Frangible bullets

[alphie]

I have a friend who reloads with frangible bullets. I'm guessing this might be a stupid question, but what is the advantage to these other than the indoor range where he shoots requires these bullets.

 

[maine04619]

Well no ricochets. Then there is the way they behave in a home like not passing through solids ( walls). I use them for steel as do most as they basiccly turn to powder when they hit so you can shoot steel form 5 foot away and get nothing on you though now and again you do get a small bit of flyback..

 

[SGB]

There are no advantages to frangible ammunition for self defense use, quite the opposite as frangible ammunition would put you at a disadvantage.

 

[NationalPoliceAmmunition]

I load primarily frangible and it's great for steel shooting. A lot of what we make uses a lead-free primer which means a lot less lead exposure for the shooter if your course of fire is several hundred rounds. It's more expensive but if you have to shoot steel frang. is the way to go

 

[BigSlick]

Frangible ammunition behaves like ball ammo on soft tissue without breaking up and tends to over penetrate. They are designed to break apart only when they hit an object that is harder than the composite material. Penetration in gelatin is often greater than 20 inches with no fragmentation. Their light weight makes them extremely fast. In testing, 9mm 87gr Greenshield frangible ammunition with velocities of nearly 1600 FPS was able to fully perforate soft armor, but would completely shatter against 5 mm steel plate with no visible damage to the steel. It would chunk out a 3 inch deep divot when fired against a reinforced concrete wall. Federal .223 26 gr frangible training ammunition fragmented completely against steel, easily penetrated soft body armor but in soft tissue tests created wounds of no greater severity than seen with a non-deforming .22 LR projectile.

I was curious when these first appeared on the market and during a business trip stopped by a popular gun shop that sold reloading supplies. I picked up some .40 cal. no-name brand bullets. The bullets were the same length and size as a 180gr bullet but weighed only 105gr. Unable to find the loading specs on a 105gr bullet I used a powder charge for a 135gr and worked my way up to 8.0gr of HP-38. Fired through a Glock 22, these things would easily penetrate 6 inches of hard wood where a typical .40 cal 180gr bullet would not and would completely disintegrate on my steel target knocking off only the paint. I set up 3 one gallon water jugs for one test. Fired from a Glock 27, the round passed through all 3 containers leaving the last one almost split in half. I made a crude video which can be seen below. The last target in the video was a section of cut mountain stone left over from the construction on my house. This round disintegrated leaving only a white mark on the stone. The rounds shown in the video were my first loads of 7.0gr. I have no idea of the FPS as I did not have a working chrono at the time. I don't have the video of the wood penetration as I quickly lost interest in frangible reloading. I still have about 20 rounds left over which I saved for a conversation piece. Bottom line for me is I'm sticking to Hornady Critical Defense.

 

[jumbofrank]

Interesting video.

 

[maybejim]

I've never seen claims about frangibles having more penetration than other bullets. I have to question any claims about them when accompanied with "evidence" of no name bullets not fragmenting. Everything I have read about the commercial frangibles have said the opposite.