Winchester .38 Spl 158gr LSWCHP +P in Clear Ballistics Gel.

[5pins]

Test Gun: S&W M442
Barrel length: 1 7/8 inches.
Ammunition: Winchester .38 Spl 158gr LSWCHP.
Test media: 10% Clear Ballistics Gel.
Distance: 10 feet.
Chronograph: Caldwell Ballistic Precision Chronograph G2.
Five shot velocity average: 778fps
Gel Temperature 74 degrees.

I didn’t realize it but its been almost two years since I did a .38 Spl. test. While digging through some stuff today I came across a box of some Winchester 158gr LSWCHP’s that I’ve for a few years now. It’s been some time since I have carried a snub nose but when I did it was with this load(AKA the FBI load). I have owned this M442 for about 25 or so years and put thousands of rounds through it. But when I picked up my first sub-compact 9mm that all change and it’s been at least 6 years since I have carried one.

If the truth is known I could never shoot well but sometimes it was necessary to have something a little smaller than my normal carry pice, a Glock 19. I guess what I’m trying to say is there is a reason the 5-yard group below sucks.

I got a five-shot average velocity of 778fps with a high of 786 and a low of 774fps.



The first round into the bare gel had a velocity of 775fps and penetrated to 20.5 inches. The expansion was .39 inches and recovered weight was 157.9 grains. Round two also penetrated to 20.5 inches and expanded to .38 inches with a recovered weight of 156.7 grains. Its velocity was 768fps.



Through the covered gel, both rounds were clogged with the clothing and passed through both gel blocks and were found laying on the floor. The recovered weights were 157.6 and 157.7 grains. The velocity of the two rounds was 757 and 775fps. There was no expansion of either round.

[KyJim]

First, thanks for sharing the results. I always read these.

I've used LSWCHP +P rounds from Remington in my two and four inch revolvers before the advent of more modern rounds. I used the Remington due to observations by the late Stephen A. Camp and others. Towards the bottom of the page, you'll see two photos showing a comparison of Remington and Winchester rounds fired from the same guns. Camp attributed the difference to antimony used in the Winchester rounds, making the lead harder than that used by Remington.

[Hal]

Good stuff!


I do have a question though - - - how in the name of all that's holy can you have hung around here for over 20 years and kept your fingers off the keyboard???!!!!

LOL!

I always envied you guys that managed to follow the old adage of "close your mouth and open your ears".

[briandg]

In my own limited testing, the fifty or so that I fired in handloads (some in a .357 with moderate loads a bit above +p velocities) I never got expansion and most of the things came through literally unscathed beyond rifling cuts. Every round I have seen in factory has been as hard as a rock and nothing had cavities that would (imo) support rapid expansion. Water, saturated paper, various types of wet mud, etc. No gel in those times.

Your results don't look so bad. A nice, flattened front end like that will still do more damage than a LRN or any other JHP that failed, but how far had it gone into the gel before it bothered to open up?

I'd like those results better than I would any of the ammunition that was used back in the times that HP rounds were forbidden to LE officials. I wonder how many actually remember seeing a cop with a K frame revolver and LRN? The first time I saw JHP rounds on duty it was a state trooper (I think) and he had a .357 with the scalloped JHP that remington makes. I was so shocked to actually see the copper peeking out of his speed loaders that I had to ask him about it.

In a .38 +P I would use just about anything other than the LHP. I think that right now I have 125 grain +P golden saber. I've no reason to test it at all, since it's been tested for decades now and has been found to meet my expectations.

If they were made out of dead soft lead and had more room for hydraulic expansion in the cavity, it would be helpful. But, so far, I've never seen such a thing.

This is heresy of the highest order, obviously, and every time I've spoken out about it, I've been shouted down like an idiot. The fact remains that I have (or used to have) the bullets that proved it for myself. Most of them that I tried in JHP worked in the really wet stuff but failed in anything other than a nice, soaking wet media or the local gooey clay that we have in some places. A particular sierra, 110 maybe, literally rolled itself into a ball in that clay. (this is probably the same type of clay that was used by some of the people back when test media mean't water, wet paper, bars of soap, and other completely inadequate testing stuff.

