9mm Critical Duty barrier penetration test

[MilitaryArms]

I've been carrying Critical Duty 9mm ammo for a while now because of its claimed superior performance in barrier penetration. I decided to see if it lived up to the lofty performance claims I've read about online. One article in Shooting Illustrated claimed the 9mm Critical Duty round could punch through a sheet of 16ga steel and still penetrate 25.5" of 10% gel! Really? If so, that's impressive given without any barriers standing in the way of the bullet the best I've seen is about 20" of penetration from the 9mm Critical Duty.


I also ran my former carry round, the 147gr Gold Dot, through the same battery of tests to see how it compared.


[video=youtube;h3XNWU8xaxk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3XNWU8xaxk[/video]

 

[HuntMeister]

Nice, thanks for doing the test and sharing!

 

[The Bubba Effect]

Good stuff! I ran out of critical duty 9mm two weeks ago and switched to 147 gr hst (what I could find enough of to shoot and carry).

I'm really enjoying these ballistic gelatin videos!

 

[rhino]

I know there are limits on what someone can do with a limited budget and gelatin, but it would be nice to see more than one round fired in each circumstance. Ideally it would be with fresh gelatin for each shot, but that's not always practical. Given that, it's a good data point, but not really enough data to draw many conclusions.

 

[mfd111]

Thanks for the review

 

[MilitaryArms]

I know there are limits on what someone can do with a limited budget and gelatin, but it would be nice to see more than one round fired in each circumstance. Ideally it would be with fresh gelatin for each shot, but that's not always practical. Given that, it's a good data point, but not really enough data to draw many conclusions.

The gel is $129 per block.

Right now I have 4 blocks.

To recycle them it takes 22 hours of work. About 2 hours to cut, clean and prep the block. 4 hours to melt it down (checking temp every 30 min). 4 hours to cure it to work the bubbles out. 12 hours to cool, then a lot of cussing getting it out of the mold. Then another 20 minutes with a hot air gun to get the smudges and imperfections out of the thing so it looks pretty on video.

 

[kludge]

It begs the question... what if you put some silicone in the nose of the Gold Dot?

Great test, thanks for sharing!

 

[squidvt]

That was quite interesting. Could you do something similar with .45ACP JHP?

 

[Clay]

IMO, the wound channel provided by the Hornady is the big winner. The gold dots didn't leave much of any wound channel at all, in either case.

 

[rhino]

The gel is $129 per block.

Right now I have 4 blocks.

To recycle them it takes 22 hours of work. About 2 hours to cut, clean and prep the block. 4 hours to melt it down (checking temp every 30 min). 4 hours to cure it to work the bubbles out. 12 hours to cool, then a lot of cussing getting it out of the mold. Then another 20 minutes with a hot air gun to get the smudges and imperfections out of the thing so it looks pretty on video.

Yeah, I assumed your resources were limited. My comment wasn't intended to be critical of what did as much as "I wish more could be done."

On the bright side, at least you can recycle them. I've never made the stuff and I didn't know you could do that.

 

[MilitaryArms]

IMO, the wound channel provided by the Hornady is the big winner. The gold dots didn't leave much of any wound channel at all, in either case.

It was impressive, only it was 90% temporary which is of limited value. If you watch the round hit you can see the temp wound cavity slowly appear.

 

[MilitaryArms]

Yeah, I assumed your resources were limited. My comment wasn't intended to be critical of what did as much as "I wish more could be done."

On the bright side, at least you can recycle them. I've never made the stuff and I didn't know you could do that.

i didn't take your comment as being critical.

I wish it didn't take 2 blocks for a test... That would leave me with quite a bit more flexibility if I had 4 to shoot at each session.

 

[rhino]

i didn't take your comment as being critical.

I wish it didn't take 2 blocks for a test... That would leave me with quite a bit more flexibility if I had 4 to shoot at each session.

Maybe someday more than one person with gelatin blocks can combine efforts at a location for ballisticsathon? Chrono everything from multiple guns and barrel lengths, fire multiple rounds of each under the same conditions in fresh blocks, etc. Of course, now it sounds like I'm volunteering to organize it. D'OH!

 

[U.S. Patriot]

That's why I resort to milk jugs. Granted it does not allow you to see a wound track, but is good for testing expansion, and how much weight the bullet retains. Ballistic jell is stupid expensive. I know some guys make their own, but it can be time consuming.