Archive for the 'Ammunition' Category

From a reader, see AR-15.com for the scoop.

I titled this with a question mark at the end.  It’s not clear, and there is conflicting information at the link, but it appears to be retailer-specific and not related to Federal.

If you have any more information please drop a comment. Either way, this isn’t a good way to win and keep customers.

Personally, I have a number of boxes of PD ammunition of different brands, but it occurs to me that John Basilone and his fellow Marines all shot ball ammunition and did just fine.  I believe that his storied battle involved a lot of action with his 1911.

Josh Wayner at Ammoland:

I tested theses loads for velocity over my Oehler 35P chronograph and they came in exactly the same at average of 2165fps, which is very close to the stated velocity from the manufacturer (Hornady lists the 2200fps from a 20” barrel, mine is 16”) and was very consistent. The accuracy (after I figured out some issues) came in at 1.5” for five shots at 100 yards.

The Buffalo Bore loads are very new on the scene as of this year I received three different loads to test: the 300gr JHP, 250gr JHP, and 275gr XPB Barnes Lead Free. These loads are all a far cry from the original .450 offerings and two of them have conventional rounded pistol bullets in them as opposed to a pointy rifle bullet.

The claimed velocity for the 300gr JHP load is 1950fps. My rifle fired this load at a five-shot average of 1920fps. This load generated the most recoil out of any .450 load I fired and it also showed the most drop of any load, falling about 14” at 200 yards from a 100 yard zero. It was quite accurate considering the bullets used and generated 5-shot groups of 2.9” at 100 yards.

The next load, the 275gr XBP, has a stated velocity of 2000fps. My rifle fired it at 1922fps and averaged 2” for five shots at 100 yards. This was a very low-recoil load and it was very comfortable to shoot. I noticed that it appeared to also be slightly lower pressure judging by a rounded primer flatness and smooth, easy ejection of cases.

The final Buffalo Bore load is the 250gr JHP. The manufacturer says this is a load designed for deer hunting and has a bullet designed to expand at pistol velocities. At a claimed velocity of 2250fps and matching speed of 2249fps from my rifle, this load certainly was faster than pistol velocities, and produced the fastest speeds of any round I tested among this group. It was acceptably accurate at 2.5” for five shots at 100 yards.

He has a number of other observations, including what it takes to get reliable feed with this large cartridge.  I see the attraction of this – essentially, this is the one shot knockdown that the SpecOps folks were searching for in the 458 SOCOM.  That’s important for the two-legged threats, but it’s also important for threats of the four-legged kind in the bush.

Not coincidentally, it’s good for hog and deer hunting within 250 yards.

Shooting Illustrated:

NRA member and Marine Corps veteran Dave Elliot was a fan of the 1911 chambered in .45 ACP, but dreamed of .357 Mag. performance and greater capacity from a semi-automatic handgun. In the early 1980s, John Ricco developed the 9×23 mm, which came close to the .357 Mag., but it could not accommodate heavier bullets. It also operated at high pressures.

Elliot decided to cut some 9 mm Win. Mag. cases to the length of the 10 mm Auto and load them with .357—not .355 (9 mm)—diameter, 140-, 158- and 170-grain bullets. He then designed a chamber around these cartridges. To test the concept, he cut some .357 Mag. cases to the same length, and starting with 60-percent .357 Mag. loads and the QuickLoad program, slowly worked his way up. Elliot figured his new cartridge (the .357 Ring of Fire) would be excellent for police, combat and hunting—especially with its potential for added capacity. You can actually cram 18 rounds of .357 Ring of Fire into a Glock G20, 10 mm magazine.

Based on the real-world performance of the .357 Mag., I was intrigued. Regardless of which so-called stopping-power theory you subscribe to, the effectiveness of the .357 Mag. on the street cannot be denied. Elliot had created a semi-auto-pistol cartridge nearing that level of performance. So, I asked him to send me a gun and some ammunition for further investigation.

I received a Glock G20 with a ported 5.5-inch barrel and 100 rounds of ammo. The ammunition was comprised of five different loads, using bullets between 125 and 200 grains in weight. I found I could indeed get 18 rounds into a Glock G20 magazine, which, when fully loaded, weighed almost 1 pound. This brought the gun’s total weight to 2 pounds, 12 ounces, with a round in the chamber.

I started with the 200-grain, lead-round-nose loads. At 920 fps, theBut y replicate 200-grain .45 ACP external ballistics and were very comfortable to shoot. Up next was the 170-grain Sierra FMJ loads at 1,060 fps. These were just as comfortable and quite similar to common.40 S&W 180-grain loads. Yet, the first round of the 125-grain Nosler load really got my attention. It was not the recoil that surprised me; it was the ring of fire that appeared in front of my face when the pistol went off. (Now I know where Elliot got the name.) At 1,335 fps this load duplicates the best .357 SIG offerings.

That same fireball was present with the 140-grain Hornady XTP and 158-grain hollow-point loads. At 1,430 fps the lighter load is indeed the equivalent of a .357 Mag. As for the 158-grain hollow point, the hottest .357 Mag. loads will exceed 1,400 fps, but 1,200 to 1,300 fps is much more common. Surprisingly, recoil with both was still extremely manageable. I’m sure this was due, in no small part, to the ported barrel.

