Someone on one of the gun forums commented that now that I’d nailed the .38 tumbling bullet I needed to try to do something for .32 Caliber. OK, why not? So today I re-swaged some 100gr LFPs. I used the same die as the .38s, which meant I had to re-size them after.
I loaded these with 4.2gr of Unique with a Federal Magnum small pistol primer, which was good for 1018fps. and 230 ft./lbs of energy from the 4″ test gun, and 931fps. and 190ft./lbs of energy from the 2″ test gun. I fired the 4″ test gun first.
The bullet passed entirely through the block, leaving a jagged permanent wound cavity nearly half an inch wide. The bullet didn’t tumble, but the ragged wound track indicates something was going on; the wound track the unmodified bullet leaves is an intermittent, thin silver line. Some aspects of the PWC make me suspect the bullet was cork-screwing through the gel.
Next I tried the 2″ gun, a Colt detective Special. The wound-track was essentially identical to the one from the 4″ gun.
Since the bullets both passed entirely through the block I reduced the charge to 3.5gr. of Unique and tested it from the 2″ gun. This load made 893fps, and 177ft./lbs.
Once again the bullet passed through the block, but this time the wound-track was perceptibly smaller and the shot curved slightly downward. Once again the bullet did not appear to tumble.
Interesting results. I decided to modify the bullet further and see what that yielded. Once again I loaded the bullet over 4.2gr of Unique. The results in gel were interesting.
This bullet stopped in the gel at 10-1/2″ and ended point-first. It certainly didn’t tumble, but created significant disruption for the first 5″ after penetration before streamlining. The disrupted zone looks like the bullet was corkscrewing in the gel. The widest part of the PWC is around 1/2″ or slightly wider. Just above the track from this bullet you can make out the thin, interrupted silver line produced by a stock bullet.
So, no tumbling but interesting all the same. All of the shots from the short-nosed bullets produced a significantly larger PWC than the stock bullet with excellent, possibly too much, penetration. furthermore the bullets did not streamline, but maintained a wider-than bullet diameter track all the way through the block. The last, long-nosed bullet under-penetrated at 10-1/2″ and streamlined halfway through the PWC. The long-nose bullet also curved more than the other bullets, which essentially travelled almost straight.
On the whole if I were to use one of these bullet designs for self-defense it would be the first, short-nose bullet. Because the bullet never streamlines the overall size of the PWC is probably larger. Also the bullet is definitely going to penetrate heavy clothing, which is sometimes a concern with standard-velocity .32s.
It seems that despite the fact that they don’t tumble this could indeed be a useful bullet design. I think more testing is needed.
Michael Tinker Pearce, 30 December 2020