Newby Ammo question, please?

spine60

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I just bought a S&W 340pd for a ccw. I'm wondering which ammo would be preferred, I've read that .38+p is suggested? I was thinking of using Federal Hydra-shock +p in 129grn? Any opinions, it doesn't have to be perfect as I'm not a gun aficionado but want a good general reliable round? This type of ammo has been really good for me in my 9mm handguns, would it be a good choice for this weapon? Thanks, Greg
 
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ANY hollow-point ammo from Wichester, Remington, or Federal weighing between 125 grains and 158 grains will meet your needs. Most will be marked "+P" and are suitable for your revolver.

Some people anguish way too much over which brand is "BEST." All are fine.

gold40
 
I don't know anyone that wants to get shot with anything. .22 will kill with good shot placement.

I carry Federal 135 gr Hyda-Shoks in my J frames. This is standard velocity, not +p, ammunition. I feel it will do the job if I do mine. I am much more confident in my capability with this then any +p and I hate shooting +p as I find it very uncomfortable to practice with from a light revolver. Also two of my J frames are older and not rated for +p (I know that it probably won't hurt them if done in moderation but it will hurt me).

I would find a good commercial self defense round that I like to shoot and that is accurate in my gun(s) and then I would practice with it.

Ken
 
The difference between standard velocity and +P loadings is the pressure generated in firing the round in a test chamber. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute (SAAMI) has established a standard pressure level for each caliber/cartridge, intended to be safe for use in any firearm of that caliber in good operating condition.

+P loadings have a test-gun pressure that is higher (typically about 20%) than the industry standard for a particular caliber, so should be used only in firearms specifically recommended for such use by the firearm manufacturer.

All of this being said, any performance difference between .38 Special standard pressure loads and .38 Special +P will be very minor, when fired in a 2-inch barreled revolver. The limitations of the short barrel are created by the very short time in which the powder charge has to burn prior to the bullet leaving the muzzle.

Many tests have been conducted, measuring the performance of handgun cartridges in firearms of differing barrel lengths, all of which have proven empirically that (1) as barrel length is decreased, there is a measurable drop in muzzle velocity (therefore muzzle energy as well), and (2) in the shorter barrels there is a noticeable and measurable increase in both muzzle blast and flash (caused by incomplete combustion prior to bullet leaving the muzzle, with remaining powder continuing to burn after leaving the muzzle).

Another aspect of ammunition selection is the amount of recoil a shooter is capable of handling and controlling. +P loadings have noticeably greater recoil than standard velocity loads, particularly in the lightweight revolvers.

So, very minor performance improvement to be expected, at the expense of increased muzzle flash, increased muzzle blast, and increased recoil (none of which are advantageous for defensive use).

Personally, in the 2-inch revolvers I prefer soft swaged lead bullets in either wadcutter or semi-wadcutter styles. The semi-wadcutters are easier to load into the chambers. Either style can be expected to upset/expand upon impact (more so than any jacketed bullet, hollow-point or not) at the velocities generated out of the 2-inch guns. Standard velocity loadings are my preference for minimal flash, blast, and recoil, based upon nearly 40 years of experience.
 
I WOULD SUGGEST A SHORT BARREL LOAD FROM SPEER. THEY ARE DESIGNED TO EXPAND WELL FROM A 2 INCH BARREL. YOU COULD USE EITHER THE 38 +P OR THE 357 MAG 135 grainers. Another advantage to these loads is that there will be no crimp jump which could tie up the cylinder.
 
Most .38 spl. hollowpoints are iffy expanders from a 1 7/8" barrel and the increase in velocity that +P ammo offers may make all the difference in the world between expanding, or not. If you can handle the recoil and your gun is rated for such ammo, you are doing yourself a disservice by denying yourself the advantage of +P ammunition. If +P ammo bothers you, you can always shoot standard pressure for most of your practice, then finish your session with a cylinder or two of +P. Of course some people are like my wife and are too recoil sensitive to handle +P ammo. She uses .38 wadcutters in her model 60.

Wadcutters and semi-wadcutters will not expand at .38 snubby velocities.
 
Originally posted by flop-shank:
Most .38 spl. hollowpoints are iffy expanders from a 1 7/8" barrel and the increase in velocity that +P ammo offers may make all the difference in the world between expanding, or not. If you can handle the recoil and your gun is rated for such ammo, you are doing yourself a disservice by denying yourself the advantage of +P ammunition. If +P ammo bothers you, you can always shoot standard pressure for most of your practice, then finish your session with a cylinder or two of +P. Of course some people are like my wife and are too recoil sensitive to handle +P ammo. She uses .38 wadcutters in her model 60.

