A day of good news/bad news at the range. The good news is that the Walker Conversion put all it’s shots in the same hole.  The bad news is only three of the fourteen rounds that I had loaded went off. It wasn’t striking light either, as you can see in the photo-

I’m pretty sure I screwed up somewhere and contaminated the primers- annoying. Well, that’s why I have a bullet-puller. The good news is that the bullets stayed put nicely under recoil, so the ‘chemical crimp’ is working just fine.  The brass fire-formed nicely in the chambers-

How is it to fire? Well, recoil isn’t painful, but you know you’ve fired a gun! There’s a definite snap to it, but the gun’s 3-1/2 lb weight really takes the sting out of it. Range wasn’t very far, but consistency was easy to attain- for what it’s worth here’s the picture of the three shots that worked. Obviously I’ll need to adjust the sights a bit:

I had also done some test-loads in .44 Colt for The Dandy using the new collet-crimp die. They were consistent- consistently underpowered, at least one of them very much so.  I’ll keep working on that.

The Steampunk Snubby has a new front sight so I wanted to test that. It’s shooting a bit high with a six o’clock hold, but I’m pretty happy with it, and with the 150gr. .361 LSWC load. It’s definitely got more pop than factory ammo, but that’s pretty weak stuff.  I ended by firing five cylinders at seven yards as fast as I could pull the trigger. Not the best shooting I have done by a long shot, but big fun!

Finally I decided to wring out the S&W m1905 and see what I could do with it.  I rested it on my shooting bag, thumb-cocked the hammer and fired as carefully as I could. I got a one-hole group high and slightly left at ten yards, then moved the target out to fifteen yards and enlarged the hole slightly. Moved the target to twenty-five yards and things went to poop. The group expanded to four inches and was noticeably furthe.r off to the left. Huh.  Pretty sure it’s me, not the gun.

I’m not used to shooting a double-action revolver single-action, and I never shoot handguns from a rest so I decided to do what I am used to- standing unsupported double action. Given that this gun is over a century old and has a rudimentary rear sight I’m not embarrassed by the result- about a 4-1/2″ group.  Pretty sure I can improve on that, so I’ll be shooting this gun at 25 yards regularly from here out.

The JP Sauer & Sohn single-action caused some consternation- it was not firing reliably and I thought I had more bad primers… until I realized the the primers weren’t showing any hits. Um… not sure how that could happen. I mean, the gun is pretty basic; there really shouldn’t be any way the firing-pin would not hit the primer. Unless the cylinder wasn’t rotating… yep. Bad hand spring- easy to fix. I’ll fabricate a replacement and she’ll be good as new.

So once again it was a mixed bag, but overall I came home pretty pleased. We’ll see if I can do better next time out.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 18 Feb. 2018

With the addition of a front sight and the ammunition made this one is, aside from inevitable tweaks, finished. The biggest piece of the puzzle was the ammunition, but that seems to be sorted now.

I originally planned to use .445 Powermag as the donor cartridge, but the brass is very expensive and must be special-ordered online. I also considered .444 Marlin, but not only was that not much better then the .445 in terms of availability, but the case flairs slightly towards the base and might necessitate special reaming, which would make shooting .44 Colt problematic.  I finally bought some .303 British ammunition, which fits well at the base and has a rim. It also wasn’t absurdly expensive.

First things first I used the bullet-puller. The 180gr bullets were set aside and the powder discarded. Then I cut the brass at the edge of the shoulder, giving an overall length of 1-11/16″- right in the middle of the estimated range needed. I then tried to fire-form the brass, erring on the side of caution by using a thick wax plug over a substantial powder charge. No joy. Rather than fussing with that further I set to work on 1/2″ brass rod in the lathe. I produced two tools of increasing size, and a steel block bored and reamed to .454″

Insert the de-primed brass in the block, hammer in the smaller expansion rod, remove and hammer in the larger. I refined the shape as I went and was very quickly producing credibly straight-walled brass. OK so far.

Next I measure how deep the heel-base bullet went in the case and found that approximately 14 grains of Trail Boss would fit without compression. Backing off to approximately 70% of that load gave 10.0 grains- according to Hodgdon’s data this should be the recommended starting load for my cartridge.

Using my home-made swage I made the 200gr. heel-base bullets to be a tight fit in the cartridge- so tight that once seated with a soft mallet they could not be removed without using pliers. I experimented with my collet-crimp die and the results were not entirely satisfactory, so I tried a ‘chemical crimp.’  Basically I glued the bullet in with blue Loc-Tite. This works quite well actually, and in the limited testing I have done the bullets do not ‘walk out’ under recoil. I’m satisfied with this arrangement, but it feels like cheating so I am going to continue to experiment with the crimping die.

