while the wadcutter/SWC cut their way through, leaving a wound that bled really well.
He also preferred the complete pass through so as to have two bleeding holes instead of just one.
I have heard that last part stated by quite a number of people over the years and it seems to make sense to me. I can't say about the difference in blood loss between bullet types as I have no experience.
Having seen that officer shoot at an indoor range, I can attest that he should have been able to provide good placement no matter what handgun he was using.
He also indicated he had some experience with this type of thing.
Make of this what you will.
Our family doctor was killed a few years ago in a home invasion. The perp was an addict looking for something to steal and unfortunately, the family had forgotten to close the garage door and the house door was unlocked. The bad guy was walking down the street and came inside the first place that was unlocked.
The confrontation happened in the hallway - the intruder had a 9mm and the doctor had a .357 revolver; both shot simultaneously from about 10 feet or so. The perp was hit in the right upper chest and his lung collapsed, while the doctor was hit in the upper part of his liver. The perp ran out of the house the way he came in and the doctor’s wife called 911. The doctor was conscious until the ambulance arrived but died on the way to the hospital. The bad guy was found several houses away bleeding severely but survived to stand trial and was sentenced to life. Both bullets were found lodged in the walls.
I knew Clay quite well because he was our primary physician for almost 15 years - we talked about guns and hunting every time I went to his office. He was a great pistol shot but dumb luck worked against him and his life came to a premature end. It was a great loss to the local community and I still miss him.
From an analytical perspective, both handguns were similar but where the bullets landed made all the difference.
How about this one? S&W696 5 shot .44 Special now Replaced by the S&W69 which is a 5 shot .44 Magnum. 250 gr. Keith Boolits at 800 fps will deal with most threats permanently.
Randy
"It's not how well you do what you know how to do,,,It's how well you do what you DON'T know how to do!"
www.buchananprecisionmachine.com
Posting Permissions
| BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
| BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
| BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
| C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
| HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
| PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
| LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
| GC | Gas Check |
Reply With Quote