What kind of velocity is required to make a 38 special wad cutter a viable defence load?

I've chronographed a few different 38 special wad cutter loads and they are obviously pretty slow when compared to standard and +p but they do have the advantage of helping to keep the gun on target and are cheaper to practice with.

I'd appreciate your thoughts...


Regards, Racingsnake

I would answer that one by emphasizing proper shot placement. It does not take a lot of velocity if you can put it where you want to put it.

All of the factory wadcutter loads will penetrate 16-19" in 10% calibrated ordnance gelatin, and are a good choice for snubs where a standard pressure low recoil cartridge is desired. I prefer the wadcutter load from Black Hills Ammo. High velocity is not needed with these loads.

Regards,

Clay

i used to load hollow base wadcutters with the hollow base up, makes a wicked hollow point, they will open up nice at moderate speeds.

RacingSnake, Jim Cirillo, the VERY BEST of the ACTUAL modern day gunfighters, did a great deal of experimentation with ammo in developing weapons and loads to be used during his stint with the elite NYPD Stake Out Squad. He did much work with wadcutters, and developed some VERY effective loads. It would behoove you to read his book.......Jim Cirillo Book – Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights :: Blue Sheepdog

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'Nam 1968-69.DAV,VFW,NRA Inst.

Back "In The Day" this was a awesome defense round at close range. I never got any accurracy from this load at beyond 21 feet.
At close range the bullet expanded to a lead donut when tested.

proficiency with shot placement, a S&W snub nose and DEWC, (mine are @ 825fps) make a good defensive combination. Its what I use for practice and ccw (as soon as illinois joins the rest of the group and no longer sits in the dunce's corner)

I once saw a guy who had been shot with a "reverse" wadcutter. He pulled a .22 and fired one bad shot at an investigator who returned fire with a S&W model 38 loaded with them. The guy was hit from about 30" and the round went through his heart. The perp never got off another shot nor did the investigator need another shot. That old mod 38 became mine several years later and is in need of a serious reblue as I've carried it off and on for over 40 years and a lot of the finish is worn off of it. My friend Leland loaded me several of the backward wadcutters and I have several house guns loaded with them.

I can assure you that after 40+ years of digging projectiles from dead bodies, a reverse wad cutter does tremendous damage. Shot placement is ALWAYS critical, but these soft expanding lead projectiles make very big nasty holes!

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Doc Garrett
Dead Man's Doctor

Until "magnumitis" set in during the last half of the 20th century, 148gr of soft lead at 700fps was considered more than adequate for close range defense, for shooters who could hit their target.

Not too shabby in a 3" model 60 for knocking off small game either.

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Science plus Art

Exactly.

I'm planning on shooting this through some barriers into gel. Should be interesting.

Most factory wadcutters really aren't that soft. That, combined with their sharp shoulder, allows them to penetrate deeply, and crush and cut tissue while they're doing it. Most of the old IWBA guys I run into are still carrying 148 wadcutters in their 2" lightweight guns.

A standard velocity wadcutter load is one of the better .38 Special loads to carry in a 2" revolver. I've known of one-shot stops and several homicides using this load.

Please be advised that the American Rifleman technical advisor no longer recommends hot loading backwards .38 wadcutter bullets. Seems the think hollowbase tends to blow off or otherwise gets stuck in the forcing cone all to often.

While wad cutters were a reasonable choice "back in the day", there has been so much bullet development since then....that I think one can readily find better alternatives! Why go back to the stone age???

Racingsnake here is my perfered carry load "Jim Cirillo's Safe Stop"

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Fair question. I recommend Gold Dots for students to carry for defense, but several physically impaired (arthritis, etc) people have been persuaded to carry .38 WC instead of going all the way down to a .22, or just forgetting the whole idea of having a gun.

Not here, but I have heard some people rant that anything less than .38 +P+ HP was "no better than a sharp stick," which is demonstrably NOT true.
We sometimes forget that the majority of the population is not composed of healthy young males.

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Science plus Art

There effective for sure when loaded in reverse. What comes to mind is the "caution or warnings" I have herd from the L.E. community and the dreaded Lawyers on this very subject. It seems such" modified" self defense ammunition or "home brew" for self defense brings with it a firestorm of additional scrutiny... Yes, better to be judged by a group of piers then carried out unable to defend your self any further. Any one have any information on additional harassment about this issue? Obviously things are bad if and when you have to shoot some dirt bag.. Kyle

Because many of the readily available and touted alternatives, will perform worse than the WC. Many of the "high performance" .38 special loads suffer from lack of penetration. A projectile that expands and makes a "big hole", but doesn't go deep enough to damage something important, isn't a good choice, no matter how new it is.

+! from Ronnie Gore

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NOT SO FAST,, NOT-- SO-- FAST

Though often brought up by dramatic gun writers, your choice of ammunition in an otherwise justified use of deadly force will have little bearing.

