Some might consider this introduction excessive, but I am bringing in a lot of information and I don't want any of it to get lost.
I have been reading this site since approximately 2007. Rather than ask a lot of stupid questions and get into fights with my elders, I read deep into the archives, on this and many other sites. I took the internet about as far as it could go at the time, then I went into hardcopy research for 5 years. I read 40 Years of Handloader on CD-ROM, books by Elmer Keith, Phil Sharpe, George Nonte, Bill Wilson, Mike Venturino, and so on. I dug deep into digitized periodicals, so far back that a "Winchester rifle" only had one chambering.
In about 2012 I started reading a lot of gun magazine articles that were badly written and obviously wrong. I got it into my head to correct the record somehow. For the next 4 years I conducted an independent battery of gel tests in Perma-Gel. I started with at least 18 different .45 ACP loads, mostly factory ammo because you couldn't get bullets or cool powders at that time. I also tested a few rifle calibers and some shotgun loads.
I am a disciple of the great pragmatist philosopher, Clark. Clark had a lot of electrical engineering knowledge, so he was on the other end of the spectrum from the know-nothing hand-wringers. He said something like, the best way to prove a circuit can run at 100 watts is to build it so it can take 300 watts at continuous duty. Somebody had a question about how strong a Tokarev pistol was. Clark converted one to .38 Super, and ran a handload through it that was a .357 Magnum double charge under a 158 XTP, at about 60,000 CUP.
With that said, I was unsatisfied with the .45 ACP results. The few loads that had good "bounce" had very shallow penetration, and promising loads like the Hornady 220+P had recoil that was, frankly, excessive for the 1911 platform. About that time I read a number of un-researched articles on the .38 Super, written by the usual cabal of hand-wringing navel-gazing staff writers. These articles were in conflict with men like Ken Waters, men that knew their facts because they were there when these things happened.
In the Clark spirit, I cut a .38 Super barrel back so it would fit a .45 frame, which when fired would leave a section of the case wall unsupported. This was my redneck pressure test barrel. The test battery ran to 1400 rounds of handloads over 2 1/2 years, with zero blowouts. Loosely, the results of the tests were these:
* The only 9mm loads worth bothering with, are boutique +P+ loads like the Federal 9BPLE (115 gr at 1300 fps), which really should be shot out of a big steel-frame gun.
* Factory .38 Super ammo is not "loaded down," they are just being cheapskates by using powders like Bullseye and HP-38. The factories think nobody cares about this caliber, and that's a shame. I'm pretty sure they could run a 125 grain bullet up to 1400+ fps while staying under the SAAMI limits (I did). That was about what a post-SAAMI .357 Magnum load was doing out of a duty gun when Marshall and Sanow gave it a 96% one-shot-stop rating.
* Needless to say, any of this stuff can be done with an inexpensive, bone-stock, non-ramped gun.
As I write this, Communism is rampant in this country. Obama and his cabinet were products of Soviet subversion, as is the "growth area" of the current and near-future Democrat apparatus. Nobody wanted to talk about that when it mattered, least of all John "Obama my good friend and collegue" Boehner.
Earlier today a Communist by the name of James Hodgkinson attempted to assassinate 20 or so Republican House members on a baseball field. House whip Steve Scalise was shot near the femoral artery with what I'm assuming was a Green Tip, spitting fragments all over and making for a very difficult surgery. The last I heard, they are still trying to control the bleeding and chase hidden arterial tears.
About 3 months ago, I got this crazy idea that I should go back to school, switch to Pre-Med, and go into "blood and guts" ER surgery. Before, it seemed like a harsh, expensive job with no upside, saving the lives of too many career criminals.
But somebody respectable needs to reconcile Marshall and Sanow with Fackler. In other words, a handgun bullet should be designed to expand, fragment, and penetrate deep. In other words, we are the first responders, the era of pop guns is over.
Too little has been done in the last 30 years of load development, thanks to the nay-sayers. We should be advancing constantly like Patton said, "I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We're not holding anything, we'll let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly, and we're not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose, and we're going to kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time, and we're going to go through him like crap through a goose."
I bet the publication of "Street Stoppers" dropped crime by 10% in this country, because it killed the 10% of criminals that otherwise would have survived. I aim to duplicate or better these results, by going over thousands of autopsies linked to police records and modern witnesses.
It'll take about 15 years to get any results out of that project. In the meantime, I think I'm finally qualified to say a few things on THR without embarassing myself. Time to melt the snowflakes!
