30' barrel

[ToxicSports]

Hello all,

I hope someone can help me out here. In the late 80's-early 90's I read an article about a 30' (that's feet not inches) .380acp barrel two guys experimented with. I think it was in Guns and Ammo but I have read so many different gun publications over the years I can't really remember.

Does anyone remember this article? Do any of you collectors still have the magazine? If so do you think I could get a copy of the article or at least the final results?

Many of you reading this may have read my post about "Mouse Gun ammo in longer barrels" and this was an interesting article that I remember had some interesting results with a .380acp.

Thanks in advance,

TS

 

[gezzer]

Aful hard to conceal aint it?

 

[Rembrandt]

30 feet doesn't sound right....most steel comes in lengths of 20' or less...not too many lathes and machinery that could handle anything that long let alone do the rifleing. Must have been shorter threaded sections screwed together.

 

[JohnKSa]

I don't believe that a .380 bullet from a factory load would even exit a barrel that long. At some point, the pressure from the expanding gases gives out and the bullet begins to decelerate.

That happens around 18" for a .22LR cartridge--I don't know the numbers for a .380.

I suppose you could go up on the powder charge or maybe use a much looser barrel-to-bullet fit...

 

[jsalcedo]

I have seen this article.

The 90 grain .356 bullet exited the barrel at about 2300 fps and grouped sub MOA at 300 yards.

 

[ToxicSports]

Yeah it does sound stupid but if I recall the bullet traveled over 1200fps max, or something like that, then dropped off drastically. They wanted to see how long the barrel would be before the bullet got stuck.

I believe the barrel was constructed out of blank sections coupled together. No rifling=less friction=higher velocity if I'm not mistaken.

I recall the first test was out of an 18" barrel and they thought they could actually grab the bullet when it exited the muzzle because the velocity would be so slow. But they were wrong and they had enough brains not to be standing in front of the muzzle when fired. That's when they started to add the sections of barrels and recording the velocity to see how far the tiny bullet could travel before getting lodged.



Anyway, it was an interesting article non the less.

 

[Tom Bri]

I remember that article. The barrel was specially made for the test, and they lopped off pieces and measured the bullets' speed at various lengths. Seems to me that at 30 ft the bullet didn't exit. Was the mag Peterson's Handguns? I subscribed to that for a while. Or maybe G&A.

 

[Dionysusigma]

For more musings by myself on this topic, you might want to venture a look at this thread... http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?postid=993728

Gets kinda silly toward the end, though...

 

[ToxicSports]

Found the article

Well all I found the article in question hidden behind my stack of bottle rockets, M-60<---tooo bad not the 80's but I used all those up years ago, original cherry bombs and other fun stuff.

It was Guns & Ammo August '96

It's in the "TECHNICAL SIDE" by Bob Forker section.

First I need to get everything straight.

1) It wasn't a .380acp but a .32S&W
2) The velocity wasn't 1200 FPS but the peak velocity was a little over 805 FPS. It was achieved at 25"
3) They started out with a 10 foot barrel. The velocity was 675 FPS.

Anyhoo, even though I couldn't remember what the exact facts were I knew that it was a tiny bullet and higher than expected FPS.

TS