How Good Can a Plain 55gr FMJ Bullet Be?

hi Andrew here let's do another gel test today let's take a look at 223 both bullets comms it's a mouthful 55 grain Full Metal Jacket they make what they consider to be a match Full Metal Jacket it has a very light candle or so several members at our comm have asked whether or not it's capable of fragmenting like m193 or hornaday's 55 grain Full Metal Jacket so I'm gonna shoot it out of an eleven and a half inch barrel using a really middle-of-the-road hand load its 24.0 grains of tack that's right in the middle of book loading the starting load for Sammy spec 223 is 23.2 grains of tack the max load is twenty five point eight grains of tack and the max load for 5.56 pressure is twenty seven point three grains of tack so this twenty four point zero grains is very vanilla 223 Sammy spec load and we're gonna shoot it out of an eleven and a half inch barrel so this is kind of a worst case scenario for fifty five grain Full Metal Jacket fragmenting at least at close range or if you prefer it simulates a longer distance although that does introduce some variables about rpms and span and all that and I should note that this is a one a9 twist barrel let's get out to the range and take a look - six zero zero okay so fairly typical performance for a 55 green full-metal-jacket even at relatively slow velocity it completely penetrated the 16-inch block we weren't able to capture the main fragments of the bullet because they exited it at a fairly oblique angle the neck about 4 inches long decent sized temporary stretch cavity measuring about 4 inches by 7 inches it's fair amount of fragmentation all over 2 main fragments deviated at a sort of Y angle one of them came out the top of the block here the other one came out the back of the block on the side at higher velocity we will expect a little bit shorter neck but otherwise generally consistent with other Full Metal Jacket bullets of decent velocity alright so what do we think about the results well the neck was about 4 inches longer than we'd like to see for high-performance defense ammo but not out of the range of what we normally see from a lot of other Full Metal Jacket bullets in 223 and five five six big decent temporary stretch cavity lots of fragmentation perfectly adequate penetration we actually lost the main components of the bullet as is often the case with Full Metal Jacket because they tend to deviate significantly from the main track got the side of the block and all that they go on to parts unknown bigger picture what we're looking for when we look for defense ammunition when we look at high-performance ammunition is improvement on this this is already pretty decent performance this would already give somebody a really bad day for a four-inch neck is enough that disruption is still happening in the vital areas if you have a decent torso shot this kind of performance shows how badass to twenty three and five five six can be honestly most sixty two or fifty-five grain Full Metal Jacket will do kind of sort of this sort of thing yeah the numbers vary a bit but in general they tend to fragment they tend to fragment a lot they tend to create big temporary stretch cavity so they get decent penetration and the neck is usually short enough that they can get their job done in the area that it really counts and that's why when people get shot with five five six or 223 they usually don't get up if you get those rounds somewhere in the don't go home tonight area like I said when we look at high performance ammunition we're looking to shorten that neck some of the really good stuff has essentially no measurable neck some of the really good stuff has a longer temporary stretch cavity it's doing that work deeper into the body some of the really good stuff is barrier blind it has a better ballistic coefficient when we look at high-performance ammunition it's important to keep in mind that all of that stuff that does better it's better on something that's already pretty dang good if you disagree with me and I'm sure some of you do if you have any questions if you have any comments definitely leave a post below I always want to hear what you think about these tests and I'd like to hear how you believe I can do things better we'll post some useful links in the description so make sure you take a look at that head on over to our comm and participate in the discussion in GD as well as in the ammunition forum as always thanks for watching have a great day you

Channel: AR15.COM

Views: 51,744

Rating: 4.925983 out of 5

Keywords: 223 55gr fmj, 223, .223, 55gr, 55 grain, 55gr fmj, full metal jacket, hollow point, 223 gel test, 55gr gel test, fmj gel test, full metal jacket gel test, 223 rifle, 223 vs 556, fmj bullet, 55gr fmj ballistic gel

Id: DamerZHdoY8

Length: 6min 29sec (389 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2017