357 WFNGC

[Ak.Hiker]

I was testing some different handgun loads for penetration and found it interesting that the 357 Magnum loaded with a stout 180 grain WFNGC bullet made a bigger exit hole out the back of a 6 inch spruce log than several larger caliber non LBT bullets. The other loads tested were the 200 grain FMJ Hornady bullet in a 10mm and the 250 Sierra FPJ bullet in the 44 Magnum. The 357 was the only load that penetrated straight out as well. Was the larger exit hole of the LBT due to the size of the meplate?  I am sure none of these bullets expanded.

[Veral]

  Your assumption is absolutely correct, and if the log would have been big enough, the LBT bullet would very likely have matched penetration of the others as well, even with the big hole.  The reason being that there is little or no side drag on a bullet when passing through a hole larger than itself, whereas the two jacketed bullets you tried were probably wedging their way through all the way.  Understand something about the big hole though.  If you split the log you shot into you'll find the hole is about bullet size for all until it gets close to exiting, at which time the wide meplat bullet takes a chunk of wood with it.  In flesh, which is what bullets are made for, the wide meplat makes tissue spray out widely past the bullet diameter leaving it flying through a vacuum, whereas a bullet with too small a meplat will not wound as large as the bullet, which means more drag on the bullet sides/less penetration, and the bullet will tumble and vear off coarse from where it was directed by the shooter.

[Chris Potts]

I sent veral an order for a couple of molds earlier this week.  One of them is the 180wfngc.  I will be using it in my 357 blackhawk, 357 max tc encore, and the marlin 1894 cowboy that I order today.  Should keep me out of trouble for a little while.

Chris

[45-70.gov]

i  got  my 357  180 gr  wfn ....  cast  many  but  shot few  so  far    tested  for penetration...3 gr bullseye 38  in  22 in rifle   800 fps...penetrated 24 inches of wet phone books......mild report [no one  noticed]...cant wait to make  some real  loads and  get  them to the  range

[tn_junk]

The gentleman who introduced me to the .357 MAX Handi used 180 grain WFNGC. He never had problems killing anything from 50 lb whitetail does to 350 lb wild hogs.
Most everything he shot just took a few stops and dropped. The one wild hog he killed when I was hunting with him was hit in the left chest at about 40 yards. The bullet was recovered in the right ham and tore up everything in between.

alan

[Veral]

  Now just a minute!  With a 38 cal bullet?

  Yep! That's the way they work in the field.  When I saw my little lady trip a full sized raghorn bull elk in his tracks with one through the ribs at a range of a bit over 100 yards, it REALLY got my attention!  Especially after seeing them run 100 to 150 yards after identical hits from a 30-06!  That was about 25 years ago and counting.--  Kill after kill after kill.

[45-70.gov]

[yt=425,350]i  just   started  working  up  loads  with  my  new  mold  357 WFN  gc  and  no gc  180 grain..should   it  be  considered  as  a self defence load   in  mine  and  my  sons  38s  and  357  snub  noses?     right  now  we  are  loading 3  grains  bullseye  and  it  shoots  ok  but  not  shot  enough  to  say  good yet

[Mikey]

45-70:  I use a 200 gn cast swc in a 38 spl over 3.8 of WW231 for a defensive load.  The velocity is better than the 38/200 British load which was the battlefield equivalent of the 455 Webley. 

Col. Charles Askins, once described as a 'stone cold killer', counted off the number of men he had dispatched (not including minorities, war time casualties or illegal aliens committing crimes) and provided his two favorite rounds were the 45 auto and the 200 gn 38 spl. 

I believe your 38 snubbies with Veral's 180 gn slugs, even at slow speeds would make a good defensive load.  JMTCW.  Mikey.

[Zcarp2]

Mikey - I must ask, are you using soft lead for your 380/200's or WW equivalent or other?  I'm using swaged lead and they make a mess in gumbo mud. 

Ak.Hiker - I am guessing your WFN's were hard.  Did you use Wheel Weights (WW)?  How much deformation of the bullet - if you were able to recover the projectile?

Thanks

[Veral]

  Yes the large meplat and  for the 10MM, probably higher velocity is what chopped the larger exit hole.  The same happens in game.  Both 'wound channel' and straight penetration.  I sure don't know everything there is to know about straight penetration, but I know and understood very well that meplat size is critical.  If either too small or too large a non deforming bullet will tumble or yaw off coarse, in both case hurting the kill power of the bullet.  Full wadcutters will not penetrate true for very long distences, yet just a little upset of the nose of a full wadcutter will make it penetrate true.

