45 cal SWC FOR PRACTICAL APPLICATION

[urbantchr]

For the sake of consistency I've always used my field loads for practice. In my 1911s, I've fired many different " magic bullet" types, but never invested $$$ in shooting much of them. Years ago l settled on loading lead LSWCs. The low pressure/velocity of the 45acp makes lead an option at standard velocity, and the lower cost means shooting about 3 times as much as jacketed, while the cost of "magic bullets" prohibits much practice with them.
In Veral Smith's book "Jacketed Performance With Cast Bullets", l seem to recall (loaned mine, and never returned) a discussion of the excellent terminal effect of flat nosed lead bullets which gave me confidence in using LSWC for defense, fortunately never needed as yet. Also, maybe 3 times more practice means 3 times better shot placement, resulting in the LSWC choice being equally as effective as the Magic Bullets. Thoughts?

 

[Boondock Saint]

I would think that if LSWCs were at least as good as modern JHPs for defensive use, they would be in wide use around the country as a presumably cheaper alternative.

 

[John from MD]

The SWC was developed to allow a bullet that will cut paper cleanly feed in a semi auto handgun.
When the Bullseye shooters were mostly shooting revolvers, they found that the wad cutter cut clean holes in targets making them easy to see and score. When gunsmiths started accurizing 1911's and Hi Power's, they needed a bullet that would do the same as well as feed properly so the semi wad cutter came into vogue.

I do recall SuperVel made SWC loaded .357 loads but that was really to get Police Department orders as they were mostly shooting 158gn LRN bullets at the time. I saw this all taking place in the 1960's when I was a junior Bullseye shooter.

 

[eightshot627]

The flat pointed lead bullets they talk about are the "Keith" style bullets with a wide sharp leading edge. My experience hunting groundhogs with LSWC out of a 44 and 45 is not good. Unless a head shot they would just run back in the hole. It just ice picked them. Reading up on it a hard cast LSWC acts like a FMJ in flesh. I did have good luck with full wad cutters on groundhogs. I'd practice with the LSWC and find a JHP that goes to the same point of aim for carry.

Walt

 

[lazarus]

The flat pointed lead bullets they talk about are the "Keith" style bullets with a wide sharp leading edge. My experience hunting groundhogs with LSWC out of a 44 and 45 is not good. Unless a head shot they would just run back in the hole. It just ice picked them. Reading up on it a hard cast LSWC acts like a FMJ in flesh. I did have good luck with full wad cutters on groundhogs. I'd practice with the LSWC and find a JHP that goes to the same point of aim for carry.

Walt

A flat nose will cut a slightly nicer wound channel than a round nose will as it does have an increased amount of crushing of the flesh rather than just parting it and pushing it around. I am not sure the effect that a flat point or SWC is going to have it really that much more pronounced than a round nose to be of all THAT much value. A 45 is a 45 is a 45 and it has a much bigger wound channel than a non-expanding bullet that is smaller with the exception of hypervelocity stuff, or something that tumbles.

On that later, a longer bullet is more likely to tumble as it is less gyroscopically stable and especially on entering a medium that slows it rapidly...basically heavy for weight bullets are more likely to make a real mess of things. Extra points for solid copper bullets since they are especially long for their mass making them less stable and also easier to flip.

But that said, OP should just find a modern good expanding JHP and stick with that for carry, so long as it'll feed reliably in their gun, and then just practice with something that shoots very close to the same point of aim and has roughly the same recoil.

I hear less expensive to shoot. However, how much do you really need to practice with your carry ammo? Yeah I have loads that shoot very far off from other ones, but ones of my loads shoot pretty close to each other at the practical distance I am practicing at. Sure, yup, I shoot at 50yds sometimes and its fun shooting clays off the berm at that distance. But at 7 or 12yds, the fact that one load hits an inch over from a different load makes no practical difference to training. I am not trying to put a round through a gnat's eye or bullseye shoot for practical defensive shooting. And if I am, I am pulling out my supremely accurate Browning Buckmark 22, which I'd only use for defensive purposes if I happened to be working a trap line and I got attacked by a mugger in the woods. If it shoots 4 or 5 inches off from my defensive load at 12yds, okay that makes a practical difference.

As for cost of shooting, I can't be the judge of that for anyone. What your budget is, is your budget. I am lucky enough that my income is such that money is not a real barrier to how much I shoot/practice. My time is. My time is a significantly large limitation. If when I am up to shooting many thousands of rounds out of whatever my carry gun is a year I'll worry a lot more about cost. Now I do NOT shoot all defensive ammo out of my carry gun(s) or bedside gun(s). I am not made of THAT much money. But if it costs me 25 cents a round to shoot 230gr RNFMJ reloads that shoot roughly like the 230gr JHP defensive ammo loaded in the magazines in my safe, or 20 cent RNFMJ 115s shoot pretty similar to the 124gr JHP +p I am not too mussed that if I ran pure lead I might save 2-3 cents a round, or casting my own I might save 3-5 cents a round. Or even 8-12 cents a round if I got the lead for free. Not sure where OP is finding lead rounds for 3x less price than jacketed. For commercially loaded ammo, I am seeing maybe a 1-3 cents per round difference, which is maybe 3-5% cheaper than jacketed. Handloading unless you are casting your own free lead, I can find 9mm jacketed bullets for as cheap as 7 cents a bullet for 115gr .355" bullets and around 14 cents a bullet for 230gr .451". Pure lead I can find .356" bullets for about 5.5 cents a round and .452" 230gr for around 11 cents a round. If it is in comparison to defensive loads, handloading the price is still not that dramatically cheaper. I can find defensive .355" JHP (good JHP!) for 20-30 cents a bullet and .451" for 25-45 cents a bullet depending on what it is and the source. I happen to generally load Hornady XTP because they are fairly inexpensive, they generally seem to perform decently so long as they are usually pushed towards the upper end of their velocity and almost never seem to come apart unless you push them WAY above their velocity range, even against things like auto glass. There are better bullets, but there are plenty of worse bullets. Even very modern JHPs there are worse bullets under certain same circumstances. That can be found shipped for around 20-25 cents a bullet for .355" and about 28-35 cents a bullet for .451". Sometimes cheaper for 2nds/blems in bulk I got 500 230gr .451" XTP for about $86 shipped with tax a year ago. I happened to get some 147gr Gold dots, which I'd also trust, for around $65 shipped for 500 8 months ago.