So this is a wildcat round that probably exceeds SAAMI pressures for the 10mm chamber/barrel, but it being shot from a 10mm gun nonetheless.

I can see the desire for something like this, although I’m just fine and happy with shooting my 230 grain ammunition at greater than 1100 FPS from 450 SMC cartridges.  I may also investigate the 460 Rowland with a ported extension.

But in order for these cartridges to be very successful on the market, engineers are going to have to do the calculations and testing to ensure safety and endurance over protracted chamber and barrel lifetimes.  I like the fact that engineers at CMMG have done this for the 450 SMC.

BRVTVS gives us this video on some .45 ACP testing.

A few comments.

First of all, it’s just wrong to say that the lighter rounds lack penetration.  The data shows otherwise.  On the other hand, I agree that I’d never recommend PD ammunition for protection against large predatory animals.  Ball ammunition (jacketed) is the way to go.  Expansion is your enemy when you’re trying for maximum penetration and organ damage against a large quadruped.

For jacketed .45 ACP, I’m now focused on purchase of Browning flat nose 920 FPS cartridges.

If I’m in the bush, I’ll carry my S&W E Series 1911 for which I’ve installed a 22# spring, and shoot 450 SMC.  That’s my main complaint with the video.  He doesn’t cover the big hitters in these guns, whether 450 SMC or 460 Rowland.  It’s easy to install a 22# spring, and the 460 Rowland conversions (that include a compensator) aren’t that expensive.

DFP:

Davis’ “bullet bill” ordinance would build a new structure for purchasing ammunition around law enforcement approval. Potential buyers would need to undergo a mental illness background check with their local police department or the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office. They would also need approval for each purchase – except at gun shows, where showing a certificate of a previous mental illness check would be sufficient.

Finally, the ordinance would raise taxes on ammunition and use the funds for gun safety and gun rights education – teaching “about the second amendment, about how to use a gun safely and about gun violence,” Davis said.

[ … ]

If he gets the ordinance passed in Wayne County, Davis said, he would like to see it implemented at the state and, eventually, federal level.

Since they haven’t been as successful as they would like in gun control, they want ammunition control, gun manufacturer bank account control, and mental state control.  Because controllers got to control.  It’s who they are.

I expect the statists will do this at the federal level as soon as the power structure changes just a little bit in Washington.  At it will, soon enough.  These are trial balloons at the local and state level right now.  Expect this to expand.

I don’t believe anyone who proposes such a bill should ever be able to get a “certificate of mental wellness.”

Shooting Sports USA:

From the standpoint of interior ballistics, the ideal match rifle bullet would be a bore-diameter, homogeneous cylinder with flat ends perfectly square to its body. Such a bullet would be cheap, easy to manufacture and have maximum bearing surface for superior accuracy.

From the standpoint of exterior ballistics, an efficient match rifle bullet would have a high length-to-diameter ration; a sharp, drag-reducing point; and a tapered base (boattail). Such a bullet would offer high retained velocity, flat trajectory and minimum wind drift.

From the standpoint of terminal ballistics, the ideal match rifle bullet would offer a center of gravity displaced toward the base, a jacket with no sidewall variations and a core with no weight variation. Such a bullet would offer consistent, reliable, sub-minute-of-angle (MOA) accuracy from lot to lot.

These requirements pull match rifle bullet designers in different, often mutually exclusive, directions. As a result, all match rifle bullets are a compromise—none are perfect.

I think it might have been clearer if the author had said “from the standpoint of gyroscopic stability, the ideal rifle bullet would be a bore-diameter, homogeneous cylinder with flat ends perfectly square to its body.”

But overall, this is an informative article and worthy of a little time.

Sierra Match King 5.56X45 77 grain rounds being pushed by Midway.

Sierra MatchKing bullets have very thin jackets and are held to exacting tolerances in diameter and weight. These Hollow Point Boat Tail bullets have a small meplat to produce a higher ballistic coefficient.

Federal Syntech Ammunition.

Syntech is Federal’s proprietary Total Synthetic Jacket polymer bullet jacket, intended to reduce metal-on-metal contact, reduce fouling, and extend barrel life.

Well, it sure looks different enough!

Shooting Illustrated:

The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI), which, among many other tasks, creates and publishes industry standards for safety, reliability and interchangeability for the firearm industry, accepted two new Hornady-designed cartridges. Chamber and cartridge drawings for the 6.5 Precision Rifle Cartridge (6.5 PRC) and .300 PRC are already availableon the organization’s website.

I had heretofore seen very little on the 6.5 PRC, but I had seen at least some analysis of it.  It has become difficult to keep up with the cartridges.

Miami Herald:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris King rolled out a bold gun violence prevention plan Friday that would create a fund designated to research, school safety and intervention programs.

The “Every Kid Fund” for Gun Violence Prevention would have three sources, King said during a roundtable discussion at Allendale United Methodist Church: sales tax revenue from gun and ammunition purchases, a 6 percent “safety fee” on the sale of ammunition, and revenue generated from aspects of King’s criminal justice reform plan.