Wadcutters and semi-wadcutters will not expand at .38 snubby velocities.

flop-shank: Sorry to contradict you, but I have been present at an autopsy and booked into evidence a .38 Special 148-grain wadcutter target load, fired from a 2-inch S&W Model 36 into the torso of a human being at a range of about 6 feet. The recovered bullet was about 0.700" diameter, almost a perfect mushroom shape. A very experienced coroner called the wound one of the most devastating he had ever seen from a handgun; massive vascular damage for several inches around the wound channel.

This was a range target load, remanufactured by a reputable company, reportedly 148-gr. HBWC loaded with 3.0 grains Bullseye powder. Estimated muzzle velocity from a 2-inch revolver around 700 FPS.

Soft-swaged lead bullets (usually 97-98% lead, 1-2% antimony, 1% tin and/or arsenic) are much different from bullets cast from hard lead alloys, and VERY much different from anything encased in a cupro-nickle jacket material.

Soft-swaged wadcutters and semi-wadcutters hit like a sledgehammer, creating incredible shock waves through tissue and fluid media, producing devastating damage to an area far exceeding the bullet diameter.

The object of the exercise is to STOP the antagonist. We do not shoot to kill, we shoot to stop. The best way to stop any person is to induce unconsciousness. The best way to induce unconsciousness is to induce a massive drop in blood pressure. The best way to induce a massive drop in blood pressure is to induce massive tissue and vascular damage.

Even the most tweaked-out, amped-up, drugged nutcase waste-of-protoplasm ceases to function when its brain is deprived of oxygen-carrying blood. That is the desired outcome. That results in survival of the innocent victims of the miscreant's behavior resulting in the need for armed self-defense.

Best regards.
 
The best way to stop someone is with a hit to the central nervous system.
Originally posted by LoboGunLeather:
flop-shank: Sorry to contradict you, but I have been present at an autopsy and booked into evidence a .38 Special 148-grain wadcutter target load, fired from a 2-inch S&W Model 36 into the torso of a human being at a range of about 6 feet. The recovered bullet was about 0.700" diameter, almost a perfect mushroom shape. A very experienced coroner called the wound one of the most devastating he had ever seen from a handgun; massive vascular damage for several inches around the wound channel.

This was a range target load, remanufactured by a reputable company, reportedly 148-gr. HBWC loaded with 3.0 grains Bullseye powder. Estimated muzzle velocity from a 2-inch revolver around 700 FPS.

Soft-swaged lead bullets (usually 97-98% lead, 1-2% antimony, 1% tin and/or arsenic) are much different from bullets cast from hard lead alloys, and VERY much different from anything encased in a cupro-nickle jacket material.

Soft-swaged wadcutters and semi-wadcutters hit like a sledgehammer, creating incredible shock waves through tissue and fluid media, producing devastating damage to an area far exceeding the bullet diameter.
I'll have to figure out how to test a dead soft lead wadcutter (and not one loaded backwards). I'm doubtful that they will expand at ~850 fps. with any consistency. I can see where a straight on hit with a major bone might cause expansion. Thank you for posting though. I have no doubt that you saw what you claim to have seen.

Erich, if you're out there, what's your take on this?
 
I hope that you will test this type of load. About 30 years ago I did so. Personally, I used one-gallon milk jugs (always in abundance, since my kids were absorbing a lot of milk back then) filled with water, set on platforms, with a backing of plywood.

I tested 148-grain HBWC loads in .38 Special, loaded conventionally as well as hollow-base forward. I tested 125-grain JHP in .38 Special and .357 magnum. I tested cast SWC loads in my .41 magnum. I tested .45 ACP with 190-grain SWC-HP and 230-grain hardball.

I had a lot of fun loading and shooting. I still enjoy loading and shooting, as I hope that you will, 30 years down the road.

I learned a lot, as I am sure that you will, from those experiences.

Yes, any solid hit into the central nervous system will stop the fight. Unfortunately, situations seldom involve stationary targets willing to expose the perfect angle to engage such points of aim, and when the adrenalin is dumped into your system and your muscles, tendons, and ligaments turn into quivering rubber bands, your control over sight-picture, breathing control, and trigger-squeeze can turn a little bit "iffy", to say the least.

We can test away as much as we like, learning all the answers to all the questions we wish to know about. Maybe it will help us out someday, maybe it won't.

As Bill Jordan expressed it, there truly is "No Second Place Winner" (excellent book, by the way, somewhat dated but always a good resource).
 