Anyway, the only way lead SWC is 1/3rd the price of a defensive .45acp JHP is if you are only looking at the price of a bullet, which only means the final round is more like 1/3rd less (about 65% of the price) than a defensive handload because of the cheaper bullet, unless you don't account for the other components (I am assuming range/reused brass. If new brass than the price differential is a lot less). Or you are ignoring the component cost because you bought several (or several dozen) pounds of powder years ago and also have a lifetime supply of primers you bought at 2-3 cents a primer years ago. So your only cost concern is the bullet.

If the later, good on you. But then I honestly do have to ask, how much do you shoot or how limited is your income that it costs you ~10 cents a round for 185gr lead bullets vs 30 cents a round for JHP, or even 15 or 16 cents a round for FMJ and you are so price sensitive that the difference means you are ACTUALLY shooting 3x more with lead than a jacketed bullet (I assume jacketed to mean JHP in this case, because you can't get lead for 3x less than an FMJ unless you are way overpaying for FMJ, or you are sourcing lead below market rate and casting your own). If that's the case, I apologize. But 5200 rounds a year is 100 rounds a week. The cost of lead would be ~$520 is all of the other components were free and FMJ would be around $830 a year and good JHP would be around $1600 a year. Of course if you worked at it, you could likely save $100-200 a year sourcing some cheap FMJ and around $200-500 a year sourcing cheap JHP (cheap I mean 2nds/blems/sale prices). I realize a few hundred bucks can be a deterrent. But very, very few people are shooting 5200 rounds a year from a single gun, unless they are competitors or trainers. If you were accounting for the price of all components though lead would be around $1400 a year for the same 5200 rounds a year, FMJ around $1750 a year and JHP would be around $2500 a year.

Sorry, long post to say, just load what shoots to roughly the same POI as your defensive load and has fairly similar recoil (ideally). There is a reason most departments and people train with an FMJ and not a defensive load. You don't need to run thousands, or even generally many hundreds of rounds of defensive ammo through your pistol every year. You WOULD want to run at least a couple of hundred through it to ensure it runs reliably. If you are running a 1911, JHP could be an issue. Tipped JHP probably isn't an issue (and plenty of 1911s run JHPs just fine, especially more modern 1911s). 200 rounds of a good defensive ammo right now is about $250-350 for .45acp. Which is kind of dear. That's about how much you should shoot to ensure it works well. If it does, another 200 doubles the price and then gives you enough defensive ammo for carry, plus shoot a box a year to make sure the ammo still works fine, no reliability issues, the ammo isn't "going bad" or there are components wearing out in your handgun that another type of ammo isn't showing issues with. And then shoot lead/jacketed ball ammo at 1/3-1/2 the price that shoots to a similar POI. Which might take a bit of experimentation, but probably isn't any worse than buying 4-6 boxes of a similar weight bullet to find one that is very close.

PS a SWC is generally not going to expand at all, unless you are handloading a particularly soft lead to fairly high velocities. A WC is a lot more likely to expand. But even there, you'd need to push it fairly fast. A HP lead bullet will typically expand unless you are casting it hard. JHP bullets are typically using a much softer lead than what you'd want to load with, but the jacket ensures it is not leading the barrel. And then the cavity enhances the hydrostatic pressure significantly. Which is why JHP can expand 50-90% larger than the diameter of the original bullet when cast lead, even fairly soft mixes usually don't expand or might expand 5-15%, unless you are casting/drilling/pressing a cavity in the nose and/or casting a very soft mix that might well be leading your barrel.

 

[lazarus]

My other thought is a .45 that doesn't expand is better than a 9mm that doesn't expand. And a .45 that doesn't expand is almost as good as most 9mm that expands okay. At least against people. Looking at typical expanded diameters of 9mm defensive loads, most are typically expanding to around .50". Some a little less, some a little more. Which is a little better than .45acp ball, but not by much. Then again, only marginally better terminal effectiveness (IMHO) for that 9mm JHP, you typically get 50% more ammo capacity and reduced recoil. Also lower cost to shoot by a lot.

Now a .45 acp that does expand might expand to .6-.8". A lot a lot better. But you do have the increased recoil, reduced ammunition capacity and much higher cost. I've got 45s and I LOVE the round. Both for plinking and reloading. And if my 45acp defensive ammo doesn't expand, well I am still putting a .45 inch hole straight through whatever I hit (supposing it doesn't tumble and it puts a WAY bigger hole through). But a 45 isn't something I'd normally carry because it'll be slower to shoot for the same accuracy and significantly less ammo capacity. And training cost is >>>. To each their own. If someone told me I could only carry 10 rounds, but it could be any 10 rounds, I'd carry a 45acp over anything else. But if I was not limited in how many rounds I could carry, I'd rather carry 15 of 9mm than 10-11 of .45acp.