I got started on this tumbling bullet thing by considering what could be done to improve the performance of bullets from short-barrel guns with relatively low velocity. That’s yielded some interesting results, and this week I’ll be sending some bullets to a fellow to test on feral hog carcasses.
Next .38 testing for me will be the 158gr. bullets through the 1-3/4″ barrel of my custom Taurus Model 85, but I need to recast the block again to get good photos of the wound-tracks.
Custom Taurus Model 85 with a 1-3/4″ barrel. Should be an ideal test gun.
As regular readers will know I also tested a bullet in .32 S&W Long, again with interesting results, and I got to thinking, ‘What other rounds have trouble getting enough penetration with expanding bullets?’ I thought I might see what I could do with .380 ACP.
I pulled out some 90gr. TMJRN and adjusted the swaging die until I got the shape i wanted. These load to .982 OAL, right on-spec for .380 ACP ball. They feed perfectly in my wife’s P238 Legion, and I’ll be using that for a test gun. Again, I need to wait for a ‘clean’ block of gel.
Linda’s Sig Sauer P238 Legion with some of the loaded BNFPs. These should be stepping out between 905-1000 fps. Will they tumble? I don’t know, but we’ll find out.
I have another, very different project in the works, but it’s not ready for prime-time yet. It’s going to take some time; it’s pretty involved.
Last summer my emails got messed up, and I haven’t been able to access my Patreon account for some time. Now on 1 January 2021 I suddenly have been able to straighten things out and have access again. It turns out several of you have been supporting me and I didn’t even know it! Thank you all very much- it means a lot.
As of December we’ve crossed the $100/month threshold, which means I’ll be making more shooting videos. I whined to Linda that I needed to start a new Youtube channel and she said, “Why? You’ve already got one…” OK, duh. I’ve shot a few ‘action’ videos of shooting to post here and other places, and you can find them here- https://www.youtube.com/user/tinkerpearce/featured
Future videos will be posted there as well. For now I’m planning on only doing videos to post here and other gun pages rather than having a ‘show.’ We’ll see how things progress. In the meantime I need to look into some equipment, and I while I don’t know what some of it is going to cost I feel a cringe coming on…
Interesting things coming up in 2021; there’s a project almost completed that’s carried over from last year. I wanted to finish it before now but, well… 2020.
In other news I bought some magazines for my Sig P-6 that turned out to be, frankly, cheaper than I’d want to bet my life on. But, acting on a whim, I discovered they would fit in my Beretta M1951 if I cut a notch for the handle-mounted magazine release. Which means they’d fit the Helwan .380 conversion…
My Maadi Helwan, which I converted to .380 ACP after the locking lugs peened. Of course the moment I did I discovered that quality replacement locking-blocks had become available… after I had bored out and sleeved the chamber, them reamed it for .380. Oh well, at least it’s not a paperweight…
I took one of the magazines apart and visited the Bin of Random Magazines at Ben’s Loans and bought a couple of .32 ACP magazines to cannibalize the springs. I modified the follower from the cheap magazine for the shorter cartridge, then soldered a brass spacer into the back of the magazine. Installing the modified follower and the spring from the .32 magazine gave me a functional .380 magazine for the Helwan.
You can see the brass spaced, and how it holds the cartridge in the proper position to feed. I may tweak the feed lips a bit, but it works pretty darn well already.
This is a big improvement over the cludged-together magazine I originally did for this gun. Yes, a 9mm magazine will still fit in the pistol, but a 9mm cartridge won’t fit in the chamber since I re-did it, so there’s no safety concern on that score.
So, how does it shoot? A little low, but recoil is minimal; it’s a very pleasant gun to shoot. The magazine holds nine rounds, and aside from a single stove-pipe on feeding it’s been reliable.
Shoots a little low, but that’s a respectable 7-yard mag-dump.
I think I need to make another of these magazines…
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.
The modified bullet is on the left, the stock bullet is on the right. The stock bullet is .570″ long, the re-swaged bullet is .616″ long.
Loaded ammo is a bit longer than standard ammo, which is 1.280″ long. With these bullets the OAL loaded length is 1.320″
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 top image is contrast-enhanced, on the bottom is the raw image.
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.
The 2″ test gun, a Colt Detective Special in .32 Colt New Police (.32 S&W Long) This gun was made in 1949.
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.
The red dots indicate the ends of the wound-track. the shot was fired at a slight downward angle.
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.
The nose of the bullet is significantly longer and the bearing-surface is shorter.
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.
