25 Comments

  2. You know that in addition to 10mm, there actually IS a wildcat called .40 super.

    It’s a bottleneck of .45 super down to .40. I’ve only ever seen one.

  3. I did not know that, actually. I was just giving Robb a hard time about the whole 10mm thing, which just doesn’t make sense to me.

  4. It only doesn’t makes sense because you don’t shoot it. Pretty much any reason you choose to shoot a particular flavor of ammo is arbitrary to someone else.

    I already had a 10mm. I can load for the 10mm. Ammo is not difficult to come by for me (bullets are .40 cal anyway). There is quite a jump in muzzle energy from the .40 to 10mm. I can handle the recoil just fine and I’m not aiming to be a master-class-world-champion shooter so the pinpoint accuracy of a round does not factor into my decision process.

    I like the ballistics of the 10mm. I like that I can now carry 15 rounds of “HOLY SH!T WHAT WAS THAT???”. And when the rush on ammo hit and you couldn’t find {insert popular caliber here}, I could.

    Plus, I have to compensate for the fact that I’m too addicted to coffee to throw it at someone.

  6. The concept is to put a light-medium 4″ .41 magnums ballistics into a standard full size auto pistol frame.

    180gr at 1350fps is a substantial degree of peepeewhacking for predators both two and four legged.

    I personally don’t find the recoil unpleasant, even in the compact Glocks; though it certainly is sharp. In a full sized 1911, I actually prefer the impulse of the 10mm to the .45.

    I like the sharp and fast kick, to the slower .45 push. I’ve timed myself, and with competition loads for each, I reset faster with 10mm. The 10mm flips more in the muzzle, but the .45 lifts my arms more, and I reset my wrists faster than I reset from my shoulders.

    Similarly I prefer the .357 sig to the .40 both ballistically, and in terms of shooting feel. It gives you roughly low–mid range .357 magnum ballistics in a compact autopistol, and I like that (especially in the Sig P229 for example).

    Of course, the fact that I shoot magnum revolvers (including J frame scandium .357s) regularly does kinda bias me.

    Oh and the big downside is the cost and comonality of ammo. You pretty much have to handload, and even then finding 10mm brass at any price can be a pain, never mind reasonable price.

    The major reason I don’t shoot more 10mm (usually 100 rounds a session at most), isn’t the recoil, it’s that for every mag worth of brass I don’t pick up, I know I just lost $2.

  7. You mean like .38 Super? Heck, why .357 Magnum? What makes any particular bullet size + casing capacity + pressure limit a ‘logical concept’?

    The concept was “We like the size of the .45, but not the slowness. We like the speed of the 9mm, but not its size. How can we push a large projectile faster?”

    Followed by “Damn… that’s a bit too much. Can we tone it down a bit for the smaller people?”

  8. Heh. I did used to own a 10mm, fyi. I do actually “get” the .38 Super and the .357, those were designed around a specific need like, 10,000 years ago before modern hollow point bullets were developed.

  9. Nope, not really.

    The difference between the .40 S&W and the .40 Magnum might FEEL significant, but the ballistic effect is about the same for all the other common autoloading pistol rounds, ie, anemic.

    If you want more wounding potential than a 9mm offers, you want a rifle. Period. The idea that the .40, .45 and .355 SIG offer any improvement is marketing and old wives tales.

  10. Bloke at the pistol club shoots a 10mm Glock. You can tell when he’s shooting, there is a very distinct thump noise when he shoots. Its no louder than a regular pistol cartridge, but it sounds a lot ‘heavier’.

  11. pdb, the day I’m attacked by a naked block of jello your point will be valid. Until then… If I had to have a choice of being shot, I’ll take a 9mm over a 10mm / .357 magnum / .45 ACP any day.

  14. Freiheit,

    I shot an action pistol competition class at Texas Defensive Shooting Academy with my 10mm 1911 a few years ago.

    I ran the final course second fastest of the group (Clean, no noshoots, all A zone but 1 clean miss – the fastest was Jim Seigler… with a revolver no less, INCLUDING multiple reloads), and the instructor Len Baxley, looked over at me and my gun and said “that’s a mighty sharp bark… what is that, .38 super pushed for major?”

    I looked back and said “Nope, 10mm. Full house 180gr at 1350fps”.

    He thought about it for a second, looked down at my time, looked back up at me, and drawled out “yep… that’ll do the job”.

  15. The old standby name could be .408 – riffing on William Gibson’s fictional round, though it was said to be a revolver chambering and therefore presumably rimmed, there is nothing to say that nerds can’t have their due on the Interwebs created in the mental image of the man who coined the term cyberspace…

    /end fanboy moment

  16. pdb, that picture you keep posting, I do not think it mean what you think it mean.

    Yes, modern hollow points designed to meet a 12″-in-ballistic-gelatin penetration standard all penetrate 12″+ in ballistic gelatin. This proves that ammunition designers are good at their jobs. But my .22 magnum meets that standard. That doesn’t make it equivalent to .357 magnum.

    That picture doesn’t give a good indication of the volume of permanent cavity, or temporary cavity. Or the curve of mass/velocity/energy available at any given point in the travel. Which of those bullets will still crush a bone 8″ in? Which will be deflected? Which will tear an artery just from passing close by it?

