Tag Archives: taurus

Ammo Quest – the search for the best ammo for the Taurus 738 TCP

Here at Shooting The Bull, I have a bit of a predisposition towards Taurus firearms. Not that they’re necessarily the highest quality, but — they’re extremely affordable, and in my experience they’re solid performers, and they offer a lot for the money. Plus, hey, Taurus goes well with the site’s name: I spend a lot of time Shooting The Bull (the Taurus pistol)…

Anyway — I picked up one of the most-talked-about Tauruses, a PT738 micro-pistol (also known as the TCP). This is a tiny pocket pistol which can easily be used for pocket carry or perhaps even ankle carry. It’s incredibly inexpensive (at $199, it’s about half the cost of the competition, the Ruger LCP) and it shoots very accurately and with a smooth trigger pull. I like it a lot.

But what to feed it? That’s the question, because, the bottom line is that it’s a .380 ACP pistol. And .380 ACP is generally considered a marginal round for self-defense purposes. Now, the TCP isn’t my primary everyday carry weapon; I carry a .45 ACP when I can, but sometimes you just need or want something lighter, smaller, easier to conceal, easier to carry, and the fact of the matter is that it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where you COULDN’T have the TCP with you. Sometimes a full-size or even compact .45 is just too big and doesn’t fit with what you’re wearing, but the tiny TCP can be a constant companion. And, hey, depending on how paranoid you may be feeling, you may want a backup gun, and the TCP is darn near perfect for that role. Except for the power of its main round, the .380 ACP…

… I am not going to be too much of a downer on .380. I think .380 is an okay choice. It’s not a great choice for your primary or only defensive pistol, but the .380 has enough oomph in it to serve the purpose of a defensive pistol, if it’s combined with the right ammo. I certainly wouldn’t want to be caught with anything smaller than a .380, but a .380 is right on the border of being adequate. I believe that with some ammo, it’s inadequate, but with other ammo it crosses the line to where it’s okay.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m betting my life on a pistol’s ability to defend me, I definitely want at LEAST “okay” and I’d certainly prefer “GOOD” or “GREAT”! Which is why, again, my daily carry is a .45, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. What I’m looking for here is — how good can this little .380 be? It shoots great, it’s very comfortable, it is extremely compact and portable, so if we can just find a type of ammo that delivers satisfactory results, well — how cool would that be?

I’ll tell you — it’d be pretty frickin’ fantastic.

So, I have commenced my Ammo Quest. I’m testing out various brands and types of ammunition to see how they perform specifically from the TCP (and, I would venture to say, the results from the TCP should be directly applicable to the Ruger LCP or any other comparably-sized, comparable-barrel-length .380 pistol). I’m conducting controlled testing using ClearBallistics.com’s ballistic gel, and a ProChrono chronograph. I’ll be testing for penetration and expansion, weighing and measuring the bullets, and coming to some conclusions about each particular ammo’s suitability for the task of personal defense.

Standards For Evaluation

The standard will I be judging against is the FBI report “Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness.” This is the 1989 study commissioned after the “Miami shootout” wherein several direct hits on some determined shooters failed to actually stop or incapacitate them. The FBI report is the result of some exhaustive research to find out why bullets stop people, and what factors in ammunition performance are important in bringing about an effective quick stop. I won’t go into too much of it here (because, hey, I even linked to the report, so you can read it for yourself) but I just want to point out the two main takeaways that I’m going with:

1) Minimum Penetration

In a short summary, penetration is the most important factor in bullet performance; if a bullet doesn’t penetrate deeply enough to hit the vital organs, then nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter if you have perfect shot placement, if the bullet can’t penetrate deeply enough to affect what you were shooting at. And, it doesn’t matter how big the bullet is, if it doesn’t penetrate deeply enough to hit something that matters. If you are being attacked by a morbidly obese person, and you shoot a huge .45 caliber bullet with perfect placement right to the heart, but the bullet stops after penetrating just six inches of outer fat layers, well — it might hurt, and it’ll bleed, but it won’t actually physically incapacitate that attacker. Simply put, it’s GOT to penetrate deep enough to hit a vital organ, artery, or the central nervous system in order to force immediate incapacitation. Anything less is, well, less. The FBI report specifies a minimum acceptable penetration depth of 12″ in ballistic gelatin.