  We all shoot at wood to test bullet performance but it is a very poor test medium, other than for penetraton.  If you want to get a good relitive picture of killing power, line up a row of plastic containers filled with water.  Milk jugs are ideal.  A full load behind the 28 180 FN LBT bullet will punch a straight line through at least 6 one gallon milk jugs.  The most impressive thing is that every one of them will burst with severe force.  Hit the same row of jugs with a 125 gr JHP and only the first till rupture, very forcefully of coarse, but normally the bullet will not even reach the second jug.  The bullets you tested would probably go the length of 6 jugs, with the other bullets you used, if they stayed on coarse, but the difference in 'kill' anmistered to each would be startling, even more than the hole in your spruce log.

[Ak.Hiker]

The bullets are a commercial hard cast. No expansion at all on any I have recovered.

[Mikey]

Zcarp2:  The last slugs I shot through a 38/200 were fairly soft.  The velocity of the 38/200 is only about 600'/sec from a 4" service barrel and I thinkl that load can be duplicated using 3.3 grains of Unique powder. 

The slugs I shoot through my 38s and 357s are commercial hard cast and have never expanded.  Mikey.

[Veral]

  If my bacon is the stuff to be defended nobody will sell me on slow 38 caliber bullets for self defense against human or animal.  My 38 FN needs about 1200 fps minimum to be a rapid killer, and much better at 1400 + fps.  Killing punch peaks at 1800 fps. 

  I did a lot of testing when developing my bullet designs and am very fixed on that opinion, as it is based on the deaths of many animals "sacrificed to science".  I don't mean dozens, I mean hundreds.

  The old british loads were discontinued for a reason.  Sure they killed, but too often if the kill isn't really quick, a person in a gunfight can make a perfect shot several seconds ahead of his assailiant only to lose the battle with his assailiant a few seconds later.  If you aren't following what I'm mincing around about.  Instant incapacitation is what it takes to make the quickest accurate shooter the winner.

[kody]

  2 questions ; what does WFNG stand for ?   And, what is a meplat? Thanks,   Ken

[Veral]

  I can answer both those questions.  WFN stands for WIDE FLAT NOSE.  The FN in 38 caliber and smaller is actually the same nose profile as the WFN, but I changed the name for the smaller calibers for some forgotten reason, back 28 years ago.

  Meplat is the flat area of a flatnosed bullet.  The larger it is the harder it smacks game.  As you read my forum you run into many answers which talk about displacement velocity, which is a kill formula which calculates killing effectiveness based on velocity and meplat diameter measured in thousandths of an inch.  There are definate practical limits to size for any given bullet diameter and weight, but the WFN profile is quite universal especially in revolvers.

[kody]

Thanks for your response. I got the WFN,what about GC?  It's interesting getting back into gun and ammunition topics. There is much I never touched on in my youth and I've been ML- ing it for 35 years. A lot of stuff to learn. To keep life simple I sold off a .357 barrel ,not wanting to get to be a Handi-holic, but I kind of wished I had kept it to try that avenue!    Ken

[blhof]

GC stands for gas check; a copper or other soft metal cap for the base of a cast bullet.  The GC has a higher melting point than the lead and acts as a barrier between the hot gases and the cast bullet.  They are used usually when pushing cast bullets above 1500 fps.

[45-70.gov]

Veral......why  won't you  design  and sell  us  a Gas  check  tool so we can stamp out our own gas checks out of beer cans??     will  aluminum work??

[Veral]

  I designed an excellent one, that would produce 1000 checks in an hour, once the strips were cut to punch the blanks from.  The prototype check maker which I built actually produced checks at a rate of 1000 per hour.  One stroke of a reloading press produced a complete check.  Problem is in making it high enough quality so it will produce precision checks for many years is expensive. So, response wasn't good enough to tool up to make them, when I sent out a feeler to see if there was enough interest to make the tool up costs come back.  So I dropped the notion, about a year ago.

[HHI 812]

Veral,
From your statement,"If my bacon is the stuff to be defended nobody will sell me on slow 38 caliber bullets for self defense against human or animal.  My 38 FN needs about 1200 fps minimum to be a rapid killer, and much better at 1400 + fps.  Killing punch peaks at 1800 fps." would you say this applies to larger calibers as well? Example with say a .45 caliber, with a WFN and LFN bullet, but loaded to equal DV's. Would the faster velocity LFN be more effective than the WFN because of its faster velocity?

[Veral]

  The faster LFN would be better because it would be carrying considerable more power, which means that remaining velocity after deep penetration would be higher, thus remaining DV would be higher.