--GROOVED WADCUTTERS vs. HOLLOW POINTS--?

When I spoke of hollow point bullets having been around for 40 years, I was thinking of pistol bullets (I am not a rifle guy) and had Super Vel ammunition in mind specifically. Were hollow points for pistols commercially available before that? (Also, despite being a rifle guy, I know that soft-nosed bullets work well in rifle ammunition.)

the Black Spot said:

So in a nutshell, people never saw a need to test anything further than the hollow point? And seems since most love the HP, further studies were done to make it better?

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Oh, no. A bunch of other stuff has been studied and even put into production. Here is an article about one such, the French THV ("Tres Haute Vitesse", or Very High Velocity, round):

http://www.quarryhs.co.uk/THV.htm

I also recall the Korean PMC "tubular" bullet, which is sort of a hollow point, but the hollow goes straight through the bullet. They weren't around long. And then there are all the exotic projectiles, which in my mind are all lumped together as Glaser types. Somehow, though, people keep coming back to the HP. For pistols, it seems to have advantages that have not yet been surpassed, although of course they might some day.

Yes, not real common but they were out there. In my generation, Norma had a .45 HP before Super Vel. It had exposed lead and a small hole similar to WW magnum revolver bullets and did not feed in my USGI. But I went many a mile with one in the chamber and ball in the magazine.

The 1939 Stoegers shows a few handgun rounds with hollow point, soft point, and "mushroom" bullets. I am not sure what "mushroom" means, perhaps a trade name for a particular hollow point or softpoint.

Malamute said: Softpoint pistol ammo was around because many guns didn't feed the hollowpoints tried. Its generally felt to be deeper penetrating and slower opening than hollowpoints. Old gun catalogs from the 1940s showed softpoint 9mm and other loads. Keith commented on them, wondering why they had been dropped, and stating they improved the performance of most auto pistol calibers they were available in.

When the Illinois State Police adopted the S&W Model 39 9mm automatic pistol back in the 1970's, they used a soft-nosed 9mm round called the "Power Point" and made by Winchester, IIRC. From what I have read, performance was really no different from hardball FMJ. I think it takes a lot more than 9mm levels of energy, and possibly more than 357 Magnum levels of energy, to get soft-nosed bullets to expand, unless you pre-cut the jacket or something.

I would bet those pre-WWII hollow-points had tiny hollows, like rifle ammunition. I have a Mexican CBC 44 Auto Mag HP cartridge, and the hollow is tiny, not like today's pistol ammo. Also, while I have seen lots of old soft-nosed pistol ammo in 25 ACP, 32 ACP, 380 ACP, 9mm Para, and even 35 S&W, I have never seen a hollow point of the same vintage. (Of course, I may have automatically assumed any such round was a reload.) But it must be scarce stuff.

Those mushroom bullets might have had round-nose full metal jackets that were not filled to the tip with lead, but instead had a hollow space under the nose. I have no source for that, and cannot recall why I think so. Maybe one of the old Barnes "Cartridges of the World" books?

In 1960, Chic Gaylord, holster maker and gun guru, pronounced the "Keith Bullet" (showing a SWC hollowpoint) as perhaps TOO deadly for police use. His idea of a suitable load was a soft blunt roundnose that would rivet out a little bit.

When talking about the development of hollowpoints in the 20's and 30's, you've got to realize that autoloaders (with the exception of the Colt 1911) were not considered a serious sidearm. And in the case of the 1911, hardball was the order of the day because that is what it was designed to function with. So, in the early days, lead hollowpoints were a revolver thing and were for the most part cast by the individuals that used them. It wasn't until the 60's and 70's that jacketed hollowpoints came into being and became popular.

Don

IMO, grooved wadcutters were a basic step in the development of the
hollowpoint. But why take two or three steps back?

Now I've shot some wadcutters and HPs, into ballistic media at private
ranges, but it's far from what could be called "conclusive testing".
My limited results show both doing far more damage than FMJ.
The wadcutters, IME, tumble more, and have less general stability.
But the new HPs performed better, overall, in my limited, and very
basic comparisons.