2) Bullet Size

This one’s simple — the bigger the bullet, the more damage it will do, and the more likely it will be to hit something vital. A little full-metal-jacket might penetrate deep enough, but it may be so small as to slip right between the heart and an artery, causing no significant damage; whereas a big expanded hollow point shot at the exact same point of aim might be so big as to hit both vitals. When it comes to damage, bigger is better. Once you have adequate penetration, you want the bullet to get as big as possible.

What Can The 380 Do?

The 380 starts off with its hands tied behind its back, as it’s not a very big bullet and it’s not very powerful. It is actually the same diameter as a 9mm bullet, but 9mm has so much more room in its casing for powder, and is designed to operate at such higher pressure, that it can propel a heavier bullet at faster speeds and expand more. 380 can’t quite accomplish that.

above: 9mm (left) and .380 ACP (right)

So what CAN a 380 do? That’s what I’m trying to find out. I know the .380 can and has been used effectively before. But can it do so consistently? Can it meet the FBI spec, especially when fired from a micro-sized pistol? Probably not, but let’s find out if it can, or at least, how close can it come? I mean, if I can find an expanding hollow point that grows to the size of a .45, and also penetrates a consistent 11″, well, that might not meet the FBI specification but I think most of us would agree that that would be totally acceptable for us; we are, after all, not the FBI (er, unless you are an FBI agent, I guess); and we’re not going to likely be put in a position of multiple attackers shooting from multiple angles and having to shoot through car doors and windshields and all the other things the FBI tests for. I’m not really interested in all that; I’m just looking for reasonable performance such that I can have reasonable confidence that the little TCP will be reasonably effective.

What about FMJ’s?

It’s true that a full-metal jacket bullet will indeed provide enough penetration, even more than enough penetration, from a .380. So why not just use FMJ’s? Well, there’s really three drawbacks to using FMJ’s for defensive purposes:

1) They don’t expand, so they’re usually relatively/comparatively small bullets, and smaller is not better when you’re looking for damage that will incapacitate an attacker.

2) They don’t inherently do a lot of damage, as they’re comparatively “slippery.” Soft tissue in a human body is usually quite flexible and stretchable, and an FMJ might just zing right through an attacker by pushing the tissue out of the way, without actually crushing or damaging much tissue. A hollow point expands with sharp petals that cut and slice their way through, causing vastly more damage; an FMJ isn’t all that damaging of a round. It’ll make a hole, yes, and if that hole were to be placed through the brain or spine that would certainly stop the attack, but — that’s a really tough shot to hit; in general, FMJ’s aren’t all that effective unless they’re bigger and heavier and they tumble. A typical 90-grain FMJ from a .380 isn’t likely to be a potent manstopper.

3) FMJ’s penetrate very deeply, perhaps too deeply. There’s a limit on how much penetration you want from a bullet. Generally 14 to 15″ is ideal. The FBI’s acceptable range is 12 to 18″. You don’t want more than 18″, because that’s a pretty good sign that the bullet is not going to stop lodged in your attacker, instead it’s going to exit out the back and keep going — and that’s risky, because it’s going to stop SOMEWHERE. If not in the attacker, where will it stop? A bystander? In general overpenetration is something that would ideally be avoided, and that’s one thing hollow points are great at; they normally expand to such a large size that they increase their drag so much that they come to a stop without exiting the target. The same can’t be said for FMJ’s.

So in general, I’m not really looking forward to using FMJ’s. If I can’t find any ammo that expands well and penetrates deeply enough, then I may have to resort to FMJ’s, but they’re certainly not my first choice.

The Quest

I know the odds are against me finding a reliable, consistent, deep 12+” performer in .380 ACP, but I’m going to give it a good thorough search. At this moment I’ve secured some of the most well-known defensive ammo brands, including Winchester Ranger-T’s, Speer Gold Dots, Winchester PDX1, Remington Golden Saber, and even some Remington 88-grain UMC hollow-points. There are lots more that I’d like to test, but the Great Ammo Drought of 2013 is making it hard to find .380 ammo. If I can find it, I’ll test it, and you can see the results right here on www.shootingthebull.net, or on my YouTube channel. If you have a request for a specific ammo to test, leave it in the comments and I’ll see if I can accommodate. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy future installments of this Ammo Quest.

Testing the GoPro Hero 3 Black slow-moootion camera

First video launched – review of Bullistic gels

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One thing I’ve noticed in using, reviewing, and reading about various rounds of ammo is — a lot of people don’t have any idea how well their bullets actually perform. For most of us, we pretty much have to take the manufacturer’s word, or pick based on what’s new and fancy or what has a pretty package or the biggest ad in the magazine, or what the bloggers are writing about.

