Just saw this video, and I thought I’d post it:
Compare with this:
Its a shame the tests aren’t 100% similar. Different guns, slightly different water jug setup. Still the results are dramatic enough that I think you get the picture.
Also just so I don’t sound like an ammo elitist:
This stuff is pretty cheap ammo, its also the round George Zimmerman used to shoot Trayvon Martin. No matter how you feel about that shooting, the ballistics don’t care.
Wow. I couldn’t tell the first one had even been fired. I thought he was just QC testing it until I watched the other two. That totally defeats the purpose of JHP rounds. Good info!
2 points. First, it would have been nice to see if denim impaired the Hornady ammo expansion. The second is more of a point about the S&B ammo. I would like to know if others have had as many failures to fire as I have with it. I’ve had at least 2 in every box I’ve fired, both in pistols (.32 ACP and 9mm) and in rifles. This is across several lots of ammo and across several months.
Not a fan of S&B because of it.
I believe most modern premium hollow points aren’t clogged with things like drywall and cloth like the older generation of hollow points used to. Still its a shame the tests weren’t identical.
I don’t shoot much S&B, as I find it cheap but at a price that does not reflect its quality. I’ve also heard complaints of reloading S&B brass (IIRC I picked up a batch of .45 ACP that had small pistol primer pockets) and other QC issues.
Still I have burned up a bunch of the stuff when I find it at a good price. Never had FTF issues for sure. Never had any FTF issues with factory centerfire of any brand.
I’ve had two S&B failures, both from firing in a PF9, first fired fine on second strike, second took two strikes and then fired fine when struck in my Glock. Shot about 400 S&B in the Glock no problem, 150 of which were from the same lot as the two failures.
I’ve heard that european primers are usually harder than will reliably fire from many pocket pistols.
Interesting, but water jugs are not valid tissue simulants.
Neither is ballistics gel, really. ballistics gel is CLOSE by scientific standards, but terminal ballistics is really an exercise in chaos theory as a living body is NOT a homogenous medium. Gel gets closest by supplying a colloidal medium that is more-or-less an average between the materiel encountered by a bullet fired at something living. Less dense than bone and muscle, but more dense than soft tissue, liquid and air spaces.
Its a nice tool to look at, as is water contained in flexible containers like milk jugs and fabric. Still this is a BIG reason why I always carry the heaviest bullet available for my carry loads. Its been my observations that heavier bullets are less likely to be influenced by major changes in density. EG a 230 grain bullet is less likely to be deflected by a bone or an uneven medium than a 180gr bullet (for .45 loadings) or a 147gr bullet vs. a 115 (for common 9×19 loadings).
Now these loads have LESS ballistic energy as the bullet is moving slowly, and velocity is squared for an energy calculation, but if I shoot an attacker in the chest I’d rather my rounds smash through his sternum, ribs, and skull, rather than be deflected into an angle away from vital stuff.
Silver Bear used to make their makarov ammo with a 115 grain HP. This was great stuff. I sold the extra boxes of this stuff I had for years for over double the price I bought it for. It tested well in most gel tests and also was pretty hot loaded. However, the hot load wasn’t good for some of the lesser 9×18 pistols so they went do the lighter bullets.
I stopped using Sellier and Bellot after two separate boxes of fifty gave me ten rounds that failed to fire. I didn’t bother looking into it after that, I just figured it was crappy cheap ammo and moved on.