Flop handgun rounds

[fxvr5]

How is that? So there's room around the barrel to slide hood area when using a 9mm conversion barrel. I'll have to check as I don't have one myself, but I though these conversions were keeping the same OD.

The exterior dimensions of the 9mm barrel and the 40 to 9mm barrel are the same. Thus the chamber wall thickness and barrel wall thickness are the same. The exception is the width of the hood. It's wider on the conversion barrel because it has to fit the wider cut in the 40 slide breech. On these guns, you could just put a 9mm barrel in the 40 caliber gun. But the 9mm barrel hood is smaller than the 40 breech cut, so the 9mm barrel will have a sloppy fit.

If one goes from 40 to 9mm if the barrel maintains the same outside diameter the barrel's walls have to be thicker due to bore/caliber size. The same goes for the chamber.

Correct. But the reply is comparing a 9mm barrel to a 40 to 9mm conversion barrel.

 

[RevolvingGarbage]

You do realize that a 30 Super Carry is 0.342” in diameter right?

Don’t think a quad stack in a magazine designed for a grip frame is in the realm of possibility. Unless you are selling to the Shaquille O’Neil’s of the world.

Well I’m selling to me, and I could get my paws around it.

My quick and probably errant math about how thick a quadrupole stack of .30SC would be shows the inside of the body of such a magazine would need to be about 1.16”. The sheet metal body of the magazine adds some. You would need some plastic thickness added to have a grip, though my experience with my Steyr L9 proves a grip can be very thin and flimsy and still be very much strong enough using modern materials. If you need a whole quarter inch more thickness around the column of rounds, you’re still within the bounds of reason for thickness of a handgun grip. Seems totally doable to me.

 

[BreechFace]

Well I’m selling to me, and I could get my paws around it.

My quick and probably errant math about how thick a quadrupole stack of .30SC would be shows the inside of the body of such a magazine would need to be about 1.16”. The sheet metal body of the magazine adds some. You would need some plastic thickness added to have a grip, though my experience with my Steyr L9 proves a grip can be very thin and flimsy and still be very much strong enough using modern materials. If you need a whole quarter inch more thickness around the column of rounds, you’re still within the bounds of reason for thickness of a handgun grip. Seems totally doable to me.

Do you have a S&W Shield Plus 30SC? Curious how wide the stack of cartridges is in the magazine, just the two cartridges at their widest point the rim, not the magazine sides?

Double that measurement, then add a divider in the center of the two columns then the steel sides of the magazine, plus you have to add a bit of height to the dimension of the magazine to allow for the quad stack to make it's way down to a single/double stagger formation. Then add your typical sides of the magazine well. And the 30 Super Carry is slightly longer (at least on some pictures of them next to each other) than a 9mm so add some dimension to the grip for that as well.

I'm not saying it's not possible, my comments were at first blush it seems like it would be too big of a grip/too long of a trigger reach for 90%+ of the population.

 

[RevolvingGarbage]

Do you have a S&W Shield Plus 30SC? Curious how wide the stack of cartridges is in the magazine, just the two cartridges at their widest point the rim, not the magazine sides?

I'm not saying it's not possible, my comments were at first blush it seems like it would be too big of a grip for 90%+ of the population.

My quick estimation based on looking at a quad stack mockup using .45ACP cases is that the column of rounds has a width of 4 times widest case diameter minus about 15 percent due to the rounds nestling into a zig zag. I unfortunately don’t own a .30SC yet and I don’t have any of the ammo around to do a mock-up either. Maybe I’m off on that 15% figure as well, but as I’ve reckoned it, the concept seems doable if on the girthy side of an acceptable handgun grip.

I wanted to add, I believe the only reason we’ve never seen somebody try a quad stack of .32ACP or .25ACP is that the semi rimmed nature of both rounds makes stacking them in more than a double column a dubious proposition. This is also what keeps either from being a true advancement from .22lr for use in semi autos.

 

[BreechFace]

@RevolvingGarbage

Not trying to prove a point but simply trying to satisfy my curiousity.

