Target Full Wadcutter - SD Load for 38 Snub Nose

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I tried the revered HBWC when I was a kid. Don't recall the recipe but it was fairly fast. Expansion was great but penetration was poor. I don't normally carry a 38 Special these days, but the M10 I have at home is loaded with DEWC cast hard (20/1) and a good dose of Bullseye. Ed Harris wrote a great article but talking with a couple of coroners convinced me of the benefits of the wadcutter bullet.

Kevin
 
I did some testing many years ago. I loaded some 148 gr HBWC's backward, and shooting them into a red clay bank. Same powder charge as if the wadcutter were loaded properly.

I don't know how they'd do against a living target, but they sure made an impressive hole in a bank of red Virginia Clay out of a Model 19.
 
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I carry a snubbie with WC.

Mine has fixed sights. If I use a heavy expanding bullet, I don't feel it would have enough velocity to expand right. If I use a lighter, faster bullet, it hits the target way low. An unexpanded HP is called a round nose. I choice the most effectice bullet that is not dpendant upon it changing its shape on impact.

Factory target wadcutter ammo is soft lead, and very low velocity.

Hollow Base wadcutters are soft lead, and the skirt comes apart if loaded at high velocity.

Hollow base wadcutter loaded backwards is essentially "prefrag" , and tends to tumble, for an effective accurracy range of about point blank.

I use a cast DEWC (double end wadcutter) that is handloaded to 900fps, which is just shy of, or just inside of the +P range. If you are a handloader, you've got it made if you can find data with full power WC loads. It took me a while to develop what I'm using, and some really old data.

I would consider most factory wadcutter ammo to be too light of a load, but it is my understanding that Buffalo Bore now makes a warm wadcutter not +P for personal defense.
 
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I never experienced any "tumbling" of reversed HBWC bullets, at least up to 50 feet, which is the longest distance I remember shooting them at. I found that the best performance came from the original Hornady HBWC bullets, loaded with about 1/8" of the bullet protruding from the case on top of a hefty charge of SR4756. (These bullets had a small groove which I crimped the case mouth into.) Performance was excellent by the standards of the day.

The later Hornady bullets with the "waffle" textured outer diameter didn't work nearly as well - they were terrible in the accuracy department, and leaded the barrel pretty badly. Speer's HBWCs gave acceptable performance.

I didn't use calibrated ballistic gelatin, but in wetpack, wet sand, clay, and putty, they never failed to expand, even when I put a couple of layers of T-shirt and denim in front of the expansion media.

Would they pass today's FBI barrier penetration protocols? Probably not. And today's premium JHPs have certainly advanced the state of the art in terminal ballistics. But for an up-close-and-personal 2" barrel "belly gun" they're still a viable choice - and I'd still prefer them over a non-expanding hard cast bullet for that application.
 
in wetpack, wet sand, clay, and putty, they never failed to expand
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Those are all excellent expansion media for hollow point bullets. My impression is they are not so expansive when they hit bone, which is a distinct possibility when shooting a human being center mass. Hence, perhaps, springs the old axiom if they don't stop on the first shot, shot 'em again.
 
When I carry my Model 36, it's with wadcutters.

When I carry my Model 36, it's with wadcutters.

I had to shoot a BIG dog in my yard one time,,,
At that moment I only had wadcutters for my model 36.

One shot at about 12 feet and the dog bled like I've not seen before.

That made me a believer.

Aarond

.
 
As I read the boost on wadcutters at the Buffalo Bore site I wonder why anybody made any other kind of bullet for close quarters shooting.
 
Well if you say so.

I'd rather have it NOT overpenetrate if possible. It's well documented that it can, and has, happened. Not to mention the larger permanent wound cavity, but I don't fault those that carry wadcutters. I know it's better at punching through bone to reach vitals etc. etc.
 
Back about 1986 or maybe 1987 Guns & Ammo had an article title "the 38 Special, is it dead yet?" or something to that effect. The picture at the start of the article was a large 38 round nose bullet with hollywood cobwebs all over it.

The article had some double hollow based wadcutter bullets featured. These could be loaded either way and there were not tail heavy and prone to tipping like reversed hollow base WC bullets are. I looked high and low for some to reload myself. I never found any and they didn't list who made them.

I even called Corbin the bullet swaging people to see about getting the dies made to make my own. I was told they would cost about $500 and that was at least 15 years ago.

I feel like a wadcutter would make an excellent defense load and have carried them myself. I do wish someone would make a cup faced WC style bullet like the old "man Stopper" round I used to read about. Dare to dream, right?
 
Pretty fascinating stuff! It's cool that there's still so much interest in the old snub .38 revolver. I used to carry a 1.87" Ruger LCR sometimes but recently swapped up for the new 3" version (LCRx). My carry ammo for the old gun was Remington 158gr LSWC +P. In the test results I've seen very JHP rounds offer reliable expansion with penetration at the kinds of velocities one gets from a 2" snub. If the velocity isn't high enough for a jacked bullet to expand well then I wouldn't overlook a WC loaded as hot as is practical.

