.40 S&W Caliber

[Mad Professor]

I'm in the process of building up my brass stash. I've been on 3 range trips this past week doing brass collection. I'm finding nearly 20-1 9mm vs anything else. Behind the 9's, I've been finding 40's, and 5.7's, then 10mm and 45's. Luckily, yesterday was the first day I was able to get a decent haul of 223/556's. I've been staring at a 3/4 full 5 gallon bucket of range brass, and dreading the sorting because I do not have any sort of sorting equipment yet. For me, it's a several plastic parts bins in front of a tv, and hours tedious sorting for now.

I might be willing to sort for a cut in some of the calibers you are not using.


Edit. This does a pretty good job of sorting. An occasional .380 skips by. But I catch those and the 9x18 with a laser on my 1050 end I further process the 9mm. I might end up seeing 1 .380 per K.

 

[thor447]

I might be willing to sort for a cut in some of the calibers you are not using.


Edit. This does a pretty good job of sorting. An occasional .380 skips by. But I catch those and the 9x18 with a laser on my 1050 end I further process the 9mm. I might end up seeing 1 .380 per K.

Hey that's one heck of an offer! I'll be in touch.

 

[Shadowrider]

10mm was an answer to a legit question: how can we get .357Mag ballistics in a rimless case that will feed reliably in a semi-auto?

.40 Short & Wimpy was also an answer to a question: how can we get 10mm to not hurt so much to shoot?

In short, .40S&W was an evolution of the 10mm FBI Lite load, which was developed because of concerns that the full-house 10mm was too much for female and smaller male FBI agents (concerns about the 10mm's reputation for battering guns may have played a role, but this happened early in the 10's history, so I find that questionable). .40 shortened the 10mm's case, thinned the case's web, and switched to small pistol primers--sort of a reverse of the .38Spl to .357Mag evolution. (Incidentally, the different web on .40S&W is why you don't just cut a 10mm down to .40 length; the thicker web results in a smaller volume inside the case, which results in higher chamber pressure.)

As to why .40 has fallen out of favor: it doesn't really gain you anything over 9mm or .45ACP as far as "stopping power" goes (and reading Medal of Honor citations illustrates how iffy a notion that is from the get-go); it costs you magazine capacity (you can get 11 rounds of 9mm in the space of 10 rounds of .40); and it doesn't have the economies of scale of 9mm in particular, so .40 costs more to shoot (which tends to be especially noticeable when you're buying large batches).

Personally, I don't shoot .40 because I find it to be very unpleasant to shoot, and this is coming from someone who enjoyed shooting 10mm and .44Mag. (Pro Tip: don't shoot bowling pins with PMC 240gr TCSP from a Model 29. After one cylinder, it was shredded...)

Another tidbit on the 10mm. The 10mm was Jeff Cooper’s brainchild. He wanted a .40 caliber, 200 grain bullet running at 1000 FPS.

Norma said “hey we have modern propellants and we’re gonna use them”. So what ended up happening was basically another.41 magnum. It was doomed as a service pistol caliber from the start and that’s probably what killed the Bren Ten too.


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[SoonerP226]

Norma said “hey we have modern propellants and we’re gonna use them”. So what ended up happening was basically another.41 magnum. It was doomed as a service pistol from the start and that’s probably what killed the Bren Ten too.

The Bren Ten had other issues, but Ian did a good job of covering that on his Forgotten Weapons channel on YouTube.

 

[Shadowrider]

The Bren Ten had other issues, but Ian did a good job of covering that on his Forgotten Weapons channel on YouTube.

I edited my post. I meant to say "doomed as a service pistol caliber". But yea, D&D didn't last long enough to work out the kinks. There are always issues to work through on new guns.