Straight out of the Bloomberg / Everytown / Brady Center playbook.

American Rifleman:

Beyond increasing on-target energy, the additional velocity greatly enhances the ARX’s terminal effect. “The fluted design of the ARX bullet is quite amazing, as it operates on the principle of fluid dynamics rather than hydrostatic shock,” explained Schultz. Molded into the projectile are three distinct flutes that, as the bullet penetrates soft tissue (and fluid), transfer the forward energy laterally. The fluids, spinning at around 120,000 rotations per minute (r.p.m.), are forced in an outward direction at upward of two times the speed of the bullet itself. “A new phenomenon has been realized,” Shultz said. “NovX can achieve breaking the liquid sound barrier, actually causing a sonic boom inside whatever water-based material it may encounter—water, clay, gel, flesh, blood, et cetera.”

The rest of the article is interesting, but testing on the round thus far lack field data from hog hunting, deer hunting, etc., and the ammunition also lacks convinced buyers.

I had missed this from Ammoland a few days ago when Glen Wunderlich wrote on NovX ammunition in .450 Bushmaster.  His concluding paragraph[s] is this.

The experiment concluded with a search for what remained of the two bullets. The recovered Inceptor made a violent entrance and completely disintegrated to its final resting place where only a tiny fragment of the original projectile was found – not even enough to bother weighing! On the other hand, the Hornady Flex Tip was peeled from well over 4,000 layers of paper, weighed 170 grains and had mushroomed to about 50-percent more than its original diameter of .452 inches, although the copper jacket had separated from the lead core.

The conclusion is that velocity and energy are only important if they can deliver a better wound channel and the less-expensive Hornady ammo and its Flex Tip design provide a much more appropriate transfer of said energy for a big-game hunting round.

No offense to Glen, but I think he’s utterly missed the point.  It isn’t the design of the NovX round to disintegrate in order to “deposit” energy.

I’ll grant the point that one has to think differently in order to understand what’s supposed to be happening here, but this round was designed using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics).  The flutes in the round accelerate liquids and other material in the direction of its path by virtue of twist, so it would be contrary to the intent to disintegrate (i.e., it would fail to perform its intended function of imparting energy by virtue of its design if it shattered).

But what I would like to see (I hinted at it above) is field tests using the cartridge.  Anecdotal data.  Yes, anecdotal data is perfectly admissible in logical discourse.  Induction cannot prove a point, but it sure can disprove it.  Show me a 500 lb. hog taken with this round.  Or better yet, invite me to this hunt and let me take the hog.

Prior:

AR-15 Ammunition And Barrel Twist Rate

Considerations In Selecting AR-15 Ammunition

Small Caliber Lethality: 5.56mm Performance in Close Quarters Battle

More On 5.56mm Ballistics

Oversimplifying Ammunition Ballistics

Pistol Ammunition Ballistics Part 2

New Ballistics Gelatin Tests At Ammunition To Go

So I went to a local gun show today, mostly looking for magazines and the availability and price of certain ammunition, but I was also surveying prices for all manner of guns.  I offer up a number of observations in no particular order.

For pistols, sellers still focus their stock in the cheap, plastic, striker-fired guns with crunchy, crappy triggers.  Good, high quality 1911s are just not carried by the folks looking to push large quantities of inventory (and rely on quantity rather than quality and larger markups for their profits).  And yes, I consider most if not all polymer handguns cheap plastic guns (with the exception of FN because their .45 tactical is a hammer gun and the FN 5.7 is an internal hammer gun).

The prices of rack (budget) ARs have not changed in months, or even years.  The prices aren’t going to get lower.  The prices of higher end ARs have not changed in months, or even years.  I suspect the prices aren’t going to get lower.  If anything, I expect the prices of the higher end ARs (Daniel Defense, Rock River Arms, FN, etc.) to creep slightly higher over the next few months, and then take off within a year or a little longer.

Good chassis bolt action guns are expensive, many as expensive as ARs.

There was plenty of ammunition for sale if you were looking for 55 gr. 5.56 mm / .223, .308, .45, 9 mm or the standard soft point hunting rounds.  Everything else is an esoteric round to them and few dealers had much else.  For more out-of-the-ordinary rounds like 77-gr. 5.56 mm, 5.7X28, .45 SMC (which I was looking for, finding none at all), and even some run-of-the-mill PD pistol rounds for 9 mm and .45 that you can get at Gander Outdoors, Cabela’s, or Bass Pro Shop, you may have to rely on mail order if you don’t want to pay a visit to aforementioned large stores.  Shipping ammunition is expensive because of the weight.  When you drive near the aforementioned large stores, always consider buying ammunition because you don’t know when you’ll be back if you don’t live near one.

Overall, there were about a third less tables than usual, and the crowd was thinner than usual.  It all felt rather bleak and depressing.  My assessment: the gun owning public is asleep at the wheel.  Give this until after the mid-term elections and it will all turn around, and it will peak at a frenzy as we near the presidential election.  The GOP shouldn’t expect to carry Florida and North Carolina again.

Get what you need while you can.