Very high velocities aren't needed with wadcutters. The most common reason to worry about lack of velocity is lack of expansion. A wadcutter is already at full caliber width so expansion isn't necessary. Add that to the lower recoil and accuracy of most wadcutters you have a winner there.

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Freedom is never free!!
SWCA #3437

I practice alot with my 158 grain load - about 500 rounds a month and I shoot occassionaly with +p 158 gr LSWCHP's - sure I can keep all five shots in the vital zone at 7 and 10 yards but follow-up are slower and less pin-point than wad cutters.

There may be 'better' choices these days but I think the wad cutters low recoil and inherant accuracy support the need for good shot placement under stress - especially with the light weight snubs these days.

I still use the old "FBI" load, 158gr LSWCHP.

WOW Pete ! ! i didn't think Jim ever got this ammo into production. Is it available for sale currently ? If so, could you post a link, please ?

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'Nam 1968-69.DAV,VFW,NRA Inst.

I suddenly feel so much better about buying a HBWC mold.

I see you're the manufacturer. A plated wadcutter is certainly a good idea, but I'm curious about the slot and it's effect on penetration. I'd be interested in what kind of test data you have. Is there anything you can link to or post?

Thanks.

We were loading them back in the 1970s as curiosities. Back then we were in production mode, as much as you can be with an old single stage press. For a while my favorite shooting gun was a M52 and that's the only round you can shoot other than forward loaded wadcutters. I've still got 2 boxes of 60 of them (thats how many fit the old Speer yellow plastic boxes.)

Just for fun we did a bunch of testing for accuracy. It should come as no surprise the M52 was dead accurate at 25 yards with its normal wadcutters. But with the reverse ones, it would open the groups up to about 6" or sometimes even more. And worse, the holes weren't always round at that distance. Some were more like smears. Recovered slugs were easy to distinguish between. The normal ones sometimes had some deformation where they went through a board. The backward ones were really a mess. Some clearly lost the skirt portion, but others were about an inch in diameter, like a heavy washer.

But then we took our little accuracy testing to another level. We started shooting them at 7 and 10 yards. At that range, the reverse ones were almost as good as normal. The 7 yard targets it wasn't unusual for all 5 shots to cut the same hole.

From my sordid youth, I discovered some other things. We had a family pellet gun. It was a Benjamin. And you could reverse the pellet when you chambered it. They delivered lousy accuracy. But something else I learned back then was how wadcutters worked. My backstop was a foam couch cushion. Well, really about a half dozen of them. Because something else I learned was you could recover them for a second life. Pellets were expensive and money scarce.

What we learned was the pellets would cut long worms out of the foam. Sometimes the forward facing ones would do that, too. But the open base would do it almost always. I remember my dad commenting on all the foam worms lying around our bullet trap. Full diameter, the length of the 6" cushions. Kind of core drillings.

I can just imagine a bad guy getting shot with a reverse wadcutter and someone finding a .357 diameter worm 10" long, with parts of the guys vitals cleanly cut from his insides.

One of the problems with bullets not expanding or being FMJ is the hole can maybe close and at least limit the bleeding. Can't do that with a big chunk missing. It provides a channel for the blood to exit. If nothing else, it will leave a good blood trail whereever he goes until he stops bleeding. That would be when he runs out of blood.

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Dick Burg

When one opts to use a firearm (deadly force), it's the use of the weapon, not the ammo to which the statutes refers.

The older stock 148 grain wadcutters back in the late seventies would kill a wild boar of 125 pounds with a side body shot from 100 feet or less, with less than a 30 yard run after shot fired. After seeing that, I never carried anything but that in my trusty .38. Everyone knows the importance of shot placement, but with all the body armor being used nowadays I carry much more punch. Follow up shots can be very important on a single target, but the first shot counts more than the next few to me.

I would not hesitate depending on that old load to protect myself with if I had to. I figure if I can get one shot off I will most likely survive to talk about it later. Hope I never have to, though. Just talking about it is fine enough for me.

I think the plain old factory wadcutter is effective as is, without reversing it or loading it to higher velocities.

I've only investigated one shooting with it - a woman popped a large man from the side at about armpit level. It careened through all of his good stuff and wound up in his pelvis. He said "oof" and fell over dead.

They are a pain to reload from a speedloader - I think I'd have something with a pointier nose for that.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

Not true at all. It happens. If it happened once, it can happen again.
The Liberty Papers *Blog Archive * Harold Fish is Free!

Another wrong statement. Read the following. It does happen.

The Liberty Papers *Blog Archive * Harold Fish is Free!

I've tested reversed hollowbased wadcutters in water and wet and dry phone books. Phone books are very good for testing penetration because you stack two or three books on top of eachother and then see how many pages the different projectiles penetrate on the book on the bottom.

