My Crude FMJ/HP Test

Here's the results of a home grown test I ran on Friday. I was trying to compare 45 Ranger SXTs to 45 Ranger T-Series out of my M&P45.

I used jugs that netted me 8" of straight line water to shoot through. 3" in the first jug and 5" in the second. No special reason for this, I just had the nice vinyl jugs to shoot. When I shoot the jugs I use a phone book (not pictured) as a backstop/bullet trap.

hudson108.jpg


Neither bullet penetrated into the phone book. And the T-Series bullet pictured here didn't even make it out of the second jug. The talons have it stuck in the backside of the jug pretty good.

hudson109.jpg


Here's a pic of the SXT next to the stuck T-series. Both have great expansion, but I'm surprised at the shallow penetration in bare water by both of the bullets. Also Both showed pretty good signs of expansion after exiting the 3 inch jug/entering the second jug.

hudson110.jpg
 
My experience with lots of bullet testing with waterjugs is substantially different than all I've seen above. I use 1-gallon water/milk jugs front-to-back.
08Nov09_4waterjugs_1000w.jpg


I shoot from about 10 feet.
Here are the .40-caliber bullets I tested.
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Here are a couple 185g. .45-caliber factory loads, Gold Dot on the left, Silvertip on the right.
245s_1000w.jpg


Here are some 0.356" bullets fired from my 357SIG. Five on the left are Hornady 124g. XTPs; on the right are Gold Dot factory loads.
357SIGexpandedbullets_1000w.jpg


ALL the bullets, even the ones that fragmented, got into the third jug, and some cracked the far wall of the 4th jug.

What have I learned from all this?
1. The bullets in the bottom row of the 2nd pic are NOT suitable for Personal Defense.
2. In .40, there are lots of good bullets I'd use for MY PD.
3. If I still carried my .45GAP, I wouldn't use the Silvertip factory loads and I would use the GDs.
4. The Gold Dot is the most-consistent, GREAT-performing PD bullet I've tested. The Winchester PDX1 is also excellent.
5. Testing bullets in water may not be indicative of how bullets perform in the bodies of badguys, but this general kind of testing is all I can do, so I do it. I believe that bullets that fragment in water will NOT penetrate well in soft tissue and especially when they hit bones, etc.

Maybe I've just figured out why my bullets penetrate far more than those of the other testers above--I use soft water. :rolleyes:
 
Yeah! Our water in the Phoenix area is hard!!! :D

I think it may have to do with regular gallon jugs being thinner. They explode too easily. That's why I quit using them and have to wait until I have enought vinyl jugs to do a test.
 
Could be Demi's plastic jugs are a lot tougher (thicker walled) than Jeff's milk jugs. Anything hard, dense apparently slows them down considerably. The other day I shot a 380 gold dot through one layer of dog bisquit box cardboard into a 1 gal milk jug and it did not even make it out of that first jug. Wish I had some more to play with, hate to buy drinking water to get jugs.

Brass Fetcher lists the 380 gold dot at 10.3 inches in gelatin, that would be getting into the 4 th water jug. We'll see.
http://www.brassfetcher.com/380ACP ammunition performance in ballistic gelatin.pdf
 
Man you guys are too kewl. I will have to take pics next time we shoot it up. Altho we shoot dead animals and cut em open to see what happened internally. I will spread the word to my farmer friends any dead let us have at em... that is how I like to test my ammo.
 
hi, JakeSnakeSlim,
thanks for starting an interesting thread. And first, your initial test performed exactly as expected. The water jug aborbed a lot of energy expanding the bullets, more energy absorbed with the dry newspaper, so there wasn't much left to penetrate the 2x6. Very good test to evaluate expansion of JHP ammo. Nice easy setup.
Also, thanks for mentioning my Ballistics section on usrange. We have a lot of fun there. Please feel free to post your tests with us.
Cheers,
og
 
Good test. I think it is interesting that the .38 SWHP expanded fully and still penetrated as much as the .380 FMJ.
I wonder how .357 magnum would do?
 
I can't believe no one's mentioned a certain website already. The truth shall set you free.

Edit: Oops, my bad. Someone (johns7022) did already mention it. :o
 
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