I recently tested Underwood Xtreme Defender 9mm ammunition provided by Ballistics By The Inch, a website dedicated to testing ammunition. The results were intriguing. In gel tests penetration was good and the permanent wound cavity showed significant disruption of ’tissue’ along the length of the track. Very promising on ‘on paper,’ but I and others have had questions about how it would perform in the real world of bone, gristle and other body structures.

During discussions of my tests we all agreed that some sort of real-world test was needed before passing judgement on these bullets. As it happens I have a friend in Texas, which is suffering under a veritable plague of feral pigs. In addition to wreaking havoc on crops these creatures represent a legitimate threat to human beings, even to the point of attacking, killing and eating them. Mike regularly has to kill these creatures, and agreed to test the Xtreme Defender on them should appropriate circumstances occur. BBTI sent him some ammunition for the test, and we didn’t have to wait long for a report.

“Was able to pop a moderate sized wounded sow last night with a Defender. She had been knocked down and got up to flee when we walked up on her. IMO this is a good and valid test, as adrenaline and the urge to flee is about as high as possible. The bullet cleanly broke a rib and penetrated about 6-8 inches. The wound track showed considerable tissue disruption for the full depth of penetration. At the hit, she went down and stopped all attempts to do anything. She just breathed a few breaths and was dead.”

‘That’s not enough penetration!’ I hear you cry. Isn’t it? The FBI standard is 12-19″ of penetration in ordinance gel after passing through four layers of 16 oz. denim, but the thing to remember is that this doesn’t represent penetration in an actual human body; it is a comparative tool only. The reason for the depth specification is because real bodies contain bone and other variable-density structures that can reduce the bullet’s penetration. The 12-19″ standard takes this into account; in absolute terms a bullet needs much less penetration than that in a body do cripple vital structures.

I’ve read several accounts of wounds left in medium game animals by 9mm 115gr. JHPs, and this performance appears comparable to those accounts. I’m usually skeptical about light-for-caliber high velocity bullets for self defense, and both testing and real-world results seem to bear that out. But these bullet’s differ in both design and wounding mechanism compared to conventional bullets, and it seems to work. They are also immune to ‘loading up’ with fabric etc. as can sometimes happen with hollow-point bullets.

That being said there is no such thing as a ‘magic bullet.’ The only way to produce a ‘hard stop’ with a handgun is to break things the baddie can’t function without, and these don’t change that fact. You still need to do your part by getting the rounds on target, and to hit things that matter like the central nervous system and circulatory system. No bullet will do the work for you. With that caveat I have to say I continue to be intrigued by these bullets, and I strongly suspect that they will do the job as well as conventional hollow-point ammunition.

The only way we will know how these perform in self-defense shootings is if enough of those happen that we have a large pool of evidence, a circumstance that I honestly hope never occurs. Comparative tests are likely to be the best measure we’re going to get, and in our tests and others these bullets seem to perform comparably to other defensive ammunition in this caliber, with some potential advantages.

In my testing they have been accurate, they are low recoil and work reliably in my weapon. The low-mass of the projectile means it will have poor penetration of household obstacles like walls and appliances. With that in mind I would be confident in loading them in my ‘night-stand’ gun for self-defense.

More testing is in the offing, and I’ll follow up as more information becomes available.

Take care and stay safe- and Happy Independance Day!

Michael Tinker Pearce, 4 July 2021

As an armed civilian you may need to use your weapon in defense of yourself or another innocent. Civilian self-defense shootings are wildly varied, so it’s hard to generalize about them. But if it happens in public you can bet the police will be arriving quickly, and when they get there it’s very likely they will have insufficient information. They will evaluate the situation mostly on what they can observe on arrival.

They’re going to be keyed up, knowing that people have been shot. If it was a spree shooter or if there’s an officer down they’re going to be really keyed up. It’s a situation tailor-made for mistakes. You need to be prepared to deal with them, and you need to make absolutely sure that you are not part of the problem. It would suck to survive a lethal force encounter only to be shot by the police. The other week in Colorado it happened.

Details are sketchy and we’re not going to focus on those here; the gist of it is a bad guy shot a good guy, an armed civilian shot the bad guy, the police showed up and shot the good guy. Three people dead, only one of them a bad guy.

We’re all human. A lot of us train. We all have reflexes. Good things, generally, but in the wrong situation even good training can get you killed if you haven’t thought about what to do after the bullets stop flying.

I’ve been around the block a time or two, and had some experiences most people haven’t. Despite this I’m just some guy on the internet so take my words as food for thought, not Received Gospel. This is a thing I have thought about and come to understand that the danger isn’t over until the police are in control of the situation.

When the police arrive they will have some very specific priorities, the first being to establish that the danger has passed. Close on the heels of that they will want to establish control of the scene, both to insure the safety of themselves and the public and to preserve evidence. Anything that interferes with these priorities will be dealt with abruptly and with little regard for social niceties. Because of the variability of the circumstances of civilian shootings it’s difficult to give specific advice, but anything that appears threatening to either their safety or their sense of control can have bad, even tragic, results. You need to bear this in mind.

That’s not going to be easy; you’ve just had the mother of all adrenaline rushes. Your fight-or-flight reflex has been triggered in a big way. You may be experiencing a major rush of elation as it sinks in that you have survived. Everything you have just experienced is going to make it difficult for you to control your responses and you may even be in shock. So what do do?

