Apple a Day
Member
I got to the range today to try out some of the fancy new personal defense .410 ammo, in this case the Winchester PDX1 (.410 caliber, 2.5" length). The shells are advertised to contain three plated cylinder projectiles and 12 plated BBs. They came in a 10-round box for $11 at Wal Mart.
For reference I fired them out of a single-shot, Rossi .410 shotgun with a 22" bbl, Modified Cylinder. Shots were made off-hand from a range of 15 yards. Shots were fired at a paper target with 10-11' circles and a couple of catalogues taped back to back as shown.
I only fired five rounds but there were no failures of fire or eject. I've had problems with hard primers on some Brown Bear #4 buckshot but these worked fine so far.
On the first target either the three disks didn't separate or two of them evaporated before they hit the target because there's only one disk-sized hole. 11 of the BBs struck with an extreme spread of 7 inches. There was one outlier about 8" from the center of the pattern (as you can see below)
On the second target the three disks separated with the largest distance between two of them being 4 inches. The BBs spread mostly horizontaly with a total spread of about 11", again with one outlier about 7" above the center of the spread.
Against the catalogues (1180 pages each and duct taped two deep, then taped to the target stand at 15 yards) I hit it with two shells. In retrospect one would have been enough and even preferable but the range officer talked me into it.
You can see that five of the six disks impacted the catalogue, three of them close together. The trio broke all the way through the first catalogue and were poking through the back of it, denting the second catalogue without penetrating it. See pictures. A flick of the fingernail and they popped out. The rest of the catalogue was peppered with BBs.
To be honest, I consider that the trio of disks skewed the results as they went deeper than the individual disks. I am not sure how true-to-life the trio represents without the ability to test the same scenario on meat.
Penetration:
trio of disks: 1180 pages (through and stop)
single disks: 721 pages, 899 pages (average ~810 pages)
BB's: from 231 to 315 pages (average ~275 pages)
for reference:
9mm 115 grain FMJ: 900 pages
9mm 115 grain JHP: 500 pages
.410 1/4oz slug: 1600 pages
.410 000 buckshot: 855 pages
Comments:
I think the shells might be more effective if they just omitted the BBs completely or substituted a fourth disk.
Either way I don't see any major advantage of these over simple 00 or 000 shells.
I'd love to throw some of these out of a revolver just to see how they might compare with a shorter barrel. Playing with .22LR out of a 4" versus 22" barrel showed quite a difference
As always, your mileage may vary.
For reference I fired them out of a single-shot, Rossi .410 shotgun with a 22" bbl, Modified Cylinder. Shots were made off-hand from a range of 15 yards. Shots were fired at a paper target with 10-11' circles and a couple of catalogues taped back to back as shown.
I only fired five rounds but there were no failures of fire or eject. I've had problems with hard primers on some Brown Bear #4 buckshot but these worked fine so far.
On the first target either the three disks didn't separate or two of them evaporated before they hit the target because there's only one disk-sized hole. 11 of the BBs struck with an extreme spread of 7 inches. There was one outlier about 8" from the center of the pattern (as you can see below)
On the second target the three disks separated with the largest distance between two of them being 4 inches. The BBs spread mostly horizontaly with a total spread of about 11", again with one outlier about 7" above the center of the spread.
Against the catalogues (1180 pages each and duct taped two deep, then taped to the target stand at 15 yards) I hit it with two shells. In retrospect one would have been enough and even preferable but the range officer talked me into it.
You can see that five of the six disks impacted the catalogue, three of them close together. The trio broke all the way through the first catalogue and were poking through the back of it, denting the second catalogue without penetrating it. See pictures. A flick of the fingernail and they popped out. The rest of the catalogue was peppered with BBs.
To be honest, I consider that the trio of disks skewed the results as they went deeper than the individual disks. I am not sure how true-to-life the trio represents without the ability to test the same scenario on meat.
Penetration:
trio of disks: 1180 pages (through and stop)
single disks: 721 pages, 899 pages (average ~810 pages)
BB's: from 231 to 315 pages (average ~275 pages)
for reference:
9mm 115 grain FMJ: 900 pages
9mm 115 grain JHP: 500 pages
.410 1/4oz slug: 1600 pages
.410 000 buckshot: 855 pages
Comments:
I think the shells might be more effective if they just omitted the BBs completely or substituted a fourth disk.
Either way I don't see any major advantage of these over simple 00 or 000 shells.
I'd love to throw some of these out of a revolver just to see how they might compare with a shorter barrel. Playing with .22LR out of a 4" versus 22" barrel showed quite a difference
As always, your mileage may vary.
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