OK, I wanted to see if I could make a simple bullet that flew straight and tumbled after impact. Mission accomplished, time to move along… or not. I linked my blog on some gun pages, posted about it on some forums. I expected people to find it mildly interesting. The reaction was surprising; people are quite interested. One fellow down south is culling feral pigs, and said, “Send me some, I’ll try them on carcasses.”

Sure, why not? I tooled up a little to swage them in bulk, modified the design to shorten the nose slightly and tested them in my shot-up gel. Yep, they still work fine. By this point the Clear Ballistics gel block was so abused that getting a decent photo was impossible.

Since I needed to re-cast the block I agreed to do a test on the ‘virgin’ block and hopefully get some good photos. I cranked out a hundred bullets and loaded them into .38 Special and .38 S&W. I took them to the range and tried them at seven yards to make sure they flew straight. I started with the .38 S&W fired from my 1-5/8″ S&W Safety Hammerless.

Ran a target out to seven yards, and it appears they are flying straight. OK then, on to the .38 Special. for this I used my custom 3″ Model 1902 and fired at seven yards.

They are definitely flying straight. So far, so good. On to the Gel test. I didn’t bother with the four layers of denim this time; it seemed to make no discernable difference in previous tests so why inject crap into the block? I can never seem to get all the denim fibers out…

The results from the .38 S&W were good but not spectacular, and honestly I wasn’t expecting them to be. First I fired an unmodified 158gr. LRNFP. The track was very narrow and even closes up completely in places. I couldn’t even get a reasonable photo. It passed completely through the 16″ block. Then I tried the Tumbler.

On the bottom is the raw image, and on top is a contrast-enhanced image for a better look at the wound-track. The bullet upset immediately on impact and produced a wound-track almost 3/4″ wide for the first 3″ or so before the bullet streamlined, travelling in reverse. Going from there the permanent wound cavity remains larger than the unmodified bullet’s, but isn’t overly impressive. The bullet stopped against the table at 11″. Not world-shaking, but it does appear to be a notable improvement over the stock bullet. Note that this bullet was travelling approx. 620 fps.

On to the .38 Special. The test-gun was my custom 3″ S&W Model 1902. The bullet makes right around 900 fps. from this gun; I’d originally intended to fire a comparison shot with the un-modified bullet, but if it sailed through the block at 620 fps. adding another 300 fps. wasn’t likely to change that so I didn’t bother. The results were a bit more impressive this time…

This time the bullet stopped right at 16″. It started to tumble about 3″ into the block, and the permanent wound cavity resembles what you’d expect to see from a .38+P hollow-point, except the bullet never properly streamlined until the last 3″ or so. I was gob-smacked. I really did not anticipate this performance from this bullet. The PWC is 3-dimensional, but the extreme disruption of the block in the middle is all on the vertical plane. The wound track does curve upward, but it’s a lot less curve than the original design, and a lot more damage.

I’m going to have to do more testing, and use a shorter-barreled gun, probably my custom Taurus 85 with the 1-3/4″ barrel. We should be seeing some results from the hog carcasses next month, and I’ll share that here as well. I also want to try a full wadcutter for comparison, and try these in a .357 Magnum at around 1100fps. and see what happens.

I’ve decided to call these bullets a ‘Lead Bottle-Nose Flat Point.’ or LBNFP. More technically descriptive than ‘Tumbler.’

Interesting stuff here.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 29 December 2020

Currently the most popular self-defense revolvers are snub-nose revolvers like the S&W J-frames and Ruger LCR. These are most often chambered in .38 Special, and have barrels around 2″ in length.

It seems the most important factor in stopping an attacker with a handgun are penetration, hit location and the permanent wound track. But while it doesn’t top the list, there’s little doubt a bigger permanent wound track is better than a small one. The most common way to produce a larger wound track is to use a Hollow-point bullet, but from these short barrels hollow-point bullets tend to not expand, or to expand and under-penetrate. There are a couple that seem to do well, but they can be hard to find, especially these days.

But maybe there’s another way…

As long as a bullet penetrates deeply enough anything that makes the permanent wound-track bigger is all to the good. What if a bullet can be induced to tumble reliably? It’s not a new idea; some say the British .38/200 was designed to do exactly that, and the King’s armed forces were satisfied with that for decades.

To perform reliably such a bullet needs to be stable in flight, but unstable on penetration; if it tumbles in flight it will be inaccurate. Making a bullet nose-heavy, like a hollow-base wadcutter, makes it more stable. Moving the center of gravity towards the base of the bullet has the opposite effect, but rifling can still make it stable in flight and this is the method most often used for things like military rifle bullets. Since pistols typically use rather stubby bullets their rifling-pitch is set up for those bullets, and increasing the length of a bullet beyond what is normal can also make it less stable.

