On The Range Again - Clever Government Thinking:

 It was good to be out with good company in the fresh air again .. except the New Zealand Spring weather dropped the daytime temperature to around 7 C. and bucketed-down freezing cold, near-snow wet-stuff onto the proceedings. - Ah well you can't have everything eh - and it was great to be nearly out of COVID LOCKDOWN once more.

I took a 38 S&W(short) 4 inch Webley and some blocks of  'ballistic' Plasticine to further test and compare how Hornady's lead 148 grain HBWC might consistently perform.

I had fun with other handguns including my Glock G44 rimfire - but that's not in this story.

I'm trying to build-up a picture of just how effective an obsolete underpowered cartridge fired from a vintage WWII "weak" break-action revolver can perform. - This would be decried as a total wimp mouse-gun by many US Gun Experts - but the results differ ..

I have loaded these flat-ended soft lead Wadcutters inserted both conventionally and 'inverted'. I locate them hanging out of the stubby brass by around 3/16 inch (rather than flush with the case mouth - as is usual in a .38 Special ) and held them in place with a firm roll crimp over a very small charge of ADI  AP70N powder.

When shooting I was initially caught-out by the inverted loads hitting an inch lower than the conventional - but we got there in the end and made some properly placed hits.

    Inverted Wadcutters                  Normal Forward Facing ..

The  "proper wadcutters" penetrated some 6 inches of clay whereas the backwards bullets punched through 3 inches - only half as far - but MUSHROOMED perfectly to .650" - .700" .. nearly 100% expansion.

My guess from other testers' results is that these rounds in 10% Ballistic Gel would travel around two to three times further in the jelly than in the 'clay'. - So you get to pick penetration versus expansion .. or maybe you might alternate the loads in your cylinder and aim your sights a little higher.

Ballistic gelatin is a testing medium designed to simulate the effects of bullet wounds in animal muscle tissue. It was developed and improved by Martin Fackler and others in the field of wound ballistics. It is calibrated to match porcine muscle, which is itself ballistically similar to human muscle tissue.

- Guess no.2 is that these results would be similar to those using 38 S&W Special brass in an appropriate revolver.

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I've worked-out that one reason the dollar-greedy marketers keep pushing newer "HOT" miracle guns & calibers with "knock-down power" as being essential upgrades - is that gun makers cannot make any extra profit by telling you in the Gun magazines that THE NUMBER ONE IMPORTANT ISSUE is actually HITTING YOUR TARGET .. with whatever you already own. Their stories are selling you "the sizzle" to make you want to give the manufacturers lots of your hard earned money.

ALL firearms work more-or-less .. As long as you reliably hit close to your aim point. - Don't stand in front of ANY loaded gun - old or new.

Marty K.

P.S. If I were to live somewhere that my Basic Civil Rights were not refused-denied by corrupt politicians .. I might be asked what would be my choice of caliber and handgun for self defense.

- Currently I would consider my Glock G19X  9mm appendix carried would do very well - with perhaps either my Ruger SP101 revolver in 327 Federal Magnum or the Webley 38-200 as a 'back-up'.

- But so much depends on what you have got and where do you live eh ..

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PPS ..

Is anyone else wondering why the 'GUN FREE' Mother Country UK didn't put nuclear driven engines into their two brand-new Elizabeth Class AIRCRAFT CARRIERS that haven't got any aircraft?

They have got stored around 140 metric tons of PLUTONIUM up in Cumbria - enough to make 28,000 nuclear warheads .. so they could have used a bit of it to push their costly white elephants  proud vessels about the seas instead of having a fleet of oil tankers follow them around eh.

That 140 ton mountain of plutonium is stored at the THORP Plant - Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant

.. that used to be called SELLAFIELD  

.. that used to be called WINDSCALE 

.. that was originally called CALDER HALL - in CUMBRIA 

.. that used to be called CUMBERLAND.

Every contamination 'radiation event' seems to be followed by by a name change - to confuse interested parties ..?

- I think they still call England 'GREAT BRITAIN' ??

- Politicians eh 

Marty K.