So how is it to shoot? Recoil isn’t bad at all; I imagine the gun’s 3-1/2lb. weight helps with that. Muzzle blast is loud but muzzle-flash is less apparent than I expected. I do not yet have a chronograph so I have to guess at the velocity.  The math I have done seems to indicate a muzzle velocity of around 1100 fps., and the rounds sound supersonic to my ear.  If this is accurate the gun is producing 537ft/lbs of energy at the muzzle. They hit pretty hard too- in my one penetration test the round penetrated 4″ of seasoned Beech wood before exiting the side and burying itself in the backstop. I’m pretty happy with that. I’ll develop some loads with heavier bullets after time and repeated firing have ‘proved’ this load.

The two questions that come to mind regarding this project. The first, which has often been asked, is, ‘You’re using the original Italian cylinder? Are you nuts?’ Yes, I am using the original Italian cylinder. I may very well be nuts- but not for that reason. As near as I and other more experienced folks can tell these cylinders are the equivalent of 1018 steel. The tensile strength of this material is well known, and the math says the cylinder will hold up to these loads just fine. In fact it suggests that a full 14gr. load would be fine, but I’m not going there. Yes, this is just a guess, but it’s a good guess backed by math and practical considerations. The practical consideration is that this cylinder is designed to withstand the maximum charge that will fit in it’s original form- 65gr. of black powder behind a 173gr. ball. The available information suggests that my load generates significantly less stress than that load in terms of both pressure-curve and recoil; black powder is pretty violent stuff.  Suffice it to say that yes, I guessed it would be OK- but it was a very well-informed guess.

The second question is ‘Why?’  That’s harder to answer. This gun does nothing that modern firearms won’t do better. The only answers I have to this are, ‘Because it’s cool,’ and ‘because it was fun to do.’  It’s cool because I did it myself, and no one else has done exactly this conversion before. Yes, others have done big-cartridge conversions of Walker reproductions before- notably Gary Lee Barnes’s .45-60-225 ‘Brimstone’ conversions. But mine is the first using a heel-base bullet and uses a proprietary case of my own devising.

Here’s the idea- if someone in the 19th Century wanted a high-powered cartridge revolver- maybe as a sort of revolver ‘Howdah Pistol,’ they could have done exactly this conversion, and it would work exactly as it does today. The goal here was never to improve the state of the art; it was to make something fun and historically plausible. It does succeed in that- this gun is significantly more powerful than a period .45 Colt. In fact it is more powerful than any revolver cartridge of the period, excepting 11.3x36mmR used in the Gasser and Montenegrin revolvers in Europe.

But mostly this, like many of my other projects, is about finding, pushing and ultimately expanding the limits of what I can do- and creating something unique and, for lack of a better word, cool. Mission accomplished.  Now I need to make a holster for this beast… and come up with a name for it.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 13 Feb. 2018

From left to right: .357 Magnum, 45 ACP, 9x19mm, .45 Colt, .38 S&W, .25 ACP Bottom Right: .38 Special

This keeps coming up. over and over. OK, seriously- which bullet has the most Stopping Power?  There is an actual answer, but you aren’t going to like it, because it is not .45 ACP. It is not 9mm. It is not even .357 Magnum.

Ready?

The bullet with the most stopping power is the one that breaks something your attacker cannot function without.  This means the bullet penetrates deeply enough to hit that thing, and- here’s the part that you won’t like- you have to make sure it goes there. Sorry, there is no magic bullet that will do it for you. No, if you hit them in the big toe with your 45 it will not kill them instantly. .44 magnum is unlikely to actually tear someone’s arm off- and if it does that may not stop them.

Some guy in the Korean war shot a couple guys with a .45, and it worked. His assumption was that this meant it was the only thing that worked.  This became like a religion in some parts of the gun culture. 9mm? ‘Bah! If you shoot me with that and I ever find out I’ll kick your ass!’  .38 Special got an even worse rap.  And anything smaller? Puh-lease! You might as well spit at them!

The sum total of our knowledge about handgun ‘stopping power’ came from anecdotes and some really, really unscientific tests performed early in the 20th C.  Tales of one-shot stops with .45s were like candy, and never mind there were also plenty of stories where it didn’t. There were also stories where someone dropped like a stone after a single shot from a .25 Auto. ‘Just a fluke,’ we were assured.  The fact is for any caliber- up to and including .44 Magnum- one can find tales of them failing to stop someone. Equally one can find a story just about any caliber dropping someone with a single shot. But people tended to only focus on the one’s that supported their pet theory or preference.

