Hey Guys-
Having a hard  time finding 230 gr HP bullets for   SHTF and I was wondering if anyone
loads 230 HP Plated for protection . It seems like the speer Gold dot is a plated bullet ??
Thanks
John

I guess any 45 acp would work
What I am trying to find out is if the HP plated bullets would react in a simular
fashion as the speer Gold Dot,which claims to have the lead "fused" to the
jacket ??
Thanks
John

The Gold Dot may be a plated bullet, but it is a highly engineered projectile.  Plated holowpoins by say Berry's or Rannier are NOT.

You can expect most plated HP designs to act the same as an FMJ.

This.

I have Berry's HPs... they do not expand, and as I found out later... were never designed to.

GOLD DOT = ELECTROPLATED BULLET

Funny how far Speer goes to hide that fact.

BUT - that does NOT mean that all electroplated hollow points are equal.  

Facts are: the Gold Dot is a supperior defensive bullet because: 1) it is designed, tested and proven in the LEO use for defensive use against criminals 2) the plating is thicker & accuracy is generally better - probably because it is more consistent 3) the design of the hollow point has been proven, over and over, to be a critical factor.

But back to you Q:  if I felt the need to make gobs of effective .45 JHPs at a reasonable cost, I'd probably be OK using a plated JHP in .45 ACP.

When you are talking about the venerable .45 Auto, you can look at the track record it has established that is nearly a century long and see that for 75% of its career as a man-stopper the bullet with which it made its enviable reputation is the 230-grain FMJ.  The nice thing about .45 Auto is that it is big and heavy enough that even FMJ is fairly effective.  They also normally feed 100%.

So using a Berry's plated version of the 230-gr ball load would simply duplicate this traditional loading.

This is not to say that modern HP designs, and especially highly-engineered ones like the Speer GDHP wouldn't be preferred,  because they do add to the already impressive performance, but they don't make the quantum leap in terminal performance that, say a 9mm HP does over its FMJ antecedent.