Pond said:My only reservation is that WCs, looking at those I can get, have 60% of the muzzle energy and 70% of the velocity, when compared to the two jacketed variants. Not to mention having 9gr lighter bullets.
OK, for the sake of looking at what such a round would do, I am assuming that we are still talking about .38-caliber for the bore, and being 9 gr. lighter that must be a 148 gr WC, and 70% of 800 fps means that your WC is buzzing along at what? 560 fps?
So just running those specs through the two formulae...
The Schwartz bullet penetration formula says that such an animal would give you about 13.9 inches of penetration and permanently crush 23.6 grams of ballistic gelatin while the MacPherson bullet penetration formula says that the very same arrangement would give you about 16.3 inches of penetration and permanently crush 29.2 grams of ballistic gelatin.
The MacPherson prediction seems to my eye to be a little 'optimistic', but otherwise both formulae seem to generally agree that you'll see about 15 inches of penetration and about an ounce of crushed gelatin/tissue.