Lobo, I have tested Rainier plated DEWCs which I believe are swaged, but am not sure of the hardness of the lead used in them. The plating is only about .002" IIRC. I found that wadcutters are very straight tracking bullets. The results on www.brassfetcher.com seem to indicate the same thing. Of course Perma-Gel, which I used, and 10% gelatin are homogenous and people aren't. The ammo/gun were .38 spl. target type handloads with varying powder charges from my wife's 3" model 60. Excepting the rifling the bullets looked as if they could be reloaded and fired again.

Any further testing would need to be with a pure lead unplated wadcutter and fired into an animal, perhaps a woodchuck. Bullet recovery would likely be an issue as wadcutters tend to penetrate very deeply.
 
Originally posted by flop-shank:
wadcutters tend to penetrate very deeply.

Well, it is pretty obvious that you and I are not in agreement.

You stated "wadcutters tend to penetrate very deeply"; that is the exact opposite of my experience and observations during testing.

Any projectile having a larger frontal area will resist penetration in any medium. A full-wadcutter, having a caliber-diameter flat meplat area, is obviously the extreme end of any comparative scale applied to bullets. Wadcutters do not even penetrate air with any degree of efficiency, losing velocity in flight more quickly than any other projectile-type, so when encountering anything more dense than air (flesh, bone, liquid) they will decelerate far more rapidly. Yes, they will stay on course more reliably, because of (1) inherent balance of projectile weight, as compared to a SWC or cone-shaped bullet of any style which has the bulk of its weight at the rear, thus allowing it to tip more easily when meeting resistance, and (2) far greater engagement in the rifling, resulting in maximum stabilization (which is why they were developed for target use).

No readily available medium will provide an exact match, compared to bullet performance in a body. The military used to use goats and sheep, until the animal rights folks made a fuss about it. I used water-filled plastic milk jugs because they are convenient, and because energy transfer in a primarily-liquid medium has at least a reasonable correlation to the subject of the experimentation.

You are certainly entitled to your opinions. The same type of arguments have gone on ever since the advent of "high performance" handgun ammunition (lighter bullets at high velocity vs. heavier bullets at lower velocity, each side of the debate has its own opinions and there is some evidence to support each side).

My opinion is that whatever type of ammunition is utilized it is always better to transfer all of the projectile's energy to the intended target, overpenetration is wasted energy (and also an added danger in populated areas). Terminal performance includes not only the damage directly administered by the bullet, but also the damage caused by transfers of energy within the target. Bullets having larger, and more blunt, frontal areas push a shock wave ahead of the penetrating projectile, causing greater cavitation as well as increased tissue damage to the surrounding area resulting from an overpressure shock wave created by compression of the (primarily-liquid) material.

I've seen the results, and I've shared my observations. Others can take them or leave them, as they choose.
 
To the new guy, as you see, we all have opinions. As one post mention, "good ammo" and Speer, Hornady, Remington make good stuff. I have the Speer "short barrel" hollowpoint rounds in my 5 shot S&W as I type and it is in my left front pocket. I was a cop for 9 yrs. and I have seen a few dead or dying people. I have seen small 22 short ball ammo kill, 32's kill, then see a 38 +P wound, but not kill, then see that +P kill another time. When I worked as LEO in olden days, we carried revolvers and it was Remingotn 125gr. +P hollow point. Of the few individuals that received one or more of these rounds in the 70's, some died, some just leaked blood. I would not get too obsessed over it. Just get some good ammo, shoot often with some ball ammo and carry some good hollowpoints. You might want to shoot a gun load of your carry ammo at a water melon or something just so you will feel comfortable. About two or three years ago, a local officer died from a cheap 32 revolver round, probably round nose lead bullet and his killer was shot 4 times with 40cal. Golden Sabre hollow point. The killer lived and now sits in a Tennessee prison. Just one of those things about ammo, time, place, fate, whatever... and at age 57, I do my best to avoid such confrontations if possilbe. My mind is my best consealed weapon, my S&W is second best.
 
Spine60, If you like the Hydra-shock, I think 129gr will be ok. Shoot some of it into something you can assess thereafter. If you feel it will give you protection, then go with it. When I got my first 38 at age 19, about all anyone used was lead ball ammo, usually in 158 gr. It was a standard round. Then a company called Super Vel appeared with "hot loaded" hollow points. Lot of cops and others just had to have them. A lot has changed since then and companies continue to develop the magic bullet. If you feel safe with it, go with it. If I had some, I would not be uncomfortable. I have always liked to carry 110 gr to 125 gr. hollowpoints in my 5 shot 2 inch Smiths.
 
Originally posted by spine60:
Any opinions on the Federal .38 Hydra-shock in 129grn??
You're talking about the +P+ round right? If so that's another polarizing cartridge. I don't like it, but others here do. A search in the ammunition forum should yield some interesting reading.
 
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