Bullet weight and velocity question...

I can't point you to any specific title, but I know Criag Boddington has written some articles on this subject. This would be more from a hunter's viewpoint than self defense but there is quite a bit of overlap between the two subjects. MHO is that 1)your bullet needs to have enough weight to go through the vitals, most importantly. And 2) faster is better because your expanding self defense bullet will expand more the faster it is going. So I want the best compromise between speed and weight.

 

For SD I think it would depend on the caliber.
The following as all guesswork on my part and nothing more.

A .44 mag, the lightest HP bullets to avoid over penetration.

For the .357 I go with 125 gr HP's these days. (Used to carry 158's but over penetration worried me).

The 38 special, probably 125 gr +P I guess. I don't shoot those so....

I've been told some of the early 147 gr 9mm bullets didn't expand well. I believe that's fixed now.

With a .380 you can have good expansion, (Fed HST) or good penetration, (FMC) but not both.

10mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP, never really studied up on those.

I don't know of any good reading material to recommend, sorry.
But ShootingTheBull410 and others on YouTube do pretty good bullet gel testing.

Oh and .22 rimfire, wear your running shoes!

 

It is a balancing act. I wouldn't want a RN bullet for self-defense, whether it was light or heavy.
If you load a light bullet and a heavy bullet to max pressure, the light bullet will have less recoil, more energy, and almost certainly less momentum.
If the bullets have a flat meplat or actually expand, you have more surface area to dump energy into the target, and the heavy bullet has more momentum to keep going through the target; however, as energy is dumped, the bullet loses momentum.
Then there is the larger the caliber, the less need for expansion.
So, to summarize, there are lots of folks arguing every which way and not enough sample for any real knowledge.
But, I would say that historically:
the larger caliber does a better job
the higher velocity does a better job
the higher momentum does a better job
the faster energy is transferred from bullet to target does a better job
Now, if you could have all four at the same time.

 

What was true in the past is not always true in the future.

From my study and practice shooting at material that would be an obstacle to a bullet I I decided to carry a 90 grain bullet cartridge.

They are the new dynamic bullets that do not expand and therefore go against conventional wisdom. You can get them from Lehigh and Underwood. I buy the 9mm+p from Underwood.

First I read about them. Then I watched every review I could find on YouTube. The bullet performance was characterized as excellent penetration and permanent wound channel. They do not clog to foil expansion because do not expand. Instead they employ dynamic bullet design that increases spin as the bullet moves.

They can penetrate a windshield and perform in gel almost the way they perform into gel alone.

I watched every review regardless of caliber see if dynamic design worked reliably. That was a lot of watching. But for me it paid off.

It some reviews they were tested against very popular and heavier hollow points. They out performed the HPs whether going through barriers like plywood, wallboard, and aluminum.

Permanent wound channels were 75% to 100% wider that HP. Penetration was better. The fascinating thing was that penetration was just a bit shorter after going through a barrier than it was without a barrier. That is due to the dynamics of the bullet. It does not rely on mass. Instead it relies on spin. The bullet looks a slight bit like the business end of a drill bit.

I have changed to that design. The velocity varies with barrel design as expected. Using a full size 9mm it was about an average 1400 FPS.

In some of the videos the reviewers announced that they were going to change their SD ammo to the new design.

The Underwood round is Extreme Defender and the Lehigh round is Extreme Defense.

 

Velocity is the speed the bullet is traveling,momentum is the driving force the bullet has. The more momentum it has the more it's going to take to stop it.

 

Agreed. We all probably know that momentum = mass x velocity. So a heavier bullet traveling at the velocity ad a lighter one will have more velocity. Simple fact leads to trying to get a higher weight bullet traveling at high speed.

Rereading my post I realized that I left out that point and it was essential to the conclusion.

What the new dynamic bullets do is increase effectiveness with less bullet weight at any given velocity.

Thank you for waking me up. Do check out the YouTube vids about you SD caliber in the Extreme dynamic rounds. Nothing ventured is nothing gained.

 

http://www.luckygunner.com/labs/self-defense-ammo-ballistic-tests/

If you would like to expand your knowledge, and assuming you may be new to this or even to those of us who try to find the best defense round for different calibers, this site seems interesting. They show gel tests along with a variety of test results. They also show actual gel tests with explanations on how the tests are conducted and how they derived their results. This may give you a little more insight as to which round for your desired caliber. I don't know how old the testing is so you might want to check other sites and see if they are in agreement or the consensus has any discrepancies. I hope this may give you a little more information. Good luck!

Tommy

 

Tommy,

Thanks for the link. I noticed that the latest upgrade to testing was recent. I also noticed that it had not tested any of the Lehigh, Underwood, or Ruger dynamic rounds. I am going to contact them and ask them to do that. It would be an interesting addition to their data.

Today I found a YouTube test of Ruger ARX billets. They were not as effective as the Lehigh and Underwood dynamic bullets. Problem was that the bullet had some disintegration upon impact which the other two do not.

Oddly I did not know anything about casings and bullets until after I retired from the Corps. We used FMJ and that was it. It took me some time to catch up. But I am caught up now, in spite of the fact that time flies. I was thinking today about if I make it to Sep 2019 I will have retired from the Corps for 30 years which is the same amount I served before retirement. Damn I am getting old.

 

Thanks Tommy for this:
http://www.luckygunner.com/labs/self-defense-ammo-ballistic-tests/
Loads of good testing / information. :Cooltu:




:GadsdenFlag:

 

Allenr,

You and I both know that Father Time creeps up on us. I get frustrated because in my mind I am still in my 30's but my body tells me different every time I move. With arthritis heavily in my shoulders it's harder to put on a sweatshirt let alone a jacket. But the one thing they can't take away from us are the memories. Good, bad, indifferent, they still hang with us. I try to stay active working on cars and welding but my hands are so sore and shaky that I get upset when they won't do what I want. Still, if I had to live my life over, I can say: at least I tried and if I failed then I learned. Had I not tried I would have not failed yet I also wouldn't have not have learned and succeeded. Good luck to you my friend!

Tommy

 

Superbly said. If all the complainers in this word had your attitude we would live in a better world.

 

I been woodworking for nigh on to 50 years.


People will say, "how did you learn how to do that"?



I always say "many failures"


Jim

 

Time teaches...if you live long enough to learn.