Multi-projectile handgun ammo

Maybe the Palm38 Tri‐Plex?

Flechette said:

Years ago I read a magazine that had an article about a .357 hand load that had three projectiles per cartridge. The projectiles were not spherical; there was a lightweight hollow point on the front end and two thin projectiles that were short cylinders in the proportional dimensions of a tunafish can loaded lower in the cartridge.

I have not seen any more information on loads like this. Does anyone have data on loading information and the performance of such a round?

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Similar to this?

http://www.doubletapammo.net/index.php?route=product/product&path=303_331&product_id=557

Remington, or Winchester sold such a animal in the late 1960's to 70's in .38 & .357.

It had three very short wad cutters nested on top of one another.

It was short lived, maybe no more then 3-4 years as it proved ineffective due to insufficient penetration of the light bullets with very low sectional density.

rc

Matt's Bullets and Penn Bullets sell stackable wadcutters.
No flechette rounds that I am aware of.

Are there any objective, third party articles that have data on how well these round work?

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As I said above in post #4, they didn't work.

That's why a major manufacture discontinued them after 3-4 years.

rc

I used to load Speer shot capsules made for the 38 special with three 30 caliber buckshot balls. They made three holes pretty close together but thats about all I can say about them. I shot a bird in the front yard with one 30+ years ago but that was the end of the field testing. I still have a few on hand.

Every once in a while, someone resurrects that idea and it gets a spread in the gunzines, but it has a built-in contradiction. At short range, there is effectively no spread and the two or three (or more) segments act as one bullet. At longer range, the pieces spread out so there are more bullets, but each is too light for sufficient penetration.

Multi-projectile rounds have had greater success in rifles, where the added velocity made up for the reduced bullet weight, but the idea has never caught on enough to make such rounds standard issue. The best known recent version is probably the 7.62 NATO Duplex Ball, M198 round, designed for use in machine guns if/when the attack by Russian hordes ever came. It didn't, and the idea went away quietly. With that round, though, the spread was increased by angling off the base of the second bullet so it few off in an unpredictable direction.

Jim

I have some 45 ACP rounds that have about 425 "projectiles".

The only advantage that I could see in a multi-round cartridge would be in round sub caliber balls which did not fully contact the rifling and therefore would not leave rifling marks on the projectiles.

In a revolver there could be value in this depending on circumstances.

Multi projectiles are still alive in the use of .410 rounds in the Judge and Governor handguns.

What's the best way to cut a 38 DEWC in half?

I have k's of them. I'd like to try this and I see no sense in buying more.

You pretty much only see them these days in .410 handgun loads.

Mike

You can cut a pure lead round ball in half with a pair of tin snips, however each side ends up horribly deformed. I suspect you would have the same result on the DEWC.

I think your best best to try that would be a hacksaw or band saw (watch those fingers!). Short of that you could try to find a mold to cast a short stubby wad cutter.

Ultimately I think you will find that the "tuna can" proportions of each segment will result in bullet instability and tumbling in a relatively short distance.

I have a 70 or 75 grain .38 special was cutter mold, and I've stacked 2 of them in a .38 special case. At 15 yards they were shooting to point if aim and hitting 1/2"-1" apart. If you could get velocities to match, I figured each slug would be like a .380 firing wadcutters.

Multi-projectile rounds have had greater success in rifles, where the added velocity made up for the reduced bullet weight, but the idea has never caught on enough to make such rounds standard issue. The best known recent version is probably the 7.62 NATO Duplex Ball, M198 round, designed for use in machine guns if/when the attack by Russian hordes ever came. It didn't, and the idea went away quietly. With that round, though, the spread was increased by angling off the base of the second bullet so it few off in an unpredictable direction.

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That was Project Salvo. One of the problems was without angling,. the bullets didn't give much spread and with it you couldn't zero with those rounds.

There was also no way to construct a Gunner's Rule, allowing machine gunners to support attacking friendly troops by shooting over their heads to suppress the defenders.

Say Vern,

The thing that fascinated me about the Duplex was that each bullet was 90 grains.

At one point around 72-73 the Infantry school in one of its last gasp hail mary passes to hold on to the M-14 produced a lightened M-14 with a "folding stock" that would use a new 7.62 Nato round consisting of the front 90 grain bullet over a charge that gave 3200 FPS here were also supposed to be aluminum magazines that further reduced weight and actually the thing did weigh less empty than the later M-16A2 rifles.

The rifle was supposed to be fully capable of using "normal" 147 to 151 grain NATO loads as well.

A short article appeared in Infantry Magazine I believe sometime in 1973.

Gosh, I wanted one.

I guess it could have used the M198 Duplex as well......just to stay on topic.

I believe that at one time Lyman might have actually listed loads for their 75 grain .357 wadcutters. There were indeed ocassional Gun rag articles about such and folks tried things like a thin sheet of cardboard between bullets to prevent their being swagged together.

I had a buddy that used to make Speer shot capsule loads with a single large buckshot and the rest filled with #9 or up to #6 bird shot. I never thought it worked well as the single buckshot was not accurate and he lost half his bird shot volume to that buckshot, still he liked it I think because it was "his"

-kBob

http://www.doubletapammo.net/index.p...product_id=557

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This actually looks good if their ballistic gel claims are true.

I picked up an old 116 gr .429 WC mold as part of a package deal a while back. Been wanting to try double stacking them in my 44 mags and 44 specials. Not sure of a real application, but might be a neat novelty round. If nothing else, it's always fun to work up new loads!

One of Dean Grennell's contacts reamed a .357 cylinder straight through for .357 Maximum cases stacked with four of those 75 gr aspirin tablets. The Quadrimaximum.
Got an article out of it, doubt much of a weapon.

I had some old Remington .357 rounds given to me a few years ago that were loaded with two round balls. From what I was seeing on the targets, they were swaging together and they seemed to transmit a lot of energy to hard objects they hit. I only had 18 of an original 20 round box. Thought about trying to load them myself with two 000 buck pellets, but they'd have to be hard to hold shape well enough to work.

Lately I have tried a .410 / .45 Colt T/C Contender. I'm unsure how I feel about its practicality, but it shoots Federal 000 Buck .410 loads into a pattern you can cover with your hand at 20 yards - sort of vertically strung with some holes touching. Color me surprised. There's a youtube video of a guy shooting a Taurus Raging Bull with the same loads into gelatin, and it actually astounded me that it would be an effective handgun... but there the evidence is. If I needed to do the multi-projectile thing, I'd probably go that route. It's just the easiest, cheapest, safest way I can see to pull it off.

kBob:

I kinda wish they had saved the M14 -- I carried one my second tour in Viet Nam, and it's one hell of a rifle. I've always said that an M14 with enough ammunition to accomplish the mission weighs less than an M16 with enough ammo to accomplish the same mission.