Why Hollow Points Don't Expand

[Music] foreign [Music] we're out on our range today and recently a viewer contacted me and asked a question about why hollow points fail to expand now that might seem very simple but there's more to it than that and what he wrote was basically that he has seen me in this format shoot our meat Target with hollow points on several occasions and on several occasions he's seen me show you a close-up of the projectiles that I recover and then heard me tell you something to the effect that the hollow point expansion was virtually non-existent and his question was if you're going to make hollow point ammunition that fails to expand why did you even bother making the hollow point ammunition now I'm not wording that exactly correctly but you get the point and what he was really asking if I understood him correctly was that if you have hollow point ammunition and you're shooting it through the firearm for which it was intended not just the right caliber but the right barrel length and so on and you're shooting it at the distance at which it was intended to be fired at the Target which was intended for this ammunition and you're still not getting hollow point expansion what's up with that okay we have discussed the failure of hollow point ammunition to expand briefly in a couple of ways on a couple of different occasions but we've never dedicated a presentation to specifically that topic so here we are now there could be many reasons why hollow point ammunition fails to have projectile expansion but I'm going to concentrate on what I would consider to be the top five and those are inappropriate Target inappropriate barrel length hollow point clogging manufacturers testing protocols or lack thereof and a Target that I'm going to call come on man we'll understand that when we get there now our first one inappropriate Target let me see if I can demonstrate that here's a soda jug and behind that is our high-tech police Bullet Stop and I have my Colt Government Model caliber 45 ACP loaded with Remington golden saber 185 grain jacket at hollow points and I'll shoot this from a distance of seven yards and let's see what kind of hollow point expansion I get well the projectile tore up our soda jug blew the cap off it and penetrated to about the 25th layer of fleece but let's take a close-up look at the projectile and there it is and that is some good hollow point expansion now I still have the Colt Government Model loaded with the Remington golden saber 185 grain jacket and hollow points but let's try a different Target now I have this very dry 4x4 post with another very dry 2x4 behind it let's shoot this from seven yards and see what kind of hollow point expansion I get I fired three shots one went through the 4x4 hit the two by four and shattered a big chunk off it and I lost that projectile the other two went through the 4x4 and they were both stopped by the two by four let's take a close-up look at the two projectiles I recovered here they are and you can see no hollow point expansion at all now we have to make sure we understand the difference between hollow point expansion and bullets flattening out because they hit something hard off camera I shot one of those hollow point projectiles through the fleece Bullet Stop into this cinder block let's take a look at that projectile and you can see it is absolutely flat but that has nothing to do with hollow point expansion that's because it hit a very hard object and was flattened Out full metal jacket projectiles will sometimes do that so why did the hollow point projectile expand shooting the soda jug but not expand shooting the 4x4 because to expand hollow point projectiles have to hit something that's gelatinous or aqueous forgive me if I'm using those terms not quite correctly but you know what I mean something like the intended target or the animal you're hunting or ballistic gel or a soda jug or a water jug the list goes on something with enough liquid or semi-liquid to it to make that hollow point expand when you shoot hollow points at that block wood or at a car door or something to that effect you won't get hollow point expansion now what about point two inappropriate barrel length let's see if I can demonstrate that this is our meat Target and for those who haven't seen it before the meat Target is leather couch skin followed by pork steak pectorals pork ribs a bag of oranges to stimulate lung tissue more pork ribs on the back four layers of t-shirt on the front four layers on the back and the whole thing followed by the new improved high-tech fleece Bullet Stop and this is my Ruger Blackhawk with a seven and a half inch barrel in caliber 30 carbine and I have it loaded with Winchester Super X 30 carbine 110 grain semi-jacketed hollow point so let's shoot this from seven yards and see what kind of hollow point expansion I get [Applause] thank you [Applause] now I'm not going to take the meat Target apart because we're not evaluating this ammunition we're just talking about hollow point expansion but I fired four shots one of which was stopped by the t-shirt on the back of the target the other three made it through to about the 70th layer of fleece now let's take a close-up look at these projectiles and here's our four projectiles and we can see that one has a little bit of expansion the other is the expansion is virtually non-existent now again I'll shoot the meat Target from seven yards with the same Winchester Super X 30 carbine 110 grain semi-jacket hollow point except this time I'll use my M1 carbine with an 18 inch barrel now let's see what kind of hollow point expansion we get okay everyone my apologies we had a snafu so we did not get the impacts on camera but as you can see even without taking the meat Target apart we have a lot more damage but our main focus is hollow point expansion now in this case I fired four shots in all four projectiles were stopped by the t-shirt on the back of the target let's take a close-up look at those projectiles and there they are so we see