I have been thinking here lately. having such a wide variety of 10mm guns I am finding a soft spot for the 165 grain bullets from the 10. I the revolvers the 165 shoots absolutely fantastic. They run really well from my autos with great velocity and accuracy. When I step up to the 180 and above the recoil of course increases with the weight of the bullet. Simple right?
The old Silver tip load was great 10mm load. Speaking the load that was the load developed not the amped 40 loads they cal 10mm today.
I am almost convinced myself the 165 grain bullets loaded to the 10mm potential is a great all around load for deer hunting and self defense.
Shoots flat.
Lower felt recoil.
The right bullet provides great terminal performance.
Works in all my guns from carbines to revolvers to semi autos.
I really am trying to simplify my reloading bench I have so much stuff it is driving me insane.
So my thought is a 165 grain HydroShock bullet loaded to the potential of the 10 is the ideal bullet for S.D. and deer hunting with the 10.
Ramjet, the original favorite 10mm bullet weight was the 170 and 175 grain projectiles, however bullet construction back then was mostly copper cup and lead core design.
The 165 Gold Dot is a great all around bullet at true 10mm velocities. Myself I favor the 200 grain weight for hunting. Speer has been asked to make their 200grain Gold Dot available as handloading components and they seemed favorable to doing so. I have several of the older 200 grain Gold Dot's that were pulled from a 40S&W contract run and they work well for me.
Recently Speer sent me a sample of the NEW 200 grain Gold Dots and they are very nice and hold together well even with great expansion.
All that said the 165 grain Gold Dots also hold up quite well as a bonded bullet, when it comes to deer close in most any good bullet should do well, but as distance increases and velocities slows down, a heavier bullet weight may hold more energy to punch the target. So it comes down to bullet placement and performance. So with reasonable hits the 165's should work well.
Good luck with your decisions! 8)
Quotethe recoil of course increases with the weight of the bullet
Uh, no. IF you have read or referenced Hatchers Notebook, he says, and it is a fact, that most recoil is a product of the exhausting gases coming out of the barrel. His comments are pretty simple, consider the weight of the bullet in grains causing pounds of recoil. Physics says it can't happen and it doesn't. While we hardly think of our guns as rocket engines, that's exactly what happens when the gun goes off. Ever heard of reduced recoil ammo? How they achieve this is simple, use a faster burning powder that the pressure spike is at the middle of the barrel length prox and the pressure will drop at the muzzle causing less recoil. It works. An example would be a 3006 using standard factory loads vs loading the same bullet on top of SR4759. SR4759 is a very bulky powder. You won't get a lot of it in a 3006 case. Burn rate is close to IMR4227. When I was teaching reloading to the local Boy Scouts, I had them loading 19.0 grs of SR4759 in 3006 cases with a 147gr FMJ bullet. That's about an 80% prox loading density. Out of the 03A3's I have that I had them shoot, there is zero recoil yet velocities and energy is that of a 30-30. It would average 2200'ps out of the rifles. Obviously, it was a hoot when the boys thought they were going to get knocked off of the shooting bench when they pulled the trigger yet nothing happened in the way of recoil. It's the same load I used when I'd take them varmint hunting and the boys killed a lot of coyotes with that load at up to 200yds.
If you haven't read Hatchers Notebook, it's well worth the time. Here's a pdf of it. Happy reading.
https://www.tngun.com/wp-content/uploads/Hatchers-Notebook.pdf
Thanks guys all good points.
Appreciate the notebook.
I am afraid your application the principles of Mr Hatchers fine notebook is not entirely accurate.
First, lets get right to the relevant quote from Hatcher
Quote
This is a promising idea, for over one-fourth of the recoil velocity of the average high powered rifle is caused by the rocket-like thrust of the jet of powder gas that rushes out at high speed as much as the bullet leaves. If we could suppress this effect completely, we would reduce the recoil velocity of the gun by approximately one fourth, and as the recoil energy is proportional to the square of the recoil velocity, anything chat reduces the velocity one-fourth will reduce the energy bv nearly 44 percent.
Hatchers Notebook, Pg 264, reference link in previous post
Mr. Hatchers physics is spot on, though I would conjecture that his hyperbolic description is misleading. Recoil is the law of conservation of momentum in action. As such the calculations are relatively straightforward:
p=mv
Where
p is the momentum, m is the mass of the ejecta and v is the velocity of the ejecta.
In a proper example we would convert grains to slugs so we had mass and not weight, but for our purposes we can cheat without skewing the results and leave values in grains and ft/sec and be fine. These units are technically not correct, but are more readable for this discourse and will not introduce a compromise since we have no need to convert to SI units.
Let us consider what the mass, or weight in our case, of the ejecta. This would be the bullet, the powder and the consumed primer compound. The primer compound is so small the every calculator of recoil I have ever seen ignores it, so to shall we.