This gives you a very precise comparative measurement of depth of penetratiion because each page is only eight hundredths of a millimeter thick.

What I discovered after firing a hundred rounds of reversed HBWC's at different velocities into these three differrent test mediums is that the results are counter-intuitive or in other words they don't work the same in real life as most people imagine that they should and they don't deform into the perfectly symetrical mushroom shape.

and the reason they don't is because the cavity is so big that the sections on the sides called the "skirt" of the base which is made thin so that it will expand outward and seal the bore, but when it's reversed it either peels outward and folds back over itself, or folds inward and plugs the cavity or does a little of both with peices of the thin "skirt" tearing off in additon to folding up.

This thin outer section of the hollowbase will also tear off even when seated with the hollowbase to the rear once velocities exceed about 850-900 FPS, causing the projectile to be imbalanced and shed weight, both of which limit penetration.

The only way you can drive wadcutters faster than standard target ammo is to use solid double end wadcutters and not hollow-base.

Buffalo bore makes a plus +p full wadcutter load and so does Bitterroot valley which is sold by Cheaper than dirt. I have tried the BV valley loads and like them, but I've not tried the Buffalo bore yet.

The reason that wadcutter ammo is still a viable alternative for self defense is because of the laws of physics. In a j-frame airwieght or even lighter snubbies such as ones with the titanium cylinders and scandium frames, any bullet 125 grains or heavier loaded to plus p velocity is going to be painful to fire and more difficult control. The copper jacket is a wondrful device for controlling expansion but it develops more friction than lead and therefore lead bullets can be driven to higher velocities at lower pressures.

I love my model 38 blued steel and aluminum snubby with it's shrouded hammer and the thin wooden j-frame grips which I can easilly carry in the top pocket of a sportcoat or a jacket pocket. But I don't like shooting it with anything but wadcutters and I'm not particularly recoil shy and enjoy shooting magnums.

another load that might be good for these lightwight guns is the federal nyclad 125 gr HP which is not plus P, but while this ammo is technically still in production federal hasn't shipped any for a while becaue they're backordered on a lot of their ammo.

This ^

Wadcutter holes don't close up, if you get hit with one, you better stick your pinky in the hole to stop the bleeding fast.

"Buffalo bore makes a plus +p full wadcutter load and so does Bitterroot valley which is sold by Cheaper than dirt. I have tried the BV valley loads and like them, but I've not tried the Buffalo bore yet."

I have used the BB 150 gr hard cast full wadcutters and they group well. They give about 850 FPS out of a 2 inch barrel. They are not plus p, just standard pressure, but because of the higher velocity, they kick like a plus P. About the same as the Speer plus P 135 gr SB that I now use. The reason that I switched is that the BB, and all other WC's that I have tried, shoot quite high in my M60 no dash and M442. The Speer SB shoot quite close to point of aim, so that is what I use.

Best,
Rick

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Right answer. I like these too, and for the reload, would like a nice SCW at a decent velocity (900+ fps) that does not cost a month's pay. I wish the folks at BH would load it; they are for my money the cream of the niche loaders along with Stan Chen (ASYM).

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NHI, 10-8.

Double Tapp makes a hard cast WC that is about midway between a target WC and the BB version. 750 FPS out of a 2 inch tube. They have a nice square edge at the nose. This was the load I used in my M442, when it was my carry gun. The BB's were quite harsh in the alloy gun. I have since changed to my new M60 for EDC, with the Speer SB's.

Best,
Rick

I like 5.1 grains of Unique behind a 148 grain hardcast bevelbase wadcutter for .38 Special SD load. I have no use for the HBWC; I'm not interested in expansion. I'm interested in penetration. The sharp shouldered wadcutter is an excellent shape for creating a permanent wound channel.

It's all about the meplat.

Wow, zombie thread. But I digress...

For those who choose wadcutters for their recoil characteristics, I don't fault those individuals in the slightest; I recall when the IWBA touted the full wadcutter as being the "best to be had" in a .38 snub. However, while it's true that a hollowpoint may expand but a wadcutter never shrinks, they don't create substantially larger permanent wound cavities than unexpanded JHP or FMJ bullets with rounded ogives despite the former's design being arguably more efficient at crushing soft tissue (the frontal area of a FMJ is ~.101 versus ~.119 for a wadcutter). I'm also curious as to why the IWBA was so enamored with this load yet, to the best of my knowledge, had never tested its performance through intermediate barriers like automotive steel or laminated windshields.

I'm not trying to disparage the wadcutter, and I certainly wouldn't want to get shot with one, but it is not a "magic bullet" by any stretch of the imagination even in more exotic non-factory loadings.

To each his own but make mine the Remington LHP +P. Like the late Stephen A. Camp, I opine that even if it doesn't expand it's still a Keith-style semi wadcutter moving at a much greater velocity than a factory loaded wadcutter.

