Other than a cleaner hole in paper is there any advantage or disadvantage in swc vs. a round nose or RN flat point? Do either of then generally feed better? Is one easier to load than the other? (for a newbie) If it matters, I'm looking at coated lead bullets.
Did a lot of searching but didn't find much profile comparison.
Thanks!
In this post-modern age of everything worthwhile being an "expanding" bullet, the genius of Elmer Keith and his "Keith style" bullet has been almost forgotten. The semi-wadcutter bullet design was Elmer Keith's brainchild back in a day when jacketed ammo for handguns was unheard of.
Keith knew that round nose bullets are inefficient when it comes to transferring bullet shock. When a round nose bullet strikes a bone at an angle, the rounded nose causes the bullet to glance AWAY from the bone. The broad, flat meplat of the SWC tends to cause it to "TURN IN" to the bone thus causing massive fracturing and producing secondary wounding through bone fragments being explosively distributed in surrounding tissue.
At the same time, Keith understood that velocity mattered. He grew up with the Colt .45 and understood well it's "power" with classic 255 grain FLAT POINT slugs, but he also knew it wasn't ideal. So he experimented with not only a new bullet profile but also pushing said slugs to supersonic speeds. If one views the shock wave attached to a SWC in flight at 1,400 fps, versus a round nose, the difference is obvious....Keith didn't have wind tunnels, but he did have animals to test on and the result was a two-tiered slug called "semi-wadcutter" because it was a wadcutter design with a truncated cone added to the front, with an INTENTIONAL ledge because that too is important in energy transference.
A proper Keith style SWC at supersonic speed will transfer energy with equal effectiveness to a jacketed expanding bullet. If you push it faster it will actually become MORE effective at energy transfer than a jacketed, streamlined profile.
A major reason the original .357 Magnum and later .44 Magnum were so "potent" was due to the Keith style SWC, gas-checked slug being pushed well supersonic from long barrels.
We live in an age where the FBI has become the "god-head" of ballistic direction, and they have decreed slow-moving, expanding slugs to be the "IT" of the future, yet a SWC design moving at supersonic speed is the better choice. In fact, the rise of the machined copper, fluted slug at supersonic speed is an attempt to capitalize on non-expanding design at high speed versus pre-cut jackets and super-soft lead, or no lead, with impact speeds below 1,000 fps.
The "round nose flat point" has risen to prominence though it is a FAR LESS efficient nose design simply because people like it....can't be any other reason because it sucks compared to a proper SWC, though it IS better than a round nose.
the truncated cone is a variation on the SWC theme...designed for semiautomatic pistols it does offer the promise of a flat nose meplat, but most jacketed versions destroy this with overly rounded jackets and rounded profiles which work against the formation of pronounced shock waves. Of course, unless the slug is going supersonic, guess what, there won't BE any shock wave! You only get shock waves when the air has become non-compressible and has "rent" as the object in flight pushes through into air molecules that don't know it's coming. This phenomenon is played down by the FBI and others drinking the kool-aid, because it does not fit within their paradigm, but then, their paradigm is built on flawed thinking and flawed application....the USUAL result of an agency trying to put the blame anywhere but on itself.
Anyway, so for autopistols, a jacketed bullet with a SHARP transition between hollowpoint and conical nose slope is preferred to a FMJ-TC with a generously radiused transition. A hard cast with a sharp edge between front meplat and conical nose section is ideal...IF the bullet is pushed beyond supersonic.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to "test" the exact same SWC nose profile slug, one loaded subsonic, the other loaded supersonic. The cartridge was .38 Spl versus .357 Magnum...SAME EXACT hard cast SWC slug just loaded different. A head shot with the .38 Spl resulted in little beyond a surprised expression followed by fleeing at a dead run. After reloading with the same bullet loaded to .357 SPEED, a single shot to the same head produced an INSTANT cessation of life. THAT is "empirical" evidence of just what a SWC profile does at supersonic speed versus subsonic.
