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ShannonHayes
Posts: 211 Member
Fluted Ammo?
ShannonHayes
Posts: 211 Member
I was just reading the June issue of another gun magazine, and they had an article on fluted ammunition. Has anyone tested any of this at the range? Not that I don't trust gun writers, but I'd like feedback from more than just the guy writing the article, from more than one source, so to speak.
Replies
They had a recall of some lots of that ammo some years back. Long over, and all those lots should be long gone.
I bought that box of Ruger ARX ammo today and took it to the field with 2 half gal milk jugs and filled them with water at the creek.
I was using a Blackhawk.
Ammo shot to POA which was a pleasant surprise since it is 118 gr bullets and billed at 1307 fps. The jugs made a big slash when hit and flew off the section of pine log
I had them on; one jug split in half and the other was torn up badly.
There were 2 issues, one of the rnds had to be pushed hard into a chamber in the cylinder to seat all the way and when I unloaded that unfired rnd it took a lot of effort to push it back out.
The other rnds just dropped in and dropped out.
It is not dirty ammo though I only fired 2 rnds. I did not see any plastic smears in the barrel or chambers such as you can get from plastic wads
in a shotgun barrel.
I cast my own, and truthfully, I'm not really any less confident in the ability of flat-nosed solids of varying alloys and flat-nosed FMJ's chosen for varying applications to do the job than I am of the hyper-engineered duty loads of today. You can turn your energy into penetration or diameter. I'm in the camp of paranoid that it won't penetrate enough rather than paranoid that it will penetrate too much, so massive expansion or an effort to displace tissue is something I'm more concerned by than impressed by.
The reality of handgun rounds: they aren't striking fast enough to displace elastic tissue fast enough to cause tearing to a larger diameter than what the bullet actually touches, so these fluted slugs are probably just marketing fluff and their effect will be indistinguishable from the solid lead slugs of Wyatt Earp. With a 230 grain .45, you'll have finished a diameter of between .452" to a little over an inch - pretty insignificant really. The biggest mushrooms will stop in gel after about a foot and maybe not reach deep enough; the non-expanders will make a tunnel maybe three times longer, will reach what they need to, in the straight line they were launched on, and will probably exit. What's the goals here?
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! -- Mark Twain
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! -- Mark Twain
Winston Churchill