So 4 - 30 Super Carry cases = 1.376" side by side
1.376" * 0.85 = 1.1696" (15% taken off per your calculations)
1.1696" + 0.1875" = 1.3571" (the 0.1875" is 3/16" I figured for the two sides of the magazines and the center divider between the two stacks)

So based off some quick napkin measurements (and I'm not staying at a Holiday Inn currently ) the magazine would need to be ~1.35" in width.

Just a quick search for a common metal full frame magazine the Sig P320 double stack magazine is: 0.851"

So my napkin quad staked 30SC magazine would be 37% wider or 0.499" wider.

 

[BreechFace]

The Glock 20/40 grip (which gets pushback on being too large) width is 1.34" so pretty much what the magazine itself would be, and then you would add the sides of the magazine well to that. But it wouldn't be as long as 10mm, 10mm overall cartridge lengths are .25" longer than 9mm.

 

[fxvr5]

The Glock 20/40 grip (which gets pushback on being too large) width is 1.34" so pretty much what the magazine itself would be, and then you would add the sides of the magazine well to that. But it wouldn't be as long as 10mm, 10mm overall cartridge lengths are .25" longer than 9mm.

10mm Max OAL = 1.260
9mm Max OAL = 1.169

1.260-1.169 = 0.091

 

[Mosin77]

This is also what keeps either from being a true advancement from .22lr for use in semi autos.

.25 may only improve on .22lr in the reliability department but I assure you that .32acp is a big step up in every respect.

 

[CapnMac]

at a quad stack

Quad stack has never really caught on anywhere, but especially in pistols. The double taper required winds up eats up potential capacity. And, you still wind up with a wide-flared magazine well.
Even in rifles, the mags wind up with too many compromises. The follower has to mash rounds up into a flare that takes the stack from 4 to 2, then to one (and even with double-feed follower design is still critical). Going to double feed in a pistol is complicated for needing a wider slide to collect the rounds across a wider geometry.

 

[herrwalther]

Some of the rounds mentioned I would not consider flops. Like 38S&W. Before 38 Special was invented there were plenty of revolvers made in 38 S&W. More outdated and obsolete, but not a flop.

45GAP is definitely a flop. Glock trying to do something innovative that nobody asked for that only they make guns in. 357 Sig flopped in a way. It had a good start and then just fizzled itself out. I hardly see any firearms at stores in it or ammo on the shelf.

 

[Mosin77]

.40S&W sure is headed that way. It’s objectively a good round but isn’t very popular these days. There aren’t as many new guns available in it, and they don’t seem to sell well on the civilian market, so the only thing keeping the cartridge alive are police departments who haven’t yet switched over to 9mm.

 

[wayneinFL]

And no gun has spawned from such seed?

Heh. I found 6 rounds of 32 auto, cleaning out a drawer. I joked to my wife I needed buy a gun to fire those off- it would be wasteful to just throw them out.

I had a plastic AR lower up for sale and the next day someone contacted me asking if I could pretty please take a Beretta 32 Tomcat for trade on it. I pretended to have to think about it before I said yes.

I still make the comment every once in a while that I need a gun for whatever ammo or brass I find lying around and now she thinks I'm serious.

 

[Showman]

.40S&W sure is headed that way. It’s objectively a good round but isn’t very popular these days. There aren’t as many new guns available in it, and they don’t seem to sell well on the civilian market, so the only thing keeping the cartridge alive are police departments who haven’t yet switched over to 9mm.

I would say another thing keeping the cartridge alive is all the people who bought police trade-in 40s

 

[Mosin77]

I would say another thing keeping the cartridge alive is all the people who bought police trade-in 40s

True enough, but considering the millions of surplus guns sold in the US, and how impossible it is to get ammo for many of them, even when there’s objectively a pretty sizeable potential market…. I have to conclude that when the cheap surplus ammo (if it existed) gets bought up and disappears from the market, there’s not much demand from most folks to shoot their cheap guns.

I suspect the enthusiasts who go to the range any amount worthy of note have all bought 9s, and the .40s are mostly owned by the folks who have a box of ammo for their cheap gun, and are happy to call it a day.

