Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Why Ballistics Gel Works And Caliber Arguments Are Dumb

Did you check on LBT Website? Wasnt he the one that coined the term back in the 1980's? Seems that would be the place ro go to.
At least I would.

Essentally what the guys in the video are saying is that at "handgun velocities", gelatin penetration depth and diameter of recovered projectile tells (more or less) the whole story of stopping power.
I'm skeptical.

Ummmmm...no fhuqking schit.

Hint................

What about occasions where LEO need to shoot through glass windows, or car doors. It's difficult to believe that all handguns penetrate the same through barriers.

Veral Smith's definitions aren't spelled out anywhere I can find (I think Stanton does in his Beartooth Bullets manual, but I'm not positive on that). Here's what I've noted for calibers I cast for:

1. WFN - Wide Flat Nose bullets have a meplat about 80-81% of bullet diameter
2. LFN - Long Flat Nose bullets tend to run a meplat of about 72-73% of bullet diameter
3. WLN - Wide Long Nose bullets have meplats around 78-79% of bullet diameter
4. FN - Flat Nose bullets have meplats anywhere from 72% to 78% of bullet diameter
5. SWC - Keith style Semi-Wadcutter bullets vary from 69% to 78% of bullet diameter, depending on the bullet in question

... so there's no hard and fast rule here. I tend to use "WFN" as a generic term for any bullet with a meplat of near 80% bullet diameter, because they're slightly wider than the Keith SWC and tend to fly straight. I don't know that they hit any harder than Keith designs, but they were all the rage when I got into bullet casting, so I bought the hype and invested in LBT and other moulds with that profile rather than SWC's. I

I like LBT bullets and molds, and I like Beartooth Bullets (which are LBT designs, for the most part). But I use other bullets as well. The Lee 265 gr 0.452 caliber bullet has an 82% meplat diameter, for instance, and I find it shoots and feeds really well in both revolvers and rifles, and I can cast a lot more of them with my 6-bullet gang mould in a unit of time than I can cast LBT bullets out of a proprietary mould.

After reading Fryxell's book on casting (great, great book!) I started trying a couple SWC designs, and I'm not convinced either the LBT or the KSWC design is better than the other. The key is use good alloy and cast consistently good bullets of the right hardness for your purpose, and find loads that work in your guns.

They don't. Performance through intermediate barriers is highly variable. Gary Roberts' group has done a lot of testing on that sort of thing and has some good recommendations if you're interested in doing the search. I stick with GDHP's for my personal handgun carry ammo because it is consistently good through barriers in all the calibers I carry. Rifles is a whole 'nother story.

Good video and discussion.

One question I would have is that for years the .357mag 125gr load doing 1400+ fps was called the king of stoppers, that it was much better than anything else in the real world. Now we don't hear as much about it. Was "king of stoppers" hype, or has new information come to light?

Yeah, I'm confused...at 7:52, he says that a .44 Magnum produces a more significant wound, but not enough to matter." Well, then, what makes it a more significant wound? Later, at 9:28, we're told the goal is "the perfect 14"-16" inches of penetration and getting the projectile as big as we can." Isn't the .45 the biggest projectile if it expands at proportionately the same rate as smaller calibers? But caliber arguments are dumb? F me!

If you ask me it sounds like Federal is sucking up to the FBI because they are a good customer.
Nothing new.
No way am I buying into the bullshit that the 9mm is the same as a 45 acp. 45 has twice the bullet weight. You can't ignore that.
Women shoot the 9mm better than the 45 so magically the laws of Physics have changed.
Little is the same as big. I don't think so.

Ballistic gelatin provides a yardstick to measure the performance of one load against another under controlled laboratory conditions. There are similarities between ballistic gel and living tissue but they end with the skin, fur, bones and various densities of organs and tissue that comprise mammals, not to mention the angle at which any of these may be struck.

It stands to reason that a government agency which puts forth a set of protocols, for measuring ammunition performance, would also set performance standards reflecting what they expect contract submissions to achieve. Federal contracts are lucrative and ammunition manufacturers will bust their humps to land them. They also realize that generally, being more or less compliant with those standards will sell a lot of ammo to people who base their selections on what reviews well in the firearms press, youtube and the internet. Now I don't begrudge anyone the freedom to report their findings; or anyone else their choices based on that reporting. In truth, I doubt any of it matters more than what you had for breakfast.

A man center-punched with 9mm ball, a 38 RNL, or a 45 ACP/ Long Colt is going to react exactly the same today as he did 100 years ago. And as with shooting game, there will always be outliers.



The important components to surviving any armed confrontation are the ability to recognize survival means destroying your adversary; the ability to irrevocably commit to destroying him or it by any means at your disposal; and the wherewithal to accomplish that end with fury and ruthlessness, to deprive them of the opportunity to kill or seriously injure you first. Weapons are of course necessary to win, but they occupy a distant second place to your willingness to use them.

I have witnessed one demonstration of the FBI protocol tests with my own eyes, and ammo manufacturers have figured out a way to stay within the 12-18 inch penetration mark in ballistic gelatin across 9mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP calibers in six different media: bare gelatin, heavily clothed gelatin, and lightly clothed gelatin placed behind 4 different barriers, namely, wallboard, plywood, steel and windshield glass. Of course, all of the barriers and the manner in which they are set up have their own parameters, so there is no way to cover every possibility. Anyway, it is rather impressive. Bear in mind that the 12-18 inch requirement still has 6 inches of wiggle room factored into it, which is pretty significant from a percentage standpoint.

