What is the benefit of a full wadcutter round?

[cslinger]

Would somebody explain to me the ballistic benefits of a full wad-cutter round? I am talking about the completely encased by brass, cylinder-esqe type round. How would this provide more benefit then a semi-wad cutter? It seems to me that it would do about the same thing while at the same time having much worse ballistics.

Thanks
Chris

 

[Vern Humphrey]

The wadcutter is a target bullet -- designed for two things, accuracy and making nice, crisp round holes in targets.

Accuracy is affected by bearing surface, and the wadcutter is all bearing surface. In addition, target usage doesn't require high velocity, so most wadcutters are quite soft -- swaged bullets are common in this configuration. At low velocities, these soft bullets "slug up" nicely, filling the barrel from the bottom of one groove to the next, which usually produces fine accuracy. And many wadcutters are also hollowbased -- which further aids "slugging up" and obturation.

Next, in most target shooting the rule is "A shot that cuts or touches a scoring line counts for the higher value." The crisp holes wadcutters make are easy to score, and you don't lose points by having a less-than-full-diameter hole.

At typical pistol ranges, wadcutters can be quite effective as defensive rounds. I took a Colt M357 to Viet Nam on my first tour, and used hollowbased wadcutters loaded backward. It leaded something terrible, but was quite effective in action.

 

[Starter52]

Vern is dead-center correct. Shooter uses wadcutters for the accuracy and for a clean hole in a paper target.

 

[cslinger]

Thanks for the info. Now one more question.

Once the round leaves the barrel it must loose stability over reasonably short distances due to the profile, yes / no?

Chris

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Yes.

To be technically correct the wadcutter's center of aerodynamic pressure is identical to its center of gravity -- which is why we have semi-wadcutters. With a semi-wadcutter, the truncated cone on the end of the cylinderical body pushes the center of aerodynamic pressure forward, but doesn't move the center of gravity all that much, and is a much more stable bullet at longer ranges.

However, wadcutters are routinely shot at ranges of 50 yards, which is a pretty fair distance with a revolver.

 

[ThomasT]

I shoot a lot of the Lee 148 tumble lube wadcutters out of my revolvers and out to at least 50 yards they are very accurate.

With the solid WC bullets you can load them quite a bit hotter to around 950 fps. These really slap a target.

The retired gunwriter Terry Murbach wrote about one hunter that killed a deer with this load.