when this ammunition is fired out of the 18 inch rifle barrel we get some good hollow point expansion so we saw that when we were shooting our 30 carbine hollow points from the revolver we got very poor expansion shooting that same ammunition from the rifle very good expansion why here's where I have to say what I've said so many times before hollow points are Velocity based the faster you propel them the more expansion you'll get up to a point if you Propel that hollow point too slowly it drops below expansion threshold you'll get minimal to no expansion and that's why we were getting such poor expansion out of the revolver is because with the revolvers shorter Barrel we get less velocity it's below expansion threshold okay but then why is it that other hollow points and other calibers give very good expansion when fired from handguns okay because different projectiles are made with different designs they're put together differently they're made of different materials and so some are intended to expand at those handgun velocities as where 30 carbine ammunition is made to expand at rifle velocities because although obviously there are handguns chambered in 30 carbine the overwhelming majority of firearms chambered in 30 carbine are rifles and so the manufacturer makes that ammo with the mindset that it's going to be fired from a rifle and it's going to expand at those velocities which depending on which ammunition you're using going from the handgun to the rifle you're going to add over 400 feet per second and that's a lot now to that you might say well okay then why don't they just design the bullet to give good expansion at handgun velocity and then when you put it in the rifle it'll be that much better because if you make the projectile to where it's going to expand at those handgun velocities then when you put it in the rifle you're going to get hyper expansion bullet fragmentation and often insufficient penetration and so if you're going to try to shoot something like a deer with that projectile you might get a very bad surface wound and insufficient penetration to get a clean kill on the deer so now we understand why when I load my Ruger 1022 with CCI Mini mag 36 grain hollow points I get excellent hollow point expansion but when I go from the Ruger 1022 to the Ruger Mark III with its much shorter barrel and much lower velocity I still get pretty good hollow point expansion but when I go from that down to something like the 21A I get no hollow point expansion okay that makes sense but as soon as I say that people will say wait a minute there's been times in this format where I've shot what would traditionally be handgun calibers like 38 Special or 380 ACP out of handguns which should have had appropriate barrel length and still failed to get hollow point expansion now those are handgun calipers the manufacturer had to presume that I was going to shoot them from handguns why didn't we get hollow point expansion they should have worked okay there's a few reasons why you might not get hollow point expansion and the first one that I'm going to demonstrate will be really difficult to demonstrate but we'll give it a try 0.3 on my list is hollow point clogging now there are some people who are concerned that if they have to shoot through several layers of clothing that it might stop the bullet we have a presentation on shooting through heavy winter clothing clothing is not going to stop the bullet however sometimes when you have to shoot through several layers of fabric that fabric can clog the hollow point so you don't get good expansion now it doesn't happen very often but we'll see if we can create that effect now I've got the Colt Government model which again is loaded with the Remington golden saber 45 ACP 185 grain jacket at hollow point we have our soda jug which we know will give us good hollow point expansion behind that the high-tech fleece Bullet Stop but in front of that 32 layers of fleece and no this will not slow the bullet down to where it's below expansion threshold but we'll see if we can get this fleece to clog our hollow point so I'll shoot this from seven yards let's see what happens foreign [Applause] Bullet Stop taken apart now side note talking about shooting through heavy winter clothing remember that projectile went through 32 layers of fleece then through the soda jug then another 40 layers of fleece heavy winter clothing is really not going to stop a bullet for a more detailed analysis of that watch our presentation on shooting through heavy winter clothing and you can see me shoot through heavy winter clothing with several calibers including 25 ACP and it went through okay that having been said what about the hollow point expansion on the bullet we fired here let's take a close-up look at it and there it is no hollow point expansion at all now there is not any material stuck in hollow point but that's kind of a shallow hollow point I can see a few fibers in there but I have to conclude that whatever was clogging it came out before I dug this out of the fleece Bullet Stop but this lack of hollow point expansion is something I can only attribute to hollow point clogging now something that isn't on our top Vibe but I think is worthy of mentioning is that as I said hollow points are Velocity based propelled too slowly they'll drop below expansion threshold sometimes depending on your firearm and ammunition choices your projectile's not that far above expansion Threshold at muzzle velocity and by the time that bullet travels downrange quite a ways and slows down it might drop below expansion threshold now this is typically something that isn't going to happen at Short distances like 10 yards by the time you shoot 75 or 100 yards depending on your firearm and ammunition choice that bullet may very well drop below expansion threshold something to keep in mind okay let's get to point four point four on my list is testing protocols or the lack thereof now this takes a while to explain and you're going to have to listen to me ramble