I am sure everyone has see the excellent Lucky Gunner tests on ammo. They updated for a new HST Micro round that Federal has produced in .38 special. I saw these and really liked them for various wheel guns I have. This test is interesting since this round performed on par with many 9mm rounds for penetration and expansion in the 2 test fire arms. A Kimber with a 2 inch barrel and a Ruger with a 4 inch barrel.
However, as lagniappe, the tester also used a S&W 342 with a 1 7/8 inch barrel and got significantly reduced test results.
This is an example of barrel length is not everything that determined velocity.
https://www.luckygunner.com/lounge/test ... special-p/
With the 2-inch barrel, we got an average penetration depth of 13 inches — that’s inside of the 12-18 inch standard used by the FBI. Average expansion was an impressive .73 inches. The 4-inch barrel gave us a velocity increase around 30 feet per second, but the gel test results were not much different. Penetration was an inch deeper and expansion was roughly the same. Compared to the 18 other .38 Special loads we have tested so far, this is excellent performance. The Remington Golden Saber and the Winchester PDX-1 were among the best .38s from our first batch of testing, but the HST looks to have a slight advantage in terms of expansion.
This is actually on par with the best expansion we’ve seen from even 9mm and .357 magnum. It’s not difficult to see how Federal was able to achieve this. The wide open front of the .38 HST bullet is almost what you might call “pre-expanded.” So it doesn’t get plugged up with the fabric and when it hits the gel, it doesn’t take much for it to open up.
I’ve been pretty impressed with this ammo so far, and in my experience, Federal has some of the best quality control in the ammo industry, so I prefer loading their stuff in my carry guns if at all possible. With that in mind, yesterday I went out to the range to run some of this HST through the Smith & Wesson 342PD J-frame that I carry sometimes. I wanted to check out the point of impact and the recoil in this little 11-ounce monster and at the last minute, I decided to get some chronograph readings too.
The barrel is only an eighth of an inch shorter than the 2-inch Kimber test gun, but every revolver is like a unique snowflake and you can’t always assume it will shoot within a specific velocity range based on barrel length alone. This turned out to be a perfect example. The Smith averaged 782 feet per second. That’s pretty slow — it’s 42 feet per second less than the Kimber, which I thought might be enough of a change to potentially have a measurable impact on terminal ballistics.
When fired from the S&W 342PD, the HST bullets lost a significant amount of velocity and performance in the gelatin suffered as well.
I actually happened to have one spare block of gelatin at the range and some pieces of our heavy clothing fabric barrier, so I did a quick gel test. The first shot looked really nice. Same kind of expansion as before with a respectable penetration depth of 12.8 inches. But (and here’s why we always do a five shot test), the next bullets did not penetrate quite as well. One of them hardly expanded and only made it to 10.4 inches.
So it looks like this bullet needs a minimum velocity around 800 feet per second in order to give it the best chance of meeting the FBI standard. Even though some of these were under the 12-inch ideal minimum, by .38 Special standards, this is actually not terrible performance overall. I probably would not carry it in this particular gun just because it’s so light and I’d rather have a standard pressure low recoil load that will let me get back on target quicker. With a slightly heavier gun, I would strongly consider using the HST, especially if the velocity clocked in at 800 or better.