380 Penetration Testing
Well I got out to the farm and here are the results of the testing I did. I had a couple other things in 38 Special and 44 Special that I wanted to test but ran out of water jugs.
Attached is a picture of the box I built to hold the water jugs, it holds a total of 16 jugs. I shot from 10 feet away, the same distance that I chronograph from. Temperature was 70 degrees.
.380 handload of 4.6 grains Alliant Power Pistol with a Lee 120 grain Truncated Cone at 951 fps. Penetrated 10 jugs and stuck into #11. The bullet was holding #10 & #11 together.
.380 factory load, PMC 90 grain FMJ at 855 fps. The bullet passed through 4 jugs and penetrated the 5th, was lying inside the 5th jug.
9mm factory load, Winchester 115 FMJ at 1149 fps. I didn’t have any factory FMJ 9mm on hand and found this load at Bass Pro Shops. I selected it as the bullet was almost identical to my cast Lee 120 grain TC. Bullet penetrated 9 jugs and exited the bottom rear corner of the 9th jug and was found laying in the box next to the rear corner of the 10th jug.
The pictures left to right show the cast Lee 120 grain TC, PMC 90 grain FMJ, and the Winchester 115 grain TC.
My conclusion is that the handload has too much penetration. What do you all think?
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KSCowboy
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