We've made such huge advances in our designs that there's no reason to choose this round other than price, and why would one buy something just because it is cheap? There are plenty of jacketed bullets that give excellent performance and many are designed to perform properly from snubs. The jackets allow a design that will open up more readily and will stop expansion exactly where it needs to be stopped for best results. Once you have those parameters, we tinkered with alloy and design to get mostly reliable performance even with clothing.

But personally, I don't worry about performance with clothing. I have no intention of ever having to shoot anyone that has a shirt on.

[briandg]

btw, I think that your posts here are just about the greatest thing to come along since $1 a box rimfire ammo. Educational.

[zeke]

Fill the hollow point with silicone, flat to end of bullet and let cure. Would love to see the difference. Always enjoying your tests, and the effort be appreciated.

[briandg]

Done by hornady at this time, a polymer plug in an XTP. called ftx.

I wondered about it myself. I personally doubt that it would change anything. When you would hit a soft barrier, it is likely to act as a pre-plugged bullet, and after losing some velocity it would be unlikely to perform any better than a plugged bullet.

The ballistic tip, when nosler designed it, had a small cavity behind the tip that was wedged open upon first impact and it opened up instantly. There is no such cavity in the FTX. I don't believe that these are the panacea that hornady (and everyone else) claims that their bullets are.

I don't know, I've never seen high speed footage of one actually working.

We have come to depend on gel testing. Gel testing is great.we can see the hole that a bullet leaves behind after the bullet has gone through the whole process of shooting through simulated bad guy. It's a way to benchmark rounds in a test protocol that is a very good replication of what a bad guy is like inside. It's the best we have except for the morgue research which includes opening up bad guys and poking around. The problem with it is that we can't see what actually occurs. Does the expansion only happen at the last three inches?

Remember that a plugged bullet is almost like a soft point, but at the same time, not at all like one. With a soft point bullet the lead collapses and is compressed, and blows the jacket open, creating a mushroom as it flattens and the jacket peels down. Sometimes that is what happens with a hollow point with exposed lead, if the cavity fails to expand, the lead may still compress.

A plugged hollow point, unlike a soft point with lead, does not have the same fluidity that a core of lead does. It's a hard and unyielding material that blocks access to the lead.

All things considered, even a plugged hollow point leaves a hole. I highly recommend using a good hp round with a good reputation. even if that round utterly fails to expand you will still have a hole in that bad guy.

This stuff has been discussed since the sixties and maybe even farther back. Funny thing, we have all of the technology in the world available to us, but this can't be answered. Chaotic variables screw it all up.

My thoughts on the whole matter have been the same since the early nineties when the design program was fully in process. I suggest buying any bullet that comes recommended by experts that you trust. Check some test results. Put your faith in that round and let the decision be final. Spend all of that time that you would ordinarily waste worrying about which one is "the best" on something productive like managing your IRA or balancing your checkbook. If you put a bullet where it needs to go, it doesn't matter if it's just a round lead ball, if you put in the practice and planning and make a good hit, you will wind up with a nice bleeding hole in the bad guy.

I once read an article about a guy who hunted elephant with an 8 bore round ball for an experiment. He retrieved those two balls that he fired and they flattened out into oblate spheroid, like an M&M or a skittle. That was magnificent expansion, and dog gone, it killed the heck out of the elephant!

[briandg]

BTW, I have finally found information in a wikipedia article that is grotesquely wrong. I probably should edit it myself, I am registered as an editor. I believe that 99.9% of the information there is accurate as usually only a true expert writes it, and many other true experts check and correct any errors. Don't just assume that it's unreliable because it's wikipedia and the internet, but do keep in mind that sometimes errors are made and not discovered.

For bullets designed for target shooting, some such as the Sierra "Matchking" incorporate a cavity in the nose, called the meplat. This allows the manufacturer to maintain a greater consistency in tip shape and thus aerodynamic properties among bullets of the same design, at the expense of a slightly decreased ballistic coefficient and higher drag. The result is a slightly decreased overall accuracy between bullet trajectory and barrel direction, as well as an increased susceptibility to wind drift, but closer grouping of subsequent shots due to bullet consistency, often increasing the shooter's perceived accuracy.

[briandg]

I have contacted Sierra and asked them to look into those errors. I don't feel as if I am qualified to correct the entry, but I have also contacted wikipedia and asked that an expert review the information.