"...HP's clog up..." Mythical nonsense. Even if the HP was filled with cotton, that will not stop the thing expanding.
The purpose of a WC is to cut neat round holes in paper. Nothing to do with anything else. And they're pure lead with no jacket. They go 100% flat when they hit something hard. So do other cast or swaged bullets. No need for an HP in a cast bullet.
A "Dum Dum" bullet was nothing more than a regular SP. Banned because of excessively messy wounds.

Something can take place to keep a hollowpoint from expanding. That's why the FBI shoots through cloth.
While a wadcutter will flatten out upon impact, an ogival cast bullet often will not. I have recovered hard cast semiwadcutters in very good condition. A cast hollowpoint is a different creature. There are pictures above.

The original dum dum bullet from Dum Dum Arsenal in India, designed by Captain Bertie Clay, was simply a FMJ with the jacket ground off at the nose to expose some lead. Expansion in Afghans was poor because the drawing process left the jacket thick at the nose, so the opening had such thick edges it would not deform much. But the British liked the idea and went through several marques of expansive bullets. I have read that they really liked what a hunting bullet would do to a Tribesman at moderate range, but the game bullets of the day did not have good long range accuracy as was called for by infantry doctrine.
By the time the peaceloving Germans and sensible French had argued the British out of keeping expanding bullets, even for colonial wars, it was fixing to become moot. The age of the spitzer arrived and the .303 Mk VII was a tumbler that would put M16 legends to shame.

Do you mean the felon grabbers?

Sunray said:

The purpose of a WC is to cut neat round holes in paper. Nothing to do with anything else. And they're pure lead with no jacket. They go 100% flat when they hit something hard. So do other cast or swaged bullets. No need for an HP in a cast bullet.

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Once again Sunray shows that there is a total lack of knowledge north of the 49th parallel.

Don

IME, wadcutters do bulge and distort, and also tumble. I've never had one "go 100% flat".
What was your ballistic media, Sunray?

Maybe AR500 plate as ballistic medium?

One of the first hollow points to be widely accepted by police was the swaged lead 38 Special +P 158 grain semi-wadcutter hollow point, aka the FBI load. Without a hollow point, plain lead bullets at 38 Special or 38 Special +P velocities do not expand significantly*, unless they hit something a lot harder than human flesh. AFAIK, at least. That is going to be even more true at normal 38 wadcutter velocity.

BTW, I was going to say something about trying to bend wheel-weights with your hands to make a point about lead not being all that soft when 1) I thought they might not have been plain lead, and 2) I realized that wheel weights don't seem to be made of lead at all anymore. What are they, zinc?

* Complaints from 1930's Germany about the British .380/200 pistol cartridge notwithstanding.

Yes. Many tire weights are zinc. Some are iron. Lead is bad, you know.

These are the V notched bullets designed by Jim Cirillo

The other picture is jims load fired from a 2 inch colt and 4 inch into water jugs.

I hve the bullets and his press and dies to make them!

Thanks, Jim Watson!

And just like that the memory queue is all filled up...
Good historical info there, now I have more reading to do.

Also remember some of the plated hollow points are just for looks.
"They sell" therefore they are...

I like the looks of the bullets from rmr or Xtreme, in 38/357, 41, 44, 45 etc. but they don't expand.
Again, they're just for looks.

I use Hornady HBWCs as a defensive load in .38 S&W, but not because I expect them to expand in the target. I use them because the skirt will expand to fill the gun's .361" bore. I load them for target shooting anyway and they might do a skosh more damage than RNL, which is the only commercially available load in that caliber. I can't say I have had any issue reloading from a speed-strip with these, but I haven't had to try it in a life-or-death situation, either.

In modern service calibers I load modern commercial hollow-points because they have been tested extensively both in the lab and on the street and they seem to work better than anything else people have come up with so far.

I like soft lead. Lead is good.

the Black Spot said:

I am still searching for some real world accounts of wadcutters being used in a shootout.
If i do find something I doubt it will be bigger than a .38

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Maybe not...