Is that sane? I mean, if you’re carrying a firearm or have one in your home for self defense purposes, you’re pretty much betting your life that the rounds you’ve chosen are going to get the job done, aren’t you? And since that’s the case, it’d be nice to know how those rounds really perform, from your particular gun…

… which leads us to the whole realm of bullet testing and ballistics gelatin. There are lots of ammo tests on YouTube, but I’ve been pretty shocked by just how unscientific and, well, let me just say it — random and unreliable many of them are. There are a few people who seem to know what they’re doing, but for every one of them, there’s a hundred people out there shooting water jugs, or newspaper, or mixing up food-grade jello and shooting that, and they’re doing so in such an uncontrolled and unscientific way that the results they’re getting are … well, they’re maybe entertaining, but they’re far from accurate and definitive.

I plan on doing a lot of ammo testing here at Shooting The Bull, and as far as I’m concerned, if the results aren’t accurate, repeatable, and reliable, then there’s no point in publishing them. I don’t plan on shooting a plate of jello and claiming that it’s going to be the same as ballistics gel! When something’s as unpredictable as bullets are, nobody can ever claim that their testing results are absolutely definitive, but — I think we can do a lot better than shooting into a water jug.

Ballistic Gelatin

So how DO you test ammo to see how it performs? The standard is genuine 10% ordnance gelatin, otherwise known as “ballistic gel”. It’s consistent, it emulates the density of muscle tissue, and it has been correlated against actual bullet wounds in people and in animals to show that it is, indeed accurate. Which is fine and dandy, but how does that help you? Because ordnance gelatin is not exactly something you have in your cupboard, you don’t pop down to the Wal-Mart and pick up a block of ordnance gelatin, and even if you were to buy some (from these guys) then you still have a lot of work in front of you — you have to properly prepare it, you have to properly cool it, you have to properly store it, and you have to properly shoot it. It’s no picnic, especially because, well, I guess you could eat it at a picnic, but I wouldn’t recommend it, as it’s basically boiled up pig skin and ligaments and tendons and all that nasty stuff. And once you’re done shooting it, you really want to get it examined and discarded as soon as possible because the longer it sits there, the nastier it gets. It’s basically boiled up meat products, and it’ll start to rot and stink like rotting meat after a little while.

But, if you manage to buy the right stuff, and mix it properly, and refrigerate it for two or three days so it gels properly, and you can keep it at no more than 41 degrees, and you manage to shoot it within less than 20 minutes of pulling it from the refrigerator, and you manage to shoot a steel BB into it at 590 feet per second and the BB penetrates between 2.95 to 3.74″, no more, no less (these are all the steps you need to take to make sure the gel is actually usable), then you can get excellent results. And if you mess up on any of these steps? If you buy Knox gelatin from the grocery store, or you heat the water too hot, or you don’t dissolve the gelatin perfectly (takes about 20 minutes of constant stirring, trickling the powder into the water slowly and methodically), then your block won’t be any good and your results will be useless. Or if you don’t store it properly, in a refrigerator set for 39 degrees, for at least 36 hours, it won’t set properly, and again won’t be useful. And if you leave it in the sun or take too long to shoot it (so that the core temperature rises above 41 degrees in the block) then it won’t calibrate properly, again rendering your results useless. Oh, and did I point out that these blocks cost around $42 each to make, and can only be used once?

So, yeah, real ordnance gelatin is not really for the hobbyist. It’s too expensive to do on an ongoing basis, and it’s too much work with too many “gotchas” if you mess up any of the steps. It’d be profoundly disheartening to spend the money, the time to make it, the time to cool it, find a way to safely and properly transport the gelatin to a shooting range, and then find out that when you shoot a BB into it you get the wrong results! Then you have to throw the block away and start over. (Note, there is a formula that can be used to rescue you in such a situation, in Duncan Macpherson’s book “Bullet Penetration”, but the book’s out of print, the author’s deceased, and the only way to buy it now is used, and my copy cost over $80 so … there’s no easy way out of that mess).

