Bullet Expansion at "Leisurely" Velocities

[pettypace]

In his 1899 Manstopper Bullet patent, Mr. Webley stated:

This invention relates to bullets or projectiles designed to be fired by revolvers and pistols, and has for its object a bullet which when fired at a low velocity of about six hundred to seven hundred feet per second, such as is obtained by ordinary revolvers, will readily expand or head up on striking a body and to an extent check penetration, thus delivering a considerable shock, whereby the stopping power of a low velocity, bullet is so increased that it will arrest the progress of a charging man or an animal even if only a non vital part of the body is struck.

I'm helping a friend resurrect this old Webley and wondering if anyone has experience with bullet expansion at velocities between 500 and 600 f/s?

[Winger Ed.]

That company Aquilla does or did make some loaded ammo that expanded easily.

It is a big mouth hollow point, Aluminum bullet that is segmented into 3-4 sections.
At .38Spec. and .45ACP speeds it opens like a pop corn kernel.

For the Webley, you'd need to 'unload' the .38s to put them in the .38S&W case.

[Thumbcocker]

I read an article called "Reinventing the Manstopper" a long time ago. The author took the base part of the old Lyman 2 part swc mold and made a pin so it would cast a giant hollow point with a plain base. As I recall it sort of worked.

Then there is a hollow base wadcutter with a .35 cal gas check on the nose loaded upside down.

Then there were double hollow based swaged wadcutters with a post in the middle. Haven't seen those for decades.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[missionary5155]

And then there are heavy for caliber FN cast of 40-1 that will expand nicely at your target velocity.
If you are looking at caliber .38 find a 200 grain FN.
For the .455 a 250 - 280 FN again cast of 40-1.

[Outpost75]

I did the Reinventing The Manstopper article in American Rifleman back in The late 1970s or early 1980s before I went to Ruger. Since then have gotten much more experience with low velocity lead HPs for use in large bore air rifles, etc.

Use 1 to 40 tin-lead alloy from Roto Metals. Have Erik Ohlen at www.hollowpointmold.com modify your wide flat nose or wadcutter bullet to a cup point. You want an elliptical cavity with major diameter of the opening 0.66 of the meplat diameter with cavity depth equal to major diameter of the opening, terminating in a full radius at max. depth of cavity which is a 0.2 radius of the meplat.

Expansion will be reliable above 600 fps with expanded diameter 1.5 times bullet diameter at 650 fps and twice bullet diameter above 750 fps. At velocity over 750 fps change to 1 to 30 tin-lead, above 850 fps use 1 to 20 tin-lead. This is established and proven design in .455, .45 Auto Rim, .38-200, .38 Special at Standard pressure.

I have pics of bullets, but unable to import on my phone.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Subscribed

[dddddmorgan]

Thumbcocker has it right about the hollow base wadcutter turned upside down. My father told me about these as well as the old Canyon County Sheriff. Was a popular trick I guess back in the day for a man-stopper, not a penetrator.

Sounds to me like Outpost knows his stuff

[pettypace]

I did the Reinventing The Manstopper article in American Rifleman back in The late 1970s or early 1980s before I went to Ruger. Since then have gotten much more experience with low velocity lead HPs for use in large bore air rifles, etc.

Use 1 to 40 tin-lead alloy from Roto Metals. Have Erik Ohlen at www.hollowpointmold.com modify your wide flat nose or wadcutter bullet to a cup point. You want an elliptical cavity with major diameter of the opening 0.66 of the meplat diameter with cavity depth equal to major diameter of the opening, terminating in a full radius at max. depth of cavity which is a 0.2 radius of the meplat.

Expansion will be reliable above 600 fps with expanded diameter 1.5 times bullet diameter at 650 fps and twice bullet diameter above 750 fps. At velocity over 750 fps change to 1 to 30 tin-lead, above 850 fps use 1 to 20 tin-lead. This is established and proven design in .455, .45 Auto Rim, .38-200, .38 Special at Standard pressure.

I have pics of bullets, but unable to import on my phone.

Outpost75 -- Thanks for all that! To paraphrase Mohammed Ali, if I even dreamed I could have gotten all that on my own, I'd have woke up smiling.

It's back to the lead pot tomorrow to cook up some 40:1.

[fm2]

Following.

[ddixie884]

Cool info. Thanx Mr Harris.................

[sharps4590]

Back in the 70's, as duty ammo, we carried the HBWC reversed in our Mod. 15's.

[nhithaca]

Check out Matts Bullets. He makes hollow base wadcutters in 32, 38, 44, and 45. I'm not associated with him but just a satisfied buyer. Uses a pretty soft alloy which I find expands well.

[rintinglen]

The 38 HBWC reversed was not as accurate as the hollow point WFN IME.

Back in the 70's I experimented fairly extensively with the concept, striving for a "good" load to use in my M-37 S&W. They would expand quite well at 700 fps, but sometimes they would squash inward. I was using wet newspaper at the time as an expansion test media (It was free and readily available.) I think a double-ended Hollow-base, Hollow nose wadcutter would work better, but I never tried it. In more recent times, I have found that the 359-640 with the large HP pin does fine when cast from 40-1 or pure(ish) lead down at low end velocities.

[Electrod47]

Go to Mattsbullets.com search under .44 Cal. you will see a 218 grain hollowbase full meplat wadcutter. I load these upside down for my Charter Arms Bulldog at 725fps w/BE. they blowup to .69Cal in wet newspaper at 7 yards. Interestingly, they are pretty accurate.

[JRD]

A quick search turned up the Manstopper article. Page 19.
http://http://www.nzha.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NRA-Cast-Sup1.pdf

[Outpost75]

Link doesn't work, DNS address cannot be found.

[Good Cheer]

In the 70's used Speer's HBWC's with 2.7 grains Bullseye for hunting rabbits.
Those bullets had a small spherical section on the front and a short segment of reduced diameter immediately behind it. If you sliced off that spherical section with a razor blade or sharp knife the short segment behind it made a perfectly formed step for seating a gas check. Loading them backwards made for some fun expansion experiments. So did putting various things in the hollows.
Tried out a Lyman #450229 with the nose of the cavity machined out to a straight cylinder. The bullets were loaded backwards for use in a Colt Model 1909. Accuracy and expansion were good and it would definitely roll an armadillo.
Tried out Lyman hollow based designs #358395 and #41027. They were OK.
Now working with a .41 SWC mold with the SWC nose removed to use adjustable length plugs.

[pettypace]

Link doesn't work, DNS address cannot be found.

I got to it with with a google search for NRA-Cast-Sup1.pdf

[rintinglen]

Good Lord! I remember reading that 40 years ago but never got around to trying it out. No wonder there's an old man in my mirror looking back at me.

[pettypace]

Yesterday I successfully defended the Snubbyfest boys from a marauding gang of water-filled milk cartons. The ammo used is shown below:



My buddy with the old Webley Metropolitan Police was mightily impressed and left with a handful of those soft "manstopper" bullets to load (hopefully not with 3.6 grains of BE) in .450 Adams cases for next week's Snubbyfest.

But I'm not convinced that an expanding bullet is the best medicine for the old Webley. More on that later...