In a 30-06 M2 Ball load which was the "high powered rifle" round in question at this juncture in the Hatcher discourse, was composed of a 152 grain bullet and a charge of about 48 grains of IMR4895. These together give us a total ejecta mass of 200 grains, and the powder is indeed 1/4 of that mass, and therefore accounts for 1/4 of the recoil momentum.
With that made clear, let's see how much recoil in a 165 grain 10mm load is attributed to powder.
Looking to Alliant 165 grain Gold Dot data:
8.3 grains Unique = 1194 fps
10 grains Power Pistol = 1314 fps
11.5 grains Blue Dot = 1273 fps
9 grains BE-86 = 1344 fps
In contrast to the 30-06 loads Mr Hatcher used as reference and source for his data, in pistol rounds, the powder charge is so small it only accounts for 5-7% of the ejecta mass.
Now, for any reader that thinks I have ignored the "rocketlike velocity", I have not. The raw velocity of the expanding gas just doesn't exceed the velocity of the bullet by enough to have a significant' impact. In an actual rocket engine the exhaust velocities are generally between 2.5 and 4.5 km/sec. That is 8,200 feet per second to 14,764 feet per second. Even the great 30-06 with an M2 muzzle velocity of 2,850 fps (0.87 km/sec) is just not rocket-like at all. And while the gas, pressurized at 50K PSI behind the bullet does experience some acceleration past the bullet when the bore become un-obstructed, the calculation would use the average velocity of all the ejecta. It is true that a small percentage of the mass is ejected at more than the muzzle velocity of the bullet, most of the mass of the burned powder is ejected at muzzle velocity or less as the pressure rapidly falls off once the bullet leaves the bore. The muzzle velocity ends up being a very accurate representation of the average velocity of all the ejecta.
If we consider grain-ft/sec momentum of standard 10mm loads we find that a 200 grain load at 1200 fps using 8 grains of powder gives us 249600 grain-ft/sec of momentum to be conserved. A 135 grain load using 12 grains of powder for the accepted standard of 1600 fps gives 235200 grain-ft/sec of momentum to be conserved. That is a recoil increase of 6% moving from the 135 grain load up to the 200 grain load.
Reduced recoil ammo universally reduces either the bullet weight or the velocity (or both) to achieve it's recoil reduction. Federal reduced recoil 45 ACP ammo uses a 165 grain JHP, while standard weights are 185 and 230 grain. It's reduced recoil 135 grain 9mm is both 12 grains shy of the 147 grain load that is well accepted, and is 50 fps below a max load for that bullet weight.
In handgun ammo, the easiest way to reduce recoil while preserving energy is to reduce the bullet weight. And this is consistent with Mr Hatchers fine notebook.
Few things about application of these weights of bullets.
Recoil has too categories; a.) actual (as explained above). B.) perceived
I can say based on my first hand experience with the 165 grain bullets loaded to the maximum safe performance level in a variety of guns the recoil is less with the lighter weight bullets. One of the guns it's very evident in is the Ruger Clapp revolver. Shooting 200 grain in that little revolver is not fun and tough to get quick follow up shots. But the short barrel requires something heavier than 135 grain for good penetration. Now take the 165 load from my Glock 40 with a KKM 7" barrel and you get some impressive velocity gains in most cases as much as my 18" encore carbine. The thread above does so much more to describe recoil I am not going back into it. But one example is the scandium framed snobby S&W in 357 magnum touch off full house 158 grain loads in that gun and yikes it whacks the heck out of ya. Light gun heavy loads. Nuff said.
Hunting game at distance: I agree the 200 grain is without a doubt better of wider range of distances than the 165-175 grain loads. That said I use my handgun to 75 yards and limit myself to that distance out of respect for my shooting ability. Now in my 10mm carbines I stretch that out to 100 yards. I hunt because I love the hunt. Sure getting game is great and I have taken literally hundreds of deer and 15 elk it great to harvest game. But if I pass it's ok I still enjoy the hunt.
Self Defense: penetration and expansion is paramount to a well designed self defense round. I think the 10 mm has tremendous potential for both and it is offered in a variety of platforms. But one thing that we must all be aware of is over penetration and the potential for injury or death of an innocent bystander. The entire premise of self defense is to stop the threat. Heavy clothing and high stress situations add to the difficulty of having the holy grail of self defense ammo. But history gives us a great basis in real life scenarios. Study of many of those SD use of weapon and caliber lead me down the path of the 165 grain bullet.
My guess is the perfect scenario is have a specific ammo for a specific application. Ideal? I would agree but I grow tired of continuously having to change over my dedicated progressive press all the time. That's what has taken me down this path. Not for everyone that's ok just a bunch of folks who like the 10mm throwing some crap against the wall around the camp fire. ;D
Have a great week and thank you for the feedback.