Common Alternatives

With so much precision necessary, is it any wonder that people have turned to alternatives? Water jugs, “wet pack” newspaper, or Knox unflavored gelatin are three of the most common, but they’re all, for various reasons, just bad ideas. The water jugs, well, I’ll leave that for another article, I’ve got lots to say about that, but let me just say that I think water jugs are a terrible way to test ammo. Popular, certainly, but still a lousy, inaccurate, deceptive, misleading way to do it. Wet pack newspaper is better, but it still isn’t reliable, or accurate, and doesn’t give controlled results. And Knox gelatin… that’s just kind of silly, because while it is in the same family as ordnance gelatin, it by very definition ISN’T ordnance gelatin. If it was, it’d have been sold to the ordnance gel industry; gelatin that fails to qualify for ordnance gel specifications gets sold to the food industry, so, by very virtue of it being sold as food, you know it isn’t real ordnance gelatin. It doesn’t meet the standards. That said, if you had to go with a homemade solution, you could come closer to accurate by using the Knox stuff than by using water jugs or wetpack, but … why bother? To get the most accurate results you’ll have to go through all the same work, all the same effort, all the same storage and temperature requirements, and … here’s the kicker … if you’re buying enough Knox gelatin to make a 20-pound block (you’d need 32 ounces of gelatin powder to make one 20-lb block) then… it’ll cost you just about as much as ordnance gelatin would! So why not buy the real stuff instead of using some homemade grocery store substitute?

Viable Ballistic Gelatin Alternatives

So what’s a person to do? If you can’t afford, or don’t want to deal with, ordnance gelatin, what are the real and useful alternatives? There are two. One, shooting real water (NOT water jugs!), is a true no-cost way to go, and can, when done properly, yield real world results. I will be doing a complete article and video on how to use water for real ammunition testing; for those who don’t want to wait for the article and want to start exploring it now, you can get Duncan MacPherson’s book “Bullet Penetration” or Charles Schwartz’s book “Quantitative Ammunition Selection”.

The other option, and one that I find very appealing, is to use one of the new synthetic ballistic gel substitutes on the market, such as the clear ballistic gel from www.ClearBallistics.com. This product has been introduced to the market within the last year, and it presents itself as a comparable substitute to genuine, organic 10% ordnance gelatin. That’s really interesting to me, because — as a synthetic, it should be immune to most of the problems I have with using regular ballistic gel: it doesn’t need to be refrigerated, it doesn’t rot, it doesn’t require being at a specific temperature, and, perhaps most significantly to the independent ammo tester, the gel blocks can be reused! You can re-melt and reform them multiple times, which really brings down the cost-per-block cost. They’re initially more expensive than a block of ordnance gelatin would be (today’s pricing looks to be $129.99 for an “FBI Block”) but if you re-use it twice, you’re already money ahead. Re-use it 10 times and it’ll be way less expensive than ordnance gelatin. And, there’s no rush! You can leave it stored at room temperature for a week, or a month, or a year, and it’ll still be there. With ordnance gelatin, you have to use it within a few days or it’ll start rotting.

Testing ClearBallistics Gel

So, yes, I was very intrigued by this stuff. I didn’t expect it to be exactly the same as ballistic gel (heck, one’s organic and one’s synthetic, after all) but — I mean, how good is it? Does it work? Can you actually use it and get usable, real-world results from it?

Let’s find out. Head on over to the YouTube channel and watch the review.

Spoilers!

Watch the video first before reading this section. Or, if you don’t want to watch the entire video review, I’ll tell you right now the basic take-away: yes, it works. No, it’s not 100% exact. With hollowpoints, I got about 94.4% the same penetration, and 94.5% the same expansion. With buckshot, it was basically 100% the same penetration and 98.9% the same pellet deformation. May not be perfect, but it beats the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of shooting a pack of wet newspaper or a jug of water! I was really impressed with just how usable this stuff is, and how close it mimics real ordnance gelatin. It was basically 94.4% the same penetration, plus or minus about 5%, so definitely close. I’ll be doing more specific tests to narrow down the statistical deviations and get a specific comparison, but for now, I would say that I would definitely trust ClearBallistics gel over homemade Knox gelatin, or wet-pack, or clay or wax or estimating penetration in water by saying “well, a bullet in water will travel about 1.6 to 2.5x as far as it would in gel”. Those results are all unscientific and ballpark, whereas the ClearBallistics gel delivers results that are quite comparable to real ballistics gel, but without any of the associated hassles or inconveniences. It ain’t perfect, but in my opinion it’s far and away the best substitute for ordnance gelatin. If you can’t (or don’t want to) use the organic stuff, ClearBallistics gel is a great alternative.