I've done it............and it worked, but you still had to get the bullet into a liquid medium for it to be a consistent expander. At one point I even glued BB's into the hollow to force expansion, it helped but the rounds weren't all that consistent. I shot them into waterlogged phone books, and the wound channels were shallow but still impressive, lots of evulsed "tissue".

I didn't have a snubby back then, so I was using a 4" 357 with seven grains of Bullseye.......pretty hot stuff. Loads as low as four grains still expanded, but not as violently. I still have the bullets somewhere...........

My current snubby load is the 110-grain Critical Defense in warmer weather, but if heavy clothing is likely to be involved I go back to the FBI load for better penetration. The intact slug was fired into denim-covered water jugs, the other two were recovered from wetpack after 5" of penetration.