Here is the article, and the URL. The passage is listed under the heading "accuracy." Maybe some other people here can address it with Wikipedia as well.

[zeke]

Believe you are right, the idea of filling hollow points with something goes way, way back. Silicone has non compressible fluidi properties, and acts to redirect force. Have tried it in unofficius testing and where the hp did not expand, the silicone filled one did and lowered the expansion threshold almost 100 fps.

And can guarantee it ain't be an original idea, but well before Hornady.

[T. O'Heir]

Kind of makes you wonder what the point of a +P lead HP is. Other than pure marketing.
"...a Wikipedia article that is grotesquely wrong..." Imagine that. Wikipedia is not a reliable source of info as anybody with internet access can post anything they want there. Including your "true experts". Wikipedia's owners have steadfastly refused to have any such group since their beginning.
"...ballistic tip, when Nosler designed it..." No$ler copied the design from CIL. They made a bullet with a nylon insert called a Sabre Tip long before No$ler's BT or Remington's Bronze Point.

[ThomasT]

So far as I have read the best expanding SWCHP made was the Remington version. But I am not sure how well they work in a 2" snub. But from a 4" barrel they are supposed to be the best. Also the Speer SWCHP bullets available for handloading are supposed to expand well from 4" barrels depending on how they are loaded.

I load them in 38 brass with 5.3grs of 231 and they get over 900fps from a Taurus model 85 snubby. The water bottles I have shot with them seem to show expansion but I am not sure. I have not been able to catch one yet.

And that load was recommended by Jan Libourel in an old Guns & Ammo article.

Kind of makes you wonder what the point of a +P lead HP is.

Yep. I said the same thing in my post on this same thread when the OP posted it over on the High Road forum. P+ is a joke played on shooters by ammo companies so they can sell 38 Special ammo for a higher price that for the most part doesn't have the power of original 38 Special ammunition.

The poster here named Saxon Pig wrote the best article on this I have ever read. But will let him post it if he wants. Or you can google it. Its called Shooting With Hobie The +P Phenomenon.

[Dufus]

Two things mean nothing but horse hockey to me: +P and hard cast.

There is no need for either except to make someone more money.

[JERRYS.]

thank you! I've found in my own unofficial water jug tests that if you want expansion the Remington 158gr. LHP +p is the only way to go in a .38spl snub for a bullet this heavy.

[tipoc]

Useful report as always.

tipoc

[briandg]

T o heir, when I said that nosler designed the ballistic tip, I meant that they designed the ballistic tip, the first polymer insert boat tail bullet with a hollow cavity behind the tip. It was a great improvement over the plain old bronze point in a number of ways. Then they patented the design. Of course there were prior tipped bullets that even went back as far as hollow pointed lead bullets with an iron ball back in the early 1800s. In some ways, you can even say that they cribbed their design from the existing match hollow point, in that the match hollow point used a lighter weight front insert (air) to lengthen and streamline the bullet. No matter what in heck we look at and call a new design or current invention, it has probably been thought of and possibly even produced in some form in past generations. Some might say that the telephone was nothing new as we were already using electrical data lines to run the telegraph. The telephone was an improvement of that design and concept in that diaphragm speakers and carbon resistance microphones allowed conversion of sound to data for use with electrical wires. People can't even agree that marconi "invented" the radio, that he only devised and took to the public a system that exploited a contemporary.

People love to knock on wikipedia, but the information there is far more reliable than people give them credit for. Data for things like cartridge dimensions come from saami. The information is suppose to be sourced in the article, and so doing, the writers offer support for information that they put in the articles.

This isn't stuff put in by teenagers anymore, it is put in by educated and expert people and these same people maintain and lock some parts of the article so that it can't be tampered with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.38_Special

If you look at the .38 special page I doubt that you can find any significant inaccuracies. The informational citations have impeccable pedigree from phil sharpe to massad Ayoob, and data is sourced from organization such as saami, federal, us military manuals and documentation, hodgdon and accurate are some examples. They cite expert's writings like phil sharpe, massad ayoob, frank barnes, trusted sources that have stood the test of time.

Any and every source is questionable when masses of information are compiled, and parts of the whole will always be tinted with bias and inaccuracies, especially soft things like history.