I started with a 158gr. LRNFP, and experimented with swaging various shapes and arrived at one that looked like it might fit the bill, and in addition would work very well in a speed-loader.

I loaded the bullets over 4.5gr of Unique with a Federal Magnum Small Pistol primer. For my test gun I used my 3″ K-frame. I set up the chronograph in front of my much-abused Clear Ballistics gel bock covered with four layers of denim. backing off approximately 10 feet I fired three test shots.

First of all the load averaged 908 fps., producing 289 ft./lbs with an extreme spread of 21 fps. The bullets did not key-hole in flight and shot to point of aim… hardly surprising given the short range. One bullet rotated 180 degrees and ended up base-first in the block. The other two made a full rotation and ended point-forward. The wound-tracks expanded to about 1 inch at the widest. Penetration was 11-1/2 to 13 inches.

The ballistic gel block is so shot up it’s hard to get a good photo of the wound-track. The bullet started to tumble after about 2″ of penetration. While the bullets penetrated adequately every wound-track was curved, which given the importance of hit location is not ideal.

So, this seems to be a successful experiment. It is arguably an improvement over a standard wadcutter or semi-wadcutter, but is it enough better to be worth the effort? Really not sure it is, what with the wound-tracks curving the way they do. Still, I doubt they are worse than a semi-wadcutter.

There are worse ways to spend an afternoon, and it was gratifying to succeed in implementing the idea. That being said I’m not convinced it’s worth pursuing this.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 21 December 2020

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I have a lot of older guns and not a great deal of money, but since I’ve spent the last thirty years making sheaths for knives and scabbards for daggers and swords. The obvious solution was to make my own. I’d made a holster for this Beretta M1951 before, but it didn’t have a retention-strap and it would not fit over my new gun-belt. Further, I have learned a lot since I made that holster and could now do a better design.

Time for a new one, and a mag-pouch while I was at it. The fundamentals of the design of the first holster are sound; it carries the gun high, and the secondary belt-loop holds the butt in tight to enhance concealment.

I used 8oz. top-grain vegetable tanned tooling leather dyed British Tan then finished with a Carnauba Wax finish. The holster and mag pouch were double-needle stitched by hand with linen thread. I have a tool that cuts a groove for the thread, which decreases wear on the stitches so they are less likely to fail. I use a flex-shaft tool with a small drill bit to make the holes for the thread. I know, I know, I should use an awl to punch the holes. What can I say? I’m lazy. I cheat. Before stitching all parts were secured with contact-cement.

The new holster would be designed for the gun to be carried ‘cocked-and-locked,’ with the hammer cocked and the safety applied. This meant I would want the leather to cover much more of the top of the gun. The retention strap would need to be angled to work properly with the angled back of the slide in order to hold the gun securely.

I used a piece of 1/4″ board to stretch the belt-loops to accommodate the very thick gun-belt, wetting them with dye to make them malleable. As the dye dried the leather stiffened, holding the shape.

The belt-loop on the back of the holster is a different construction than the original holster; that was a single strap secured only by contact cement and threads. The leather plate pierced with belt-loops transfers the strain to the leather rather than the stitching and glue. This is enormously stronger and more secure.

I used similar construction for the belt-loops on the magazine-pouch. The pouch is designed for concealed carry, and must be held tight to the body. This being the case I made the pouch with a flap to cover the magazine base-plates, which would otherwise dig into my side.

I did make two small modifications to the gun. First I filed an under-cut in the front sight and filled it with bright orange enamel. Second, and more importantly, I slightly relieved the hole in the grip for the cross-bolt safety. It is possible for me to take the safety off with the side of my thumb, but by increasing the clearance around the safety if I grip the gun properly my thumb removes the safety every time without my thinking about it.
One advantage of the M1951’s design is that once the hammer is cocked and the safety applied you can still operate the slide to load or check the chamber.

The M1951 is by no means a modern handgun. It’s heavier than a modern polymer gun, holds half as many rounds in the magazine and it has a manual safety. This doesn’t make it a bad gun. It is commendably flat and very comfortable in the hand. The heel-mounted magazine release on the left-hand grip is not much slower than a more conventional release, with training at least. Contrary to their reputation this gun has no difficulty feeding hollow-point ammunition, and if it did I would use one of the ball-profile ‘ballistic-capped’ hollow-points. They are pretty inexpensive right now, too, usually under $300 for a decent Italian Police trade-in like this one.

For someone looking for a high-quality budget self-defense handgun you could easily do worse.

Sometime soon I’ll do a step-by-step post about making a holster.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 19 December 2020