Federal Syntech Defense SJHP 9mm 138 grain

Browning · Jul 20, 2019

Tested those Federal 138 grain SJHP 9mm hollow points on jugs of water and while they partially fragmented, they didn’t expand.

One gallon milk jug of water and then three antifreeze bottles. Four jugs in total.

Should have taken a pic, but I didn’t.

Bullet lodged in between the 3rd and fourth jug. Didn’t expand, but there were blue fragments in the 3rd jug.

Kinda disappointed that it didn’t expand.

Anyone else shoot this stuff?

fxvr5 · Jul 20, 2019

They're not supposed to expand. They are supposed to fragment. Look at the picture on the box!!!

Browning · Jul 20, 2019

fxvr5 said:
They're not supposed to expand. They are supposed to fragment. Look at the picture on the box!!!

I was under the impression that part of it fragmented and the front part expanded. So much for watching YouTube.

Snowdog · Jul 21, 2019

Thanks for the pictures. I bought 5 boxes of these from Target Sports USA (something like $12/20) just yesterday and they should be in next week. Before I purchase anything, I'll research it first. All the YouTube videos I could find showed the same thing, 3 fragments veering off a few inches from the center and penetrating to more than 6" (some much deeper) in ballistic gelatin with the remaining base continuing on to about 18".

Not a single video showed any type of expansion of the core. All the videos showed a recovered core in exactly the form you recovered from your test, so... you had a successful test. I don't think these are the cat's meow for anything but they're not too shabby either. I bought them for the neato factor as it's heavy in that attribute.

Browning · Jul 21, 2019

Snowdog said:
Thanks for the pictures. I bought 5 boxes of these from Target Sports USA (something like $12/20) just yesterday and they should be in next week. Before I purchase anything, I'll research it first. All the YouTube videos I could find showed the same thing, 3 fragments veering off a few inches from the center and penetrating to more than 6" (some much deeper) in ballistic gelatin with the remaining base continuing on to about 18".

Usually I’ll research it as well. In this case it was reversed. Saw it on the shelf and bought two boxes.

In the one video I watched the reviewer zoomed in on the fragments and then showed where the bullet came to rest and used the word ‘expansion’.

Now that totally could have been habit (I’m sure he uses that word a lot) and it never zoomed in on an expanded bullet. However that’s what I was looking for, ‘expansion’.

Might have been the person watching it (me) and a failure of comprehension on my part. I don’t know.

At any rate it worked as intended. :Shrug

I guess despite my initial misgivings I don’t have any complaints.

Snowdog · Jul 21, 2019

Browning said:
I guess despite my initial misgivings I don’t have any complaints.

If you intend to use this round for defense, I believe it will serve you well. It appears it always wants to fragment even after heavy clothing and leather. It also appears to always provide a near constant 18" of penetration in gel.

Do you have any idea what kind of material is being used in the projectile? the grain structure does not resemble lead in the photos I've seen. It appears to be some form of hard/brittle metal composite material.

TTv2 · Jul 21, 2019

Can't say I'd want to carry this ammo as I don't think penetration is reliable thru barriers, but inside the home where I don't want overpentration, this may find its way into my handguns.

Browning · Jul 21, 2019

Snowdog said:
Do you have any idea what kind of material is being used in the projectile? the grain structure does not resemble lead in the photos I've seen. It appears to be some form of hard/brittle metal composite material.

After some looking I found this ...

Federal Premium has taken ammunition in a new direction. Instead of using a copper jacket, the company coated a lead core bullet with a synthetic jacket for its Syntech ammunition. Federal has now introduced Syntech Defense loads. The hollow-point bullet separates into three segments and these segments create three secondary wound channels more than 6 inches deep. The core achieves 12 to 18 inches of penetration in both bare ballistics gel and through heavy clothing. The blue polymer jacket reduces barrel heat and friction and eliminates metal fouling. Extremely reliable Catalyst lead-free boxer primer, reloadable brass cases.

Browning · Jul 21, 2019

TTv2 said:
Can't say I'd want to carry this ammo as I don't think penetration is reliable thru barriers, but inside the home where I don't want overpentration, this may find its way into my handguns.

I had those thoughts myself, but I’m wondering if a frangible load would be better?

I don’t know.

Snowdog · Jul 22, 2019

I would imagine Syntech training ammo is most certainly lead and likely no different than the bullets I cast and polycoat. However, the recovered pieces of the "Defense" line appears to be a different animal entirely. Either the lead has a very high antimony content to make it harder and resistant to deforming or is some kind of sintered material. For example, in the image below (lifted of a Google search), there appears to be no smudging/smoothing anywhere on the bullet material. Instead of the petals pealing off, they appear to have snapped off.

The consistency of this fragmentation in ballistic gelatin seems to support this.
An example of this can be seen in TNOutdoors9's YouTube review:

This leads me to believe it's something much much harder than lead and simply pre-stressed/cut in certain areas to ensure controlled fragmentation upon impacting a soft target.

I would suspect if these truly are of some harder material rather than lead, it may excel at barrier penetration due to the hydraulic effect within the hollow cavity being possibly the only trigger to initiate fragmentation.
Time will tell what the defense line projectiles are made out of.

TTv2 · Jul 22, 2019

Browning said:
I had those thoughts myself, but I’m wondering if a frangible load would be better?

I don’t know.

Since the pieces fragment, I'm going to say this is a frangible load, or at least frangible-ish. The core section is probably 2/3rds the total weight of the projectile, a 95-ish grain projectile after having expelled its energy inside an intruder, if it does exit his body, isn't going far. A missed shot tho that sails thru the wall... not much is going to stop it other than furniture, but there's a chance that the 3 petals will be peeled off and not attached to the core thus reducing energy.

Palolosj · Jul 24, 2019

It will feed in guns that are finicky about feeding certain JHPs. I like it.

BlueHeelerFl · Jul 24, 2019

Interesting load. That video had some good info

gotboostvr · Jul 25, 2019

It looks like a less malleable metal than lead base and petals, covered in lead, then polycoated to me.

Interesting design, and seems to work very reliably and consistently. Wether or not I want that particular fragmenting effect is a separate question.

Federal Syntech Defense SJHP 9mm 138 grain

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