I expect that the extra bit of velocity from the 3" will give me a little more latitude in choosing a CCW round. For now I'm still running the same 158gr LSWC +P ammo. It may well be as good as anything out there. But I'll probably read up on the 135gr Gold Dot as well. It should perform pretty well from the 3-incher.
 
I never experienced any "tumbling" of reversed HBWC bullets, at least up to 50 feet, which is the longest distance I remember shooting them at.
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Contruction of HBWC varies a lot, and I'm sure some work better than others. I don't remmeber what kind I experimented with in the 80's. Might have been Berrys. At 50', I put two out of five on the paper, and they were footballs.
 
Given the high percentage of misses recorded during gunfights, over-penetration is an overrated perception.
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Hardly, if people understand what it actually means.

Overpenetration is not the failure of a human body to provide an adequate backstop for you bullets.

Overpenetration is when all those misses (or hits) go through the siding, insulation, and dywall in nearby houses and kill or injure innocent people.
 
StrawHat said:
The tumbling is found primarily in the target medium. Not often noticed during flight.
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TimSr said:
Contruction of HBWC varies a lot, and I'm sure some work better than others. I don't remmeber what kind I experimented with in the 80's. Might have been Berrys. At 50', I put two out of five on the paper, and they were footballs.
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I don't recall seeing that either on paper or in the expansion media I used - but then again, I DID notice differences in performance between brands. So I can readily believe substantially different results from other brands.

IIRC, there was an article in one of the Digest books about 30+ years ago about backwards HBWC bullets - for the .41 Magnum! It turns out someone was making a wadcutter mold with a pin for the hollow base and, when cast reasonably soft, modest loads gave good performance - way above what you could do out of a .38, according to the article. (It might have been written up in Law Enforcement Handgun Digest, but I couldn't swear to it.)
 
I have and sometimes do carry DEW in my 2" carry gun and I find that they perform well for both accuracy and penetration.

I don't carry HBWC any longer. I experimented with them years ago and found that if you load them just a little too hot you run the risk of a "blow-out" where the center of the bullet blows out and will sometimes leave the hollow cylinder of lead stuck in the barrel. I have had this occur at velocities of 900 - 1,000 fps. and occasionally at lower velocities. This was probably due to the softness of the HBWC as it was not manufactured to be a SD load.
This is a pain to remove from the barrel and would have dire consequences in any kind of real life situation, so I never carried them for SD.
 
My wife and I each carry LCRs loaded with DEWC loaded out and crimped in the 2nd lube groove. 3.5 grains of Bullseye stings the hand a little compared to our practice rounds of 3 grains but they hit with authority.
 
My wife and I each carry LCRs loaded with DEWC loaded out and crimped in the 2nd lube groove. 3.5 grains of Bullseye stings the hand a little compared to our practice rounds of 3 grains but they hit with authority.
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My old Speer manual says that in their tests, a 148 grain lead WC (not HBWC) over 3.5 grains of Bullseye left a 6" K-38 revolver barrel at 871 ft/sec. Out of a 2" snubby, I'd estimate somewhere in the 700-750 ft/sec range. The WC profile makes it a step up from the old standard 158 RNL loading.
 
HankB the Speer #11 shows the same solid WC bullet getting 981fps with 5.1grs of Unique and 933fps with 4.5grs of Bullseye from a 6" barrel. I would guess that either load would get well over 800fps from a 2" barrel snubby. I have loaded the 4.5gr BE load and was shooting some of them just last week from a model 10 with a 6" barrel. These are NOT +P loads either.
 
I carry +P 158 JHPs in my snubby. They work fine on pigs in the trap (my test medium of choice) and feed from a soeedloader a lot more smoothly. BUT, I have been amazed at the penetration of wadcutters when shooting pigs. I've never had one stop in an animal. IMHO, though, they really have too much penetration and, of course, don't expand, though the flat front of the bullet surely works pretty well. BUT, I'll keep carrying 158 +P stuff, even from my snub.

BTW, I shoot 2.7 grains of B'eye under my Lee cast WC.
 
Ratshooter, just looked in my Speer #8 manual. It doesn't show your loads for 148 WC, but for a 158 LSWC it shows 6.0 Unique for 1085 and 5.0 Unique for 898. 3.5 gr BE gives 880. This was out of an S&W K-38 revolver; I believe later manuals may have switched to test barrels.

In a 2" barrel, Speer #8 says the same 158 LSWC and 5.5 gr Unique gave 858, and 3.5 gr BE gave 719.
 
HankB you really need a newer manual. :D

The data I showed from the #11 manual used a 6" ruger security six not a test barrel. I am guessing Speer may have dropped the solid WC bullet because they do not show any data for it in the #14 manual.

Thats OK. I used a Lee 148gr WC tumble lube in my loads. Its an accurate bullet. I used it to win several trophies shooting falling plate matches back in the early 1990s.
 
Yep they have been dropped. Along with a bunch of other bullets in the .357 range plus some of their rifle bullets.:banghead:
 
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