(Yes I’m generalizing, I know there are probably some dedicated .40 shooters here, but I suspect that as a percentage of the shooting public they’re dwindling fast.)

 

[Showman]

True enough, but considering the millions of surplus guns sold in the US, and how impossible it is to get ammo for many of them, even when there’s objectively a pretty sizeable potential market…. I have to conclude that when the cheap surplus ammo (if it existed) gets bought up and disappears from the market, there’s not much demand from most folks to shoot their cheap guns.

I suspect the enthusiasts who go to the range any amount worthy of note have all bought 9s, and the .40s are mostly owned by the folks who have a box of ammo for their cheap gun, and are happy to call it a day.

(Yes I’m generalizing, I know there are probably some dedicated .40 shooters here, but I suspect that as a percentage of the shooting public they’re dwindling fast.)

Sad to say, but you're probably right. Actually, truth be told, .40 never outsold 9 in the civilian market in the U.S. (and probably no other place). It was only popular with law enforcement in the Western Hemisphere, and it was never really anything of a military round. When you factor all those things, it's sort of understandable that the .40- dependent as it was on American law enforcement- would fade quickly. Maybe .40 S&W suffered from being the "16 gauge of handguns": too powerful to be small, too small to "grow bigger" as it was already loaded to full pressure and there was nowhere further for handloaders to go with it.
The whole "potential for KABOOMs" thing didn't help.

 

[Old_Grouch]

Maybe .40 S&W suffered from being the "16 gauge of handguns":

I don't think I've ever seen a better description!
I also agree with the law enforcement connection. If the FBI (and subsequently a majority of LE agencies) had given it a yawn so would have 90% of consumers.
I've always maintained that the development of the .40 from the 10mm would be like developing the .38 Special from the .357 Magnum if the .357 had come along first.

 

[mcb]

I don't think I've ever seen a better description!
I also agree with the law enforcement connection. If the FBI (and subsequently a majority of LE agencies) had given it a yawn so would have 90% of consumers.
I've always maintained that the development of the .40 from the 10mm would be like developing the .38 Special from the .357 Magnum if the .357 had come along first.

Like 41 Special from 41 Magnum, 45 Cowboy Special from 45 Colt, 500 JRH from 500 S&W?

 

[Showman]

I don't think I've ever seen a better description!
I also agree with the law enforcement connection. If the FBI (and subsequently a majority of LE agencies) had given it a yawn so would have 90% of consumers.
I've always maintained that the development of the .40 from the 10mm would be like developing the .38 Special from the .357 Magnum if the .357 had come along first.

Thanks for the compliments. I don't know how that analogy/comparison came to me. Just to add to the "shotgun gauge" analogy....
Everybody knows that 12 and 20 gauge rule the shotgun world, just like .45 ACP and 9mm Luger rule the handgun one. It has been that way for decades. 16 gauge once had its followers but the performance of the two dominants just crowded it out. I suppose we could carry things further and claim that 9mm+P could be what "20 gauge magnum" was to shotguns. By the time 12 gauge "big boy performance" could be expanded, the 16 couldn't even begin to compete because it was simply as developed as it could get. (Sound familiar?) There is still something of a cult following for 16 gauge but it's always going to be a niche gauge.
Except for the US military's semiautomatic and its cartridge, 35 caliber (.38 in America, 9mm in Europe) was the Free World's "King of the Hill" service pistol diameter for almost the entire 20th century. Now that law enforcement in North America has found a way to made it work in the 21st, it's guess it's no surprise who's "king" again.

 

[unspellable]

445 SuperMag. Winchester briefly loaded it which makes it technically a production cartridge and not a wildcat. Today it's effectively a wildcat although Starline makes brass. Would be nice in the S&W X frame.
357-44 Baine & Davis is a wildcat that should be more popular. Unlike the 22 Jet it was not designed to tie up revolvers.
I have a rifle chambered in 400-360. This was popular in it's day in the British empire but is now more or less obsolete although it's still produced in England. Not imported to the U.S. though.