The article about the lowell textile company is accurate and unbiased, if short, but if you look at historians it was sometimes compared to slavery and even worse, such as the coal mining towns and the mining and factory towns where people lived in financial bondage but at least had a roof over their heads and a place to form a community.

Wikipedia is like the glass half full, but far from the cliche'd meaning. Wikipedia has a tablespoon missing from the gallon, but it's the most reliable source for information on multiple subjects available. Hard data is going to have that tablespoon but art, history, biography and other subjects are too fluid and there will always be a level of inaccuracy in any reporting.

Once an author complained that wikipedia had put a false and uncomplimentary entry in his page, and when he asked that it be removed, the moderators for his bio page refused to. Why would they? there were numerous sources for the entry, many of his contemporaries claimed that it was true, but why should they believe a single person who had a vested interest in removing information that scandalized him somewhat? People lie and people forget and they often insist that what they choose to see as truth isn't what others see as truth.

I use wikipedia and then try to confirm things as well as possible if the information is important. Going to the saami site isn't even going to be helpful sometimes, as they don't generally put historical information in such as what ballistics for this round would have been measure at 80 years ago.

Writing these days is sloppy and full of inaccuracy, and information is no more reliable than the person who wrote it, whereas wikipedia is group sourced and group checked.

choose what you want, try to give wikipedia a bit of leeway about an inaccuracy or two in an article when magazine writers take so many liberties with facts that you can't trust them any farther than you can an angry dog.


Years ago I made a statement taken directly from James howe's gunsmithing manual, and it was protested all over the place as inaccurate. Taken directly from historical documents by the designer himself, I feel that my statement was more likely accurate than what the internet experts said. Not one cited proof.

[5pins]

I don’t know how many times someone said ” try it with a 4 inch, a 4 inch, a 4 inch” Ok, here it is out of a 4-inch S&W 686 .357. Two round in bare and two in the clothed gel.

The first round in the bare gel had a velocity of 830fps and penetrated to 17.5 inches. The recovered diameter was .47 inches and the recovered weight was 157.1 grains. Round two’s velocity was 824fps and penetrated to 17.25 inches. The recovered weight was 156.4 inches and expansion was also .47 inches.



Through the heavy clothing, the first round’s velocity was 812fps and it penetrated to 18 inches a recovered weight of 156.8 grains. Round two’s velocity was 778fps and it’s penetration was 26 inches and weighed 157 grains. Neither bullet showed any expansion.

[briandg]

In your belief, is this a good round to carry?

[JERRYS.]

Originally Posted by briandg

In your belief, is this a good round to carry?

based on these results and what I've "tested" myself with the Remington Green and yellow box stuff, I'd take Remington all day long.

[briandg]

That's alright, I still respect you.

[JERRYS.]

Originally Posted by briandg

That's alright, I still respect you.

the Remington load must use a softer lead because the rounds look identical to the Winchester load but expand far better in my experience.

[KyJim]

the Remington load must use a softer lead because the rounds look identical to the Winchester load but expand far better in my experience.

Yes, see my post #2.

[J.G. Terry]

How Hard: The span of hardness that has been recommended to me goes from unalloyed lead to half wheel weights half lead at the hardest. Glen Fryxell has articles on lead hollow points. Hollow Point Mold Service offers mold modifications. I have had several single cavity molds modified there. They have a great website. I have my own hollow points in my 45 ACP carry gun. I'd personally pick a JHP in a factory cartridges over a factory lead hollow point. Just a personal pick nothing more.

[ThomasT]

Its too bad that this same load is not offered with a lighter weight HP all lead bullet for snubs. Something between 130-140gr loads with more velocity for expansion and less recoil in a snub without going to a jacketed bullet.

But then I am not a believer that an expanded bullet all of a sudden becomes a magic "knock em on their butt" bullet. I look for penetration first and expansion second. If I can have only one it would be penetration.

[Sharkbite]

I look for penetration first and expansion second. If I can have only one it would be penetration.

And this bullet gives you that. IF it opens at snubby velocities, great. If not you have a good bullet weight to carry it deep and a good wound channel caused by the SWC design.

This was the go to bullet in snubbies for a long time before the current “short barreled” JHP loads came around.