Think it through in advance. Be mentally prepared; understand the priorities and needs of the responding officers. Know what they want and do your best to give it to them. Condition yourself to do as they order, immediately and without hesitation. Don’t volunteer information, don’t try to explain anything and, for the love of God, don’t argue with them. If they tell you to drop your $3,000 STI pistol drop it. A gun is a lot easier to fix than a bullet hole.

There’s another thing you can do to improve the situation if it seems safe and prudent.

Dial 911.

Yes, other people have probably called them already. So what? Tell the operator who you are. Answer their questions, but don’t volunteer information. OK you’re pretty much going to need to give them basic details like the fact that you were involved in a shooting. But that thing about ‘anything you say can and will be used against you’ is very much in play here. People tend to be a bit disorganized in these situations and sometimes say things out of their proper order or express themselves in a way that later sounds bad in court. Limiting yourself to the bare essentials can insulate you from this possibility. The police will make their decisions based on what they find, and you’ll have ENDLESS opportunities to tell your side of things later, trust me. Ideally after consulting with and in the presence of your lawyer.

The 911 operators will keep the responding officers informed, and the more information they have the safer you are. They’ll also probably keep you informed and instruct you on what to do as the police arrive.

Any shooting situation is messy and chaotic. People are going to be frightened, maybe hysterical. The responding police will be in a high state of readiness and hyper-alert. Nothing will absolutely guarantee things will go as they should, but with some understanding and forethought you can stack the odds in your favor, and really that’s all you can ever do.

Stay safe and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 30 June 2021

A few years back I started making pistol grips for revolvers, mostly because I liked a lot of revolvers no one makes grips for. Over the years I got better at it, and occasionally made a set of grips for friends.

People have increasingly asked me if I want to sell grips. Now, I like making grips and it’s a lot less hard on my aging body than making swords. But inletting the grips to fit over the frame is pretty labor-intensive, and labor is far-and-away the most expensive component of most hand-crafted items. In short I couldn’t charge enough for the grips to make them worth what I would have to sell them for.

What I needed was a way to inlet the grips that didn’t require as much labor. I looked at various options, and discovered that small CNC routers were not awfully expensive. After sorting through reviews and such I made my choice- a Sainsmart G3018 PROver.

When it arrived a few things became apparent. It’s a bit smaller than I expected, something like 1-1/2′ wide. It’s big enough, so that’s fine. The second thing I realized was that Sainsmart and I have very different ideas of what constitutes ‘simple assembly.’ In fairness if you have an advanced degree in engineering or regularly assemble satellite buses it’s pretty easy, and the directions aren’t hopelessly bad. Your Mileage May Vary.

The last thing was that the software that’s bundled with it is junk. It simply doesn’t work on either of my computers (one of them a state-of-the-art gaming laptop.) I tried to find out how to make it work, and the best I could discover was a fellow who said, ‘It just started working. I don’t know why.’ This will not do.

Much teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling later I realized to was simply a GRBL controller, and there are plenty of them out there. I tried several and settled on the Sourcerabbit GRBL sender. Easy to use, free and, most importantly, it actually works. As an aside I love that I get to use Gerbil-control software; plays into the ‘Mad Scientist’ trope nicely.

Then things got expensive. With the learning curve on CAD software it was apparent that the way forward was to use a 3D scanner. I finally bought a unit from SOL (about $800) that would do the trick. I made a 3D model to use as a ‘blank’ for K-frame square-butt grips and proceeded, which meant learning to use CAD software on top of everything else.

We will draw the curtains of charity over the events that followed. Suffice it to say that it was a process of Trial and Error; it was a trial that was mostly in error. I did eventually get things working, and a dozen prototypes later I had my first set of grip-blanks… which required extensive hand-fitting and ultimately didn’t work. Back to the drawing , uh, keyboard.

Learning from experience I made a new physical model, scanned it and set the machine to work. There were some bobbles, but eventually it worked. The grips fit perfectly with less than a minute of fitting. I can live with that.

One thing to point out- this process, from scanned model to a usable grip-blank, took a week. The thing is the CNC router is not fast when it comes to a complex model like this; the first run took over eight hours for half of a grip. As I learned the machine and software this got faster, but each grip-half still takes 2-1/2 hours. That’s acceptable given that setting up the machine and starting it takes about 3 minutes per half, and I don’t have to charge for the labor because I can walk away and do other things.

Once I have a right and left grip blank I cut the final shape, sand the contours on the belt-sander and go to hand-sanding. All of the external shaping and finishing is done by hand, but the labor costs of that are manageable, and I’ll be able to offer the grips at a competitive price. Achievement Unlocked: Potentially Viable Business.

Actually selling them is going to be a whole ‘nuther challenge. I reckon Linda will set up a website, then we have to figure out how to drive traffic to it etc. We’ll open that can of worms another day. In the meantime I’m going to work on grips for N-frames, K-frame round-butts and who knows what else.

I’m pushing 60; making swords and my various misadventures in martial arts demos, martial sports, theatrical fighting etc. have not been kind to my body. Making grips may provide a less brutal way of supplementing my income. While I’m not going to use this blog to push these, I will be posting a link to the eventual web-page here.

Maybe it’ll work out, maybe not… but it’s been an interesting learning experience. Hopefully it will be a profitable one as well.

Stay safe, and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 27 June 2021