I'm mostly concerned with how a bullet performs when I center punch a mans chest at 5 feet distance in a dimly lit parking garage. The only barrier I'm likely going to need to penetrate is a heavy coat. I guess I just live a boring existence.

Good and even a heavy bullet in a .45 Colt slower will kill anything on earth. It is not velocity but where energy is applied and too fast does not mean deader. The fact is I have revolvers that shoot too fast like the 45-70 BFR and it will lose deer because 1630 FPS makes it a stick hole. Then I found a WFN does not work better then a WLN. There is a pressure wave from the meplat that will move tissue out of the way of the bullet and will collapse back so the big meplat theory is not true. Slow the big meplat and it will work better.

If you have penetration,you can break skeletons and in a handgun,the chambering/projectile is largely moot,assuming a shred of sense. Break shoulders on tablefare,shoot schit trying to chew on you in the melon...there ain't much to it.

Hint...............

The flipside to that is the handful of times I've been involved in with security contractors (essentially clearing buildings) they opt for max penetration - bad guys hide behind stuff.

Patrick, you have to take that "king of the manstoppers" title in the context it was made... the 60's and 70's. At that time, 90% of American patrol officers carried 158 gr roundnose lead bullets in their 6-shot revolvers. Which, if you recall, was not a terribly effective bullet at baseline. It was upgraded some to the so-called Treasury Load (158 gr SWCHP at +P velocity), which was a substantial improvement. The 357 Magnum came into more widespread LE use in the late 60's, and a high-velocity (1250+ fps) 125 gr bullet was the "standard". I know guys who carried that load, and they said it was truly impressive to fire those off at night (when most OIS's happen). I have some old Super Vel loads from that era, and have fired them at night for a photo op, and they are amazing... flame shoots 10 feet from the muzzle, and the side blast from the cylinder-barrel gap looks like a giant orange butterfly 5 feet across. And they were LOUD. None of this low-flash, low-blast nonsense!

In any case, one of my old copper buddies tells me they would shoot at perps with these loads at night and the bad guys would often surrender just based on the blast, flame, and roar of the 357 loads.

But ballistically speaking, did they perform any better than current LE/defense rounds? Not really. I've shot ballistic vests with them, and I've shot gelatin with them, and all the metrics are within the FBI protocol. So nothing magical.

Snake, when I lived and worked up in Wisco I did an informal study of bad guys shot by police in our area in the cold months. It wasn't uncommon for the local felons to wear 4-5 layers while out and about committing their felonies. More or less typical was a leather jacket or vest and maybe a polyester-fill insulated jacket, denim/canvas shirt, cotton hoodie, and a couple of t-shirts. This much clothing exceeds the FBI test protocol by a helluva margin. Top that off with 3-4" of chest blubber on your typical Wisconsin fat f u c k e r/biker and you have a significant penetration challenge.

The most common rounds carried by the po-po in Wisco at that time were the Federal HST 40 S&W 180 gr load, or the 40 S&W Speer Gold Dot Hollow Point 180 gr load. Both rounds are pretty hot as I recall. These rounds performed superbly over and over again, through clothing, interior doors, auto side window glass, windshield glass, and auto sheet metal doors.

This is the same ammo that you can buy to load in your personal defense guns, in whatever caliber you prefer, and it will work just as well for you. To my mind this is what the ammo companies should be using as a selling point, sort of the way Mercedes-Benz and Ford use their auto racing successes to sell more of their cars to us urban commuters.

Depends on how you define "work better", but in the main I agree with you. My standard load for my 45 Colt revolvers is a nominal 265 gr WFN bullet at about 950 fps. Cast of Lyman No. 2 alloy it's about 258 grains actual weight. It is deadly on deer and on hogs.

True.

If you look at Dr. Gary Roberts' recommendations for 5.56 carbine loads, you'll note that he lists standard patrol/antipersonnel loads separately from SWAT/antivehicle loads. The latter have greater barrier penetration capabilities. You really can't go wrong with the Nosler Partition 60 gr bullet, for example, at relatively low cost. Any of the bonded bullets from any of the manufacturers out there will do equally well. Federal TRU 62 gr is an excellent choice in this category as well. Black Hills used to make a Nosler Partition LE load that was superb, and I stocked up on it at the time fearing that it would vanish down the road, and it did.

This is the same principle identified by officers chasing down bank robbers in the 1930's, which led to development of "heavy" revolvers such as the S&W 38/44, which were loaded with linotype bullets that would zip through the relatively thick automobile sheet metal of the day like a hot knife through butter.

The flip side of the advantages of this penetration capability is that downrange collateral damage can be fierce with the wrong bullet. So that 1938 .38 caliber linotype bullet might be great for perforating the door of a gangster's Ford V8, but it would just keep on keepin' on through the other side door, and through the little old lady bystander on the sidewalk. This police PR disaster ain't as likely with good loads from Federal/Speer/ATK or Winchester-Western, Black Hills, Barnes, and Hornady... as the OP video points out, these makers have made the effort to optimize performance, and in the case of patrol rifle loads, they've developed loads that will defeat intermediate barriers but still perform to FBI standards in gelatin (no more than 18" of penetration).

Well, I think you're selling both the FBI and the Federal/Speer/ATK guys short, but that's your business.

The cool thing about America is you have the freedom to buy and carry 45 ACP loads for your personal carry, or to buy 9mm for your personal carry, and nobody can tell you it's prohibited. And you will be well-served by either one, no matter what you believe or don't believe. So carry on and more power to you, amigo.