    In the spirit of “Would you give a guy a foot massage?” I have to ask, “Would you hunt deer with a 9mm?” .357 magnum will humanely dispatch an animal roughly the weight and skin thickness of a man. 10mm will. I love 9mm. But I only carry it in its +P+ loadings, and I would decline to hunt with that. And it’s actually easier these days to find factory .357 SIG or 10mm in loadings I consider sufficient for man or beast.

  17. You’re going to give up demonstrable advantages in cost, capacity, reliability (10mm is a very poor shape for reliable feeding) and shootability for a at best marginal increase in terminal effect that can’t be quantified?

    Okay then!

  18. It is a poor feeding round and is unreliable?

    Huh, I guess the 3k rounds I’ve had through the 29 sans a single FTF is really shitty performance then.

    Really pdb, I love you like the brother I never wanted and then later found out was adopted, but please tell me exactly what the issue is with the ogive that makes it so unreliable? I’ve been immersed in the 10mm world for a few years now and I’ve never heard anyone complain about poor performance related to the 10mm round in general (reloaders have their own issues but that’s generally attributed to the tuning of the round to the pistol).

    As for price, I just reloaded 150 rounds at a cost of $33.50 (this includes the brass as reused). These are Self Defense ready loads too, not just plinking loads. For that, I could load a lot less, but then I’m not shooting what I carry which most people, even 9mm owners, do to save $. I prefer the extra cost to ensure I know exactly how my pistol will perform (which is perfect, reliable, and accurate. I cannot say the same for me).

    Keep shootin’ that jello!

  19. Just because of the nature of the two cartridges, I find it vastly more appropriate to call the famous “Four-tay” 10mm S&W Special…because frankly that’s what it is.

  20. Caleb & PDB,

    As a recovering 10mm addict, I can tell you that it’s not worth talking sense to them; your logic will bounce off their bulletproof coating of irrational 10mm love. 😉

  22. Tam,

    Lest I be misunderstood, I don’t think the 10mm will shoot through 7″ thick depleted Uranium and then still have enough power to kill every last person in the room just by the pressure wave. I also don’t think a shot by a 9mm will bounce off of two-ply toilet paper.

    One would assume the more joules you can impart into tissue is part of the equation of how effective a bullet is (as is wound channel, fragmentation, etc.). While the difference between 520 J and 750 J isn’t night and day, it does have more effect on the surrounding tissues when all that energy is pushed into it. It’s why a .44 magnum hurts a little more than a .22short when it hits your shin.

    We all know handguns are not rifles and cannot equal the energy imparted to the round. So we compromise by making the projectile larger and eeking out as much velocity as we can.

    For me, the decision on what to carry comes down to
    *What can I handle, recoil wise?
    *What holds an adequate amount of ammo?
    *What can I conceal easily?

    Because handguns lack in the ability to really get that projectile moving like a rifle, you want to get as much (sorry for this folks, I really am) “bang for the buck” as fits within your criteria. The recoil and cost of 10mm does not put me off, and I like having 11 – 16 rounds at my disposal.

    Oh, and I ate some jello today. Through my tests with the gelatin, it appears I can chew through a human chest.

  23. Tam,

    Not just whitetail, Texas whitetail. Notoriously tiny. Meanwhile, 10mm hunters are taking deer all over, and black bear besides.

    Don’t get me wrong. I love 9mm. My regular carries are either a CZ 85 Combat or a H&KP7M8. Or a .22 magnum J-frame. I’m not about carrying the biggest gun possible. But I can definitely see a compelling case for gruntier cartridges for hunting, or even carry. Especially if you don’t have a ready supply of 9mm +P+. Tried finding Federal 9BPLE lately? But if all the hollow point ammo in the world dried up tomorrow, I’d just drop 7 rounds of boring old .357 SJSP in my 586 or 9 rounds of flat-point FMJ in my 10mm Commander and be well-armed.

    As a stock car racing friend once said to me, “Ain’t no re-placement for dis-placement.” If you can tolerate the recoil of a load that is both heavy and fast, tricky bullet construction becomes much less critical. I find having that option comforting. And I’m not going to scoff at anyone who makes that their first choice, rather than their second.

  24. Robb,

    Dude, I understand. It’s cool. You don’t have to sell me on the awesome virtues of the Mighty Ten. Everything you just wrote is more or less verbatim the points I used to argue with “Turbonatr” in the “Calibers Forum” at GlockTalk back ten years ago because he just didn’t understand that 10mm totally pwned his beloved .45. Heck, I was forum buddies in the Ten Ring with Mike McNett back when he was just some crazy handloader thinking about getting an FFL…

    And I just gave my last bag of Georgia Arms 10mm Auto to Frank James at the last Blogmeet.

  25. The 10mm Auto cartridge in all its factory loadings is NOT a .41 Magnum, but it’ll do. (And I say that from experience with killing things, not square range observations.)

    I like the 10mm for 2 reasons: the first is its trajectory out to 100 yards and the 2nd is the fact it has yet to exhibit the pressure problems sometimes seen with the .40 Small & Weak.

    Each to his own, however….

    All The Best,
    Frank W. James

Comments are closed.