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Hornady Critical Defense in P3AT

10K views 14 replies 6 participants last post by  frank 
#1 ·
when deciding whether to carry the new hornady critical defense ammo, i decided to implement the wetpack method outlined in this section. the only problem i had was finding enough newspaper to provide sufficient resistance, as nobody apparently saves them back at my parent's house. between what i scrounged from my dad and grandmother, it made about 6 inches thick after soaking in a 5 gallon bucket of water for a couple of hours. i placed this in a box, backed by 2 layers of inch thick roof decking board of some evergreen consistency, probably spruce.

here's the setup from the front:


and the side:


and a measurement of depth with my hand:


i shot 5 rounds at the box, in the pattern shown here:


all 5 went through the paper and impacted the front board, as shown here. none fully penetrated it:


and finally, here are the resulting bullets. the one in the middle took a lower trajectory and contacted the bench that the box was sitting on, but the rest are beautiful. also included are 4 of the plastic inserts from the original bullets:


enjoy :D
 
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#2 ·
Nice work! :D

Do you have the ability to measure the expanded diameter of the bullets? Or could you give us an estimate?
 
#4 ·
well i don't have any calipers, but i do have metric wrenches and an adjustible with metric markings lol...

so on the basis that .380 is 9mm short, (confirmed by my adjustible), the bullets expanded at least 1mm. while the expansions were fairly uniform, the result is not perfectly circular, so at the narrowest point, none are below 10mm. at each's widest point, which is what i believe should count, we have 12.0mm, 11.5mm, 11.1mm, 11.4mm, and (flattened one) 12.0mm. as is scientifically accepted, the last significant figure is an estimate between the smallest markings of the tool.

as far as penetration, review of the video in the link pocket posted in the p3at forum showed penetration of ten (inches?) in the gel after passing through FBI spec "down". since i had limited thickness of newspaper (~6in), all 5 bullets were halted by the spruce decking board. it having been 3 years since i've taken a physics course, i'm not even going to attempt a conversion of coefficients of friction, but basically the 4 bullets that solidly contacted the wood were just below the original surface, so i would estimate that in pure newspaper, they would also have gone about 8-10inches.

another posibility of variation is that my shots were from about 8 ft away, while on the video they seem to be 10-12 ft away.

FWIW, my uncle (who now has my uncle mike's pocket holster :roll: ) shot his .32 FMJ at the same setup and it went all the way through... so at least this ammo has more energy transfer than .32 ACP lol.
 
#5 ·
12.0 mm = 0.472" - not bad at all. Also, it looks like the bullets actually get bigger than that at some point, then the petals start to fold back, making final diameter seem smaller.

p3atnewb, look into oldgrandpa's wetpack testing - he had it down to a science, and even had a conversion factor for wetpack to gel that seem to be pretty well verified. He would saturate a lot of newspaper.

Thanks for running the tests for us, and posting the pics. *)
 
#6 ·
i had read og's tests substantially before deciding to try the wetpack... your nudge to try out the ammo with one was what it took lol.

his comparison of wetpack to gel had a couple of different ratios of results, but is essentially between a 2:3 and 3:4, with the gel being more permeable than newspaper.

like i said, the tests are enough to convince me to load both mags with this ammo, and it's in my pocket as i type.
 
#7 ·
I think it is going to be a major performer. I have been on record for a long time saying the FBI standard for penetration (12"-14") doesn't apply to CCW by ordinary folks and/or with pocket pistols, and people are finally starting to get the message.

10+" with reliable expansion even through heavy clothing is impressive. All this at only 860 fps MV. I hope Hornady sells the FTX bullets so someone like Double Tap or Buffalo Bore can load it at 1000 fps or so. Buffalo Bore pushes the 90 gr Speer Gold Dot (same weight as the FTX) at over a 1000 fps from the P-3AT, so it should be something they can do.

I want to see come tests on bare gelatin also, but it sounds like the FTX will work the same way on either due to the rubberized plastic insert.
 
#8 ·
i think it would be fairly pointless to increase MV on this bullet design, as that would only result in the excessive FBI spec penetration... i'm counting on organ trauma rather than an exit wound to bring an attacker down... and they're </= 10+ inches inside a body lol.

that said, if double tap or BB could sell them cheaper than my other options, i'd give it a try *)
 
#9 ·
Its not that having more penetration isn't a good thing. I think it is great to get 14" and excellent expansion. The problem is people have been passing on expansion for years under the misguided belief that if they don't have 12" of penetration the ammo won't be effective, which is bunk IMO.

I would like to see how it performs at the higher velocity. If it gets 11" of penetration, or better expansion, so much the better. If the performance isn't as good, one can always go back to the 860 fps that is already available.

Generally, Double Tap offers better prices, and sells its stuff in boxes of 50 (instead of 20 or 25). Not sure about Buffalo Bore, but their site has been offline for a while now so I can't check. I think they are priced comparably to DT.
 
#10 ·
I want them to offer this bullet to reloaders. Even though the cases extracted from my P-3AT are beat-up to the point of being useless, I could use once fired brass at a reasonable price to experiment with my own loads.
 
#12 ·
Re:

pocketgun said:
Generally, Double Tap offers better prices, and sells its stuff in boxes of 50 (instead of 20 or 25). Not sure about Buffalo Bore, but their site has been offline for a while now so I can't check. I think they are priced comparably to DT.
that'd be nice on the double tap, this box i have came as 25, but i don't know what it cost since it came from my aunt and her boyfriend...

dilly i'd hate for you to use your last 2 bullets for diagnostics, what if you need them?
 
#14 ·
thanks for the test. I just ordered some from cabelas. Like their site said, took one week to arrive.

I was very skeptical of these bullets because if you look around with a detectives eye, all the hype right now seems to come from advertisers and not from backyard wet packs.

Really appreciate it.
 
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