so please bear with me sometimes you go to the store and you buy some jacketed hollow point ammunition and it's stamped right on the box personal protection so you presumed that that ammunition is made for your concealed carry firearm a fair presumption you take it out to the range you test it and you get completely inadequate hollow point expansion what went wrong there a lack of testing protocol the wrong testing protocol and possibly the manufacturer deliberately marketing something that they know won't work now let me see if I can explain this and it requires a dawn of time explanation back in the 1950s 44 magnum was introduced and at the time according to the sources I read and sources don't always agree with each other it was a joint venture between Smith and Wesson and Remington that's why it's technically called a 44 Remington Magnum and they had some kind of handshake deal that Smith and Wesson manufactured the Firearms Remington would manufacture the ammunition and at that time a really popular projectile loaded into that was a 240 grain semi-jacketed flat nose soft point and as far as I know it worked out pretty well okay fast forward from 1955 to 1964 when the 444 Marlin was introduced and again Remington made a lot of the ammunition for that now 444 Marlin just to the unaided eye looks like a really long version of 44 magnum it isn't it looks like it but it isn't however they do use the same diameter projectile and so something Remington did was they took that exact same 240 grain flat nose soft point that they were using in 44 magnum and loaded that into their green and yellow box 444 Marlin ammunition the problem you run into there is that depending on which firearm you're using when you go from the 44 Magnum revolver to the 444 Marlin rifle you gain about 900 maybe a thousand feet per second velocity that's a lot more and so our flat nose soft point that was designed to give good expansion at 44 magnum handgun velocities when put into a 444 Marlin rifle ended up with Hyper expansion insufficient penetration when you're trying to shoot something really big I dealt with this firsthand when I was using a 444 Marlin rifle with Remnant green and yellow box ammunition trying to kill a particularly large Buffalo it didn't give me sufficient penetration now how did that come to pass because of a lack of testing protocols and sometimes ammunition gets marketed when it hasn't been tested sufficiently in terms of amount of testing or sufficiently in terms of type of testing now there's another thing when you look at the ballistics chart you have to read the fine print and I'm going to use the example of caliber 3030. you look at the chart and it says with this particular ammunition I'm going to get this particular muzzle velocity yeah when I try to duplicate that with my chronograph and I have several chronographs I never get that velocity why well sometimes manufacturers advertise velocities are optimistic but in this case you got to read the fine print and it says their test Barrel was a 24 inch barrel okay we know that up to a point longer barrels will give you more velocity my Marlin lever action 3030 rifle only has a 20 inch barrel so I'm going to get lower velocity fair enough however I'm not talking about someone's collection of antique Winchesters I'm talking about when you go to the range or you go hunting and you see people shooting 30 30 rifles look at the rifles they're using a very popular one is some version of the Marlin 336 some of those have 16 inch barrels the great majority of them have 20 inch barrels another very popular 30 30 is the Winchester model 1894 some of those have 16 inch barrels but the great majority have 20 inch barrels I'm going to estimate that of all the 3030s out there that people are really using for target shooting and hunting I'm going to estimate less than one percent of those actually have a 24 inch barrel so although the manufacturer isn't lying to you when they say you're getting that velocity yeah you might with a 24 inch barrel but it's really not realistic because 99 of us are using a 20 inch barrel or less and so sometimes what the manufacturer tells you isn't really the results you can truly expect in the field now talking about velocities when I use the chronograph and I shoot a few shots and I tell you what the velocity is I typically shoot five to ten shots and then compute the mean average okay what you don't see is that quite often I've done several strings of five six seven shots off camera to confirm that now if I really wanted to for a ballistics chart really tell you the velocity I probably wouldn't shoot six or seven shots I'd probably shoot 40 shots just to get more data points okay but sometimes on some ballistics charts what people will do is they'll shoot 50 plus shots and instead of computing a mean average they'll give you the mode average that's just whichever reading shows up most often and sadly what some people are going to do is they'll shoot 40 or 50 shots and whichever one shot happened to be the highest velocity that's the one they'll print on the chart again they're not really lying to you but that isn't really the way I'd computed okay and so sometimes testing Protocols are insufficient incomplete or sometimes just done in such a way to create a favorable result now when we're out here shooting the meat Target I'm not really interested in achieving a particular result I'm just interested in achieving what I think is a realistic result and most people who are shooting their own version of a meat Target or ballistic gel or something like that that's what they're trying to do is get a realistic result sometimes manufacturers are going to create a testing protocol that is intended to create a favorable result now I am not accusing any manufacturer of actually doing what I'm about to say I'm speaking in the hypothetical but you buy a particular type of Handgun Ammunition it's Jack and hollow point or semi jacket hollow point it's stamped right on their personal protection okay