 

[Hasaf]

.25NAA and .32NAA both qualify. Both great ideas that nobody needed or apparently wanted. It’s a shame too.

These rounds in particular, like the 22tcm suffer from a lack of pistols that shoot them. I would love to be able to get .32NAA barrels to fit to some of my 380 pistols, just to see if I like it. At the same time, I would like to get a 22tcm barrel for something other than a Glock, again, to see if I like it. In particular, I would like a 22tcm barrel for my P30. I would also like 32NAA barrels for the colt mustang alikes, such as my Kimber Micro and one for my Glock 42 (a 380).

It is possible that I won't like the 32NAA, or the 22tcm in a pistol. That is a good part of the reason for not trying to track down one of the few, rare, offerings in those calibres. Just getting a conversion barrel would be enough to form some opinion with though.

As it stands, the two bottlenecks you mentioned, the 25 and 32NAA, along with the 22tcm, are likely to become flops.

 

[Old_Grouch]

I would love to be able to get .32NAA barrels to fit to some of my 380 pistols, just to see if I like it.

Several years ago our Highway Patrol got a few NAA .32 NAAs to evaluate for issue as backups to the troopers. The then head of the HP told me once that they were the nastiest, most unpleasant guns he'd ever shot.

 

[Skribs]

One I think is interesting (and may even get) is the .50 GI round. I think it suffers from a few problems, most notably being that as a proprietary round, nobody else can make it, and so it remains expensive. But also I think Guncrafter Industries makes great guns and horrible hollowpoints.

2. The 45 GAP-that seems to have gone nowhere.

This honestly surprised me. There's a big market around being able to just swap the minimum amount and have a functioning gun, and I think being able to do 9, .40, and .45 in the same frame would be a huge selling point.

Wouldn't surprise me if we find the 30 Super Carry on that list in 10 years.

30 super carry has additional capacity, which I can see as a big selling point. So does the 5.7, and that seems to be on the rise right now. We have FN, Ruger, and S&W making 5.7 pistols, The nice thing about the 30 super carry is there are pistol ranges where 5.7 is not allowed, and so 30SC would be. And the technology advances that have made the 9, .38, and .380 as good as they are today can also apply to 30SC. I can imagine the 30SC filling the role that those calibers filled a while back, where some people think they're enough and some people think they aren't.

I can imagine full-size pistols in it holding 20-22, or a midsize holding 18+. We just need to give it time to breathe like the 5.7.

There are literally millions of guns chambered in it. I dont think I would call that a flop

I do agree with many posters here, the .40 S&W seems on the decline. I think advancements in 9mm bullet design and .45 ACP gun design have made the advantages of the .40 much less attractive when compared with their bigger and smaller brethren, and the sharp recoil of the .40 makes it even less attractive. My first gun was a .40. At this point, the only reason I'd take a .40 over a 9 or a .45 is to have ammo coverage in case there's another shortage.

 

[Shawn Dodson]

That myth persisted for years mostly because USA manufactured 9mm loads were anemic. The rest of the world was using 9mm loads that were much more effective. Once USA manufacturers started loading 9mm to its potential that led to the death of 40 S&W.

"Anemic" 9mm loads weren't the issue.

It was objective performance standards based on informed medical opinion, and the use of a realistic soft tissue simulant (properly prepared and calibrated Type 250A ordnance gelatin) to test terminal performance that led to improved JHP bullet designs for 9mm.

 

[Englishmn]

375 super mag.

 

[GarnetandBlack]

My favorite round, .357 Sig is the fastest moving round to near complete disappearance. It’s sad. The other day Cabelas had one type of ammo, some FMJ for $67 a box of 50. Every single agency has dropped it. It’s gone.

.40S&W was huge and is now going fast. 30SC will be very short lived.

The one positive is that 10mm is back in a pretty big way; it fills the void of all the other bigger calibers than 9mm which have disappeared, and it’s a fantastic round. So, 10mm has replaced .40 and .357 Sig for me as a primary woods gun and fun range gun.