Those .38spl Barnes loads looked wicked. All jacket. Can you imagine what that would do to soft tissue? Like a Ginsu knife.
Precisely why they aren't as impressive, not nearly, as the final maximum expanded bullet diameter would suggest. Tiny thin cuts don't do much damage, but a big dull crushing nose does. The final maximum diameter does not represent the average over all diameter of the expanded head, and the sharper the petals, the less disruption and crush they do, and the more low quality cut they do, meaning a rounder, more mushroom expanded face of the same diameter is far better, in fact, mushrooms with smaller final diameter probably do far better damage. Just take a good look at the minimum diameter, that's about right back down to original diameter, with big ol pie shapes missing. Not very impressive, not in the least.
As expected, the 110 grain bullets in 38 were terrible, either they had poor expansion to no expansion, or saw penetration failure. The 90 grain, as always, the laughing stock of the bunch. The 125's came in as failures as well, poor performance. Winchester's 130 grain bullets did fantastic, absolutely dead on the money, save for the PDX 2 inch barrel which can be discarded outright as unacceptable. Although other tests showed the 135 Gold Dot to have promise, according to this test, it flunked out. XTP appears to be too heavily constructed for 38 Special in this round of testing. Remington's FBI load was a top grade performer, but the others were clogged with denim or simply too hard a lead alloy to work properly.
2 inch barrel velocity losses for these two lengths showed that length and velocity can matter. The snub nose showed a lot more failure, and the difficulties faced with low energy bullet and proper designs.
357 Magnum wise, we see the engineering problem with excess handgun power. Penetrations over the 18 inch mark is common for this caliber, so not actually too surprising. Again, once you factor in the minimum expansion of Barnes, they aren't impressive in the least. 158 grain Gold Dot are under powered, so we can't get a good feel of the bullet's capability with better loading. Looking at bullets of all makes, fragmentation and "curl back" seem to be issues, curl back being where the expanded diameter begins to bend backwards so much that it crushes over and decreases the final expanded diameter. Barrel lengths and velocity change once again heavily altered performance, meaning load should match capability of gun.
In 4 inch barrel, the 135 grain Golddot stands head and shoulders bout the crowd, clearly. The 110 Corbon, being as light weigh as it is, came in very impressive, The 130 grain Hydoshock was superb and showed great consistency, making it a very viable choice. The PDX did well again, but its inferior expanded shape has to be taken into account, as well as final expanded irregularities.
The legendary old SJHP were the most interesting to see. The 125 grain failed utterly in the 2 inch barrel, but performed admirably in 4 inch, but showed signs of fragmentation. The 158 grain showed great shape and consistency in the 2 inch barrel, a worthy carry consideration, but in 4 inch it shows the same kind of mushroom shedding I found in my own test of the 158 grain SWCHP Speer handload. This would suggest a more sturdy bullet design is in order for this type of velocity.
Over all, very interesting results, and remember folks, keep watching more videos, reading more reports, and doing more research, because one test isn't as good as many valid tests. Gives me some direction on my own research into the future.