so you think that that 357 Magnum ammo is going to work correctly in your two and a half three inch barrel snub nose 357 revolver okay when the manufacturer tested that however they didn't use a revolver so there's no cylinder Gap pressure loss and they use just a test Barrel that was maybe a 12 inch barrel and so for them in whatever they were shooting worked out great but they really should know that that's not a realistic representation of what you're going to do with it and sometimes manufacturers will do testing protocols that are made to create a favorable result rather than a realistic result now some manufactures will through grotesque carelessness or intentional dishonesty put something on the market that they know isn't going to work now let me give you an example recently we did a presentation comparing 22 long rifle and 25 ACP in Pocket guns and for 25 ACP I fired Hornady Critical Defense with its 35 grain FDX projectile and Hornady custom with its 35 grain xtp jacketed hollow point and the results I got in terms of expansion weren't that good however one of the other ammunitions that I got for that test was this stuff right here which is 25 auto that's advertised to have a 35 grain xtp jacket at hollow point the exact same projectile that I was using in Hornady custom ammunition okay and I was going to use this 25 ammo in the presentation except in preparation for it off camera I chronographed this and even though it's using the same bullet that the Hornady ammunition was using I was getting chronograph readings that were well over a hundred feet per second less than what I was getting from the Hornady ammo and Hornady ammo is good but it's not known as being a super powerful ammunition this ammunition is drastically underloaded and there is no way the manufacturer could have reasonably thought that you're going to get hollow point expansion out of this now I may have ordered this and it says distributed by me wall my wall m-i-w-a-l-l my wall Corporation Grass Valley California and I'm going to have to say that this ammunition is so woefully underloaded that I can see no way to figure that it was responsibly manufactured at all it was put on the market due to what I'm going to call significant negligence or incompetence on the part of the manufacturer or just plain dishonesty and sometimes that's what you deal with in terms of why hollow points won't expand now there's a demonstration that I'm going to try to do to illustrate this let's see if it works now I have a new me Target set up and I have my Colt Government Model loaded with Remington green and white box 45 ACP 230 grain jacket hollow point let's see what kind of hollow point expansion we get with this foreign I fired four shots they all went through our meat Target and they were all stopped by the t-shirt on the back of the target for the first or second layer of fleece but let's take a close-up look at these projectiles and here's our projectiles and we can see that one has good hollow point expansion the other three the expansion is virtually non-existent so we see that with my testing protocol the 230 grain jacket hollow points didn't perform very well and I've done that exact same test on previous occasions and got basically the same results I've also used this pistol with that ammunition to shoot a deer and granted that's a sample size of one but still I saw no evidence of any hollow point expansion so with my testing protocols that ammunition performed poorly now I have to point out that in shooting the meat Target with my Kimber 1911 platform that has a six inch barrel instead of a five I got just enough more velocity that that Remington 230 grain jacket hollow point ammunition expanded pretty well but I have to conclude that when the people at Remington manufactured that ammo that they had to know that it was most likely going to be fired through a 1911 platform with a five inch barrel that's a very common type of pistol to shoot 45 ACP so it would appear that their testing Protocols are different than mine now I'm going to do a different test with a different testing protocol and keep in mind I am not in any way suggesting that this is what Remington does but I want to make this point I've got the fleece Bullet Stop set up here with a one gallon jug of water in front of it and I consider a water jug like this to be almost a perfect medium for hollow point expansion so again try a different testing protocol let's try that again and here's our projectiles all of which were stopped by the first or second layer of fleece and we see that three of our projectiles lost their jackets but there's very good hollow point expansion in all of our projectiles I guess it just depends on your testing protocol now I'm going to say again that I am not suggesting that Remington or any other manufacturer is doing a test that hyperbolic but you see my point sometimes if you do the right test you can get the right result so that having been said let's recap our four that we've gone through so far if you're not getting hollow point expansion it could be because inappropriate Target inappropriate barrel length because of hollow point clogging then remember honorable mention two sometimes if you shoot too far your bullet slows down before it gets to the Target because of inappropriate or insufficient or non-existent test protocols and that brings me to 0.5 for manufacturers that are not doing the right test protocols not doing realistic test protocols not keeping in mind that they're manufacturing and marketing a product that some people might have to bet their lives on for people that are doing that without the right test protocols I have to say 0.5 come on man so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the wire your hollow points not expanding video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 184,232

Keywords: paul harrell, hollow points, not expanding, expansion, 1911

Id: b9yu8WwT8mw

Length: 27min 53sec (1673 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 12 2023