A coworker was curious about two loads he has in .357 Sig and gave them for me to try out. The one I will report on is the Hornay Critical Duty 135gr FlexLock in .357 Sig. Test gun used is a Glock 31 with a four and a half inch barrel shot into two 16 inch blocks of Clear Ballistics gel.



Round one shot into the bare gel had a velocity of 1210fps, penetrated to 16 inches, and expanded to .54 inches. Round two had an impact velocity of 1184fps, penetrated to 17 inches, and expanded to .51 inches.



Round one into the heavy clothing gel hit at a speed of 1184 penetrated to 16 inches and opened up to .51 inches. The second round had a velocity of 1174fps with 18.5 inches of penetration and expanded to .48 inches.





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Very interesting, we appreciate you doing these tests!

Not very spectacular expansion, but it does penetrate well. According to Hornady it should have expanded slightly more, but I know each test is different.

From other tests I've seen, Critical Duty will seem less impressive in gel than HST/Gold Dot but when you shoot it through autoglass or other difficult barriers it has more consistent penetration.

Does not really seem like it did any better than their 9mm+p load.

I know that some have this concern, but I do not and will stick with HST and GD.

However, the standard pressure 135 has a proven track record as a man stopper and performs good with auto glass tests. I use 135's Critical Duty Flexlocks in my car pistol and HST's in my EDC.

Looks like a standard pressure 9mm HST performed better than this watered down load.

1100 to 1200 fps? Are they serious?

Thanks for doing this! Informative!

Speed with certain bullet projectile designs does not necessarily mean better performance.

Exactly, which is why they should design a better projectile to take advantage of 357 SIG velocity.  They just downloaded to a 9mm+p with lower capacity and more expensive ammo.  Speer doesn't just throw 124 gr gold dot 9mm bullets in their 357SIG, it's a different bullet design.

If you compare this ammo to the 9mm +P 124gr XTP test I did you will there is not much difference.

Personally if I had the choice, I would pick a 9mm. If I felt I needed the .357 sig round, I would take advantage of a better load like the Speer round I tested.