Secondary question, the primary question is can you hit with a .38 wadcutter. There is no magic bullet, it's about shot placement, shot placement, shot placement. If you shoot well with wadcutters then by all means use them with confidence. Any gun and ammo combination you shoot well is a viable defense tool.

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Regards,
Guy-Harold Smith II

Now Boys, that is sur nuf ol school right thar!

But, knotchin' them bullet noses go way back, I recall ol men talking about doing that when I was a young'n....


I used to load them HBWC backwards for them snubs,
now I'm jest loading a sharp shoulder cast or swaged HPs......For just about everything now'n days.


Su Amigo,
Dave

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"IN GOD WE TRUST"

Shot placement in a self-defense situation is a fantasy. Shot placement in a self-defense situation is a fantasy. Shot placement in a self-defense situation is a fantasy.

I have always thought the wadcutter had a place in personal defense. I really want a wadcutter mould and have someone hollowpoint the darn thing. Eventually I want to try some expansion tests on these old Hydrashok hollowpoints to see exactly what they can do before I carry them around in my 649.

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Vaya con Dios

After having lurked on this thread I started researching what the current market had to offer in wad-cutter's. What I found was not pretty, In fact it was UGLY!!. Not only are there not many choices, the availability is dismal and the price is over the moon. The "out of stock" notices got to be really tiring. Haven't reloaded in decades but it might be time. Thanks to the OP for dusting off my cobwebs.

hardcase60

The factory target wadcutters don't offer much performance out of a
J frame snubby barrel in my opinion so I load my own for carry in my
37. 4.0 grs Bullseye under a hard cast 148 gr bevel base wad cutter
crimped in the crimping groove runs 820 fps out of the 1 7/8" barrel
of my lightweight 37-2 and is a standard pressure load according to
every reloading manual I have. A substantial improvement over
factory target wadcutters and at standard pressure.

10-4. I use Pennbullets premium hardcast, and crimp in the first groove, giving me 1.245" COAL.

In my speedloader for my 642, I have Blazer brass 125 FMJ. Chosen for the round nose, to ease reloading. Reloading still takes me forever.

It is? Please elaborate. No disrespect meant, but I'm curious why attaining fairly solid COM hits in a civilian self-defense situation is a statistical impossibility.

Nothing personal, but this is bunk.
Shot placement is everything. I "know a guy" who was in a defensive situation in Seattle a few years back, and ran his 4516 to slidelock on a bad guy at ~30 feet. The ME reported (a month later) that there were five unsurvivable hits, and that they only recovered five rounds in the guy. He believed that the last three went through the existing hole, based on some of the tearing in that area with no rounds accounting for it.

That guy carries a revolver now, and wadcutters suit him fine.

Not impossible. Just unlikely.

If you have to shoot someone, it is highly likely that you'll be within six feet of them. Hence you will not be able to extend your arms toward them, as that will create an opportunity for them to grab your gun. You will likely be holding your gun between waist and chest high when you fire. You will hence not be able to use the sights. Hence you will not be able to aim, at least not in a conventional manor. By the way, the perp will likely be moving, and you should be moving, too. Look at "shot placement" in that perspective.

Additionally, even at longer range, where sights could be used, target fixation frequently causes people to ignore the sights. It's hard to take your eyes off someone who is threatening your life.

The average shot fired in self defense MISSES THE ASSAILANT ENTIRELY. That's why I get so amused when the "over penetration" crowd comes out.

You mention COM hits, and that is good. Targeting COM is what you should expect to have to try. You will instinctively do that, anyway, as COM will be the largest target available during your extreme situation. SD shoot training should include some shots fired from waist high at short range, like 5 feet.

Also, do not shoot once, then pause to analyze the effect. Most handguns are poor stoppers; you should expect to continue firing until you get a positive reaction from the assailant, i.e., they collapse or run, so that they are no longer a threat to you. Your first shot is unlikely to stop the assailant, and you won't know whether it was because it didn't stop them, or your shot missed entirely.

The above is why I say "shot placement" in a self defense situation is a fantasy. You'll be damn lucky just to hit them!

Fire from a retention position when within spitting distance of an attacker... Shoot until the threat stops... Seems we have all the proper bases covered. Yet, I still don't see how Smith357 was emphasizing surgical shot placement within the context of a very close self-defense encounter.

Just my own personal viewpoint, but if I were within six feet of an attacker, especially a knife-wielder, the LAST thing I'd be doing is reaching for my sidearm... In fact, I'd probably be asking myself why my situational awareness (or lack thereof) hadn't prompted me to present it before they even got that close to me.

Anyhow, I don't wish to digress from the OP's topic. If you would like to discuss this further, I would be happy to but I also recommend that you start a new thread so we don't get dinged by the moderators.