Threaded barrels

[GJM]

Forever, I have wondered about threaded barrels. Generally they show up at a Timmie class with the guy with a beard, M&P and Surefire light in a Raven holster. Since I never saw their suppressor, I wondered why.

The whole field gun quest has gotten me thinking about reliability, penetration, and carry-ability. Interrelated with penetration is velocity, as in enough to get through a thick animal's skull. Once I figured out the HK45C would run Super, it occurred to me that the Tactical model with threaded barrel, extends the barrel from just under four inches to about 4.5 inches. While you don't get extra sight radius, you get the velocity of a full size HK45 of USP in a more compact pistol format.

While I have no illusion .5 inch of barrel means anything in most service loads for traditional use, it may increase velocity enough with a penetrating load to make the service pistol more viable in the field pistol role. Thoughts?

[StraitR]

Forever, I have wondered about threaded barrels. Generally they show up at a Timmie class with the guy with a beard, M&P and Surefire light in a Raven holster. Since I never saw their suppressor, I wondered why.

The whole field gun quest has gotten me thinking about reliability, penetration, and carry-ability. Interrelated with penetration is velocity, as in enough to get through a thick animal's skull. Once I figured out the HK45C would run Super, it occurred to me that the Tactical model with threaded barrel, extends the barrel from just under four inches to about 4.5 inches. While you don't get extra sight radius, you get the velocity of a full size HK45 of USP in a more compact pistol format.

While I have no illusion .5 inch of barrel means anything in most service loads for traditional use, it may increase velocity enough with a penetrating load to make the service pistol more viable in the field pistol role. Thoughts?

I think if you can put positive, quantifiable data to this, you're on to something. Otherwise, your inner Timmie is coming out.

[HCM]

It will prevent your gun from going out of battery in the event of a contact shot.

[JR1572]

It will prevent your gun from going out of battery in the event of a contact shot.

I prefer to use a WML for that.

JR1572

[StraitR]

It will prevent your gun from going out of battery in the event of a contact shot.

With a bear?

[CCT125US]

What's the chrono say? How does it translate to expansion vs. penetration?

You do have a chrono right?

[Default.mp3]

It will prevent your gun from going out of battery in the event of a contact shot.

I'm pretty sure the exact opposite is true, at least in my experience playing with my threaded barrel on my P30LS, as pushing on the barrel will force it out of battery. I have specifically carried my non-threaded-barrel gun for EDCing when I was too lazy to rezero the one with the threaded barrel.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Interesting thought.

Hopefully this doesn't send things off on a tangent but I occasionally have the threaded-barrel renditions of guns, simply because Canadian laws require a 4.2" barrel. That often makes threaded barrels legal on compact (or at least mid-sized) guns.

For example, I have a threaded G19. I've never thought about the effect on performance; it's just a way to get a 19 here. People here do the same with threaded HK45Cs, exactly as described in your post. Technically it's illegal to take them into the bush for most people (and the exceptions aren't especially interesting, although in my area at least they actually are somewhat readily available for people who work in remote areas) but if you could magically survey all of Western Canada on any given day during hunting season, how many handguns would you find? Thousands. Hunters with handguns as emergency backups are super common, although, much like Alaska, magnum revolvers are the standard, and HKs running .45super? I don't know, there's probably five or six of them, and four or five are probably in safes 99.9% of the time.

Anyway I guess if you had the inclination you could probably compare velocities to a known standard and work out the relative performance envelope of a given