I grabbed a box of Federal's new HST 130 grain 38 Special +P "micro" loading specifically designed for short barrels. This round is fully seated within the cartridge case and looks very much like an inverted hollow base wadcutter. I had the opportunity to fire three round from my S&W 642 snub nose into ballistic gel from 10 feet and got the following results:
4 Layers Denim - 13.75 inches penetration - 0.68 inches expansion
2 Layers cotton T shirt - 13.75 inches penetration - 0.70 inches expansion
6 Layers cotton T shirt - 13.75 inches penetration - 0.69 inches expansion
Yes, that is correct. All three rounds penetrated to EXACTLY the same depth and expanded to pretty much the same diameter. This load is very reminiscent of the old school inverted hollow base wadcutter only it expands in typical HST fashion. In the photo below, you can see that the rounds look like almost every other caliber expanded HST. On paper, they punched a nice clean hole just like a standard full wadcutter. Though these are labeled as +P the recoil was mild. In fact, I randomly loaded a mixture of these and Federal 130 grain FMJ target loads and was unable to tell the difference in felt recoil.
Though my sample size is small, I'm encouraged by the performance I've seen. Hopefully others will be testing soon and we can get a larger picture of how this new load performs. Looks like these could make for a consistent viable defensive round for the classic snub nose revolver.
4 Layers Denim - 13.75 inches penetration - 0.68 inches expansion
2 Layers cotton T shirt - 13.75 inches penetration - 0.70 inches expansion
6 Layers cotton T shirt - 13.75 inches penetration - 0.69 inches expansion
Yes, that is correct. All three rounds penetrated to EXACTLY the same depth and expanded to pretty much the same diameter. This load is very reminiscent of the old school inverted hollow base wadcutter only it expands in typical HST fashion. In the photo below, you can see that the rounds look like almost every other caliber expanded HST. On paper, they punched a nice clean hole just like a standard full wadcutter. Though these are labeled as +P the recoil was mild. In fact, I randomly loaded a mixture of these and Federal 130 grain FMJ target loads and was unable to tell the difference in felt recoil.
Though my sample size is small, I'm encouraged by the performance I've seen. Hopefully others will be testing soon and we can get a larger picture of how this new load performs. Looks like these could make for a consistent viable defensive round for the classic snub nose revolver.
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