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The basic SWC design consists of a roughly conical nose, truncated with a flat point (called a meplat), sitting on a cylinder (A at right). The base of the cone is slightly smaller in diameter than the cylinder, leaving a sharp shoulder. The flat nose punches a clean hole in the target, rather than tearing it like a round nose bullet would, and the sharp shoulder enlarges the hole neatly, allowing easy and accurate scoring of the target. The SWC design offers better external ballistics than the wadcutter, as its conical nose produces less drag than the flat cylinder. A typical modification is to alter the conical section to make the sides concave, to reduce the bullet mass, or convex, to increase it. B shows a concave sided SWC, typical of a lightweight .45 ACP bullet used in bullseye shooting. The concave sides reduce the bullet weight, and thus the recoil, while keeping the overall length of the bullet long enough to feed reliably in a semi-automatic pistol such as the M1911 commonly found in bullseye competitions. |
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