Now we don’t have to rely on anecdotal evidence. People have studied actual shootings over a period of decades to see what really worked in real life. What they discovered is that any service caliber- that being .38 Special, 9mm, .357 Magnum or Sig, .40 S&W, 10mm, .44 Special, .45 ACP- all work about the same.  If you use a modern hollow-point they all work a bit better- but still about the same as each other.

Coroners report that among these calibers- presupposing the use of a good hollow-point- the only way they can identify the caliber that caused a given wound is by finding the bullet. Seems unlikely- these rounds have wildly varying amounts of energy and expand to different sizes in ballistic gel. The fact is that human tissue is not ballistic gel- it is inconsistent in structure and density and very elastic. Yes, a more powerful bullet may produce more damage- but not as much more as you might think, and the evidence suggests it’s not enough to make a difference in something that happens as fast as a lethal confrontation. Adding power adds penetration more than it adds damage, and that’s great if you are hunting large game. Less vital in a lethal encounter.

Calibers smaller than .38 Special get a little more complicated. Sub-calibers like .22LR and .25 ACP may not penetrate deeply enough to cause a solid ‘stop,’ and may not do enough damage if they do. Best bet with these is quantity- but not quantity over quality.  You still need to hit things that matter. If you can put a half-dozen of these in someone’s heart-or face- in short order they are likely to reconsider their life-choices.

Small calibers like .32 ACP , .32 S&W Long, .380 ACP and even the venerable .38 S&W can all do the job, but hit location is crucial with these calibers- even more so than with service calibers. Generally hollow-points are not a worthwhile proposition for these cartridges; either they don’t expand and the round behaves like ball ammo, or they do expand but don’t penetrate deeply enough to interrupt vital structures. Best to use ball ammunition in the semi-autos and wadcutters in the revolver cartridges.  Options to this in .32 ACP and .380 ACP are offered by Lehigh Defense in their Extreme Penetrator and Extreme Cavitator bullet designs; these seem likely to be somewhat more effective than ball ammunition. There are also a couple of hollow-point offerings in .380 that may perform adequately, but I am a bit leery of them.

In a self -defense situation a bullet can produce one of two kinds of stop. The first and most desirable is a ‘Hard Stop.’ This means they stop because they have no choice; you have broken a part of them that they cannot function without. This can be produced by a hit to the central-nervous system or upper spine. This is the only thing that will reliably produce a Hard Stop, but multiple hits to the heart are almost as effective. This is good thing, because in the heat of the moment it’s a lot easier to hit the middle of someone’s body than it is to hit their head.

The second and far more common is the ‘Psychological Stop’ or ‘Soft Stop.’  This occurs when you shoot them and they decide, consciously or unconsciously, that they are done. People don’t like to be shot. It’s traumatic as hell and it can be fatal, and your brain and body want nothing to do with it. Pretty often the fight/flight/freeze instinct kicks in and they run away or simply fall down. Sometimes their brain decides, ‘Nope. Shit got real, we’re done now.’  Sometimes they consciously realize they’ve been shot and decide their best chance to survive is to not get shot anymore. Whatever, when a ‘Soft Stop’ occurs the person stops being a threat, either by running away or effectively surrendering.

Any hit from any bullet can produce a ‘Soft Stop,’ but it’s more likely to happen if the person notices they have been hit. It is possible that this is where service calibers have their largest advantage- they produce more damage, which means there is a greater likelihood that a person will notice they have been hit. People involved in a gunfight have to be told they’ve been shot surprisingly often; they did not experience a Soft Stop because they weren’t aware that they’d been hit.  This seems to happen less frequently with service caliber and larger hollow-points. This can be viewed as an argument in favor of calibers like .357 Magnum, .45 ACP and 10mm, but this is often argued to be countered by 9mm’s ability to put more accurate rounds on target faster.

Soft Stops are common and probably that’s what will happen if, God forbid, you are required to shoot someone in self-defense. But it might not- in which case your only option is a Hard Stop, and that probably means more bullets. One Marine was asked, hit for hit- which caliber he preferred. He shrugged and said, “Who shoots them once?”

It does seem clear that while small calibers may work your best bet is a service-caliber using modern hollow-points. Whatever caliber you choose to defend yourself with, you need to make sure you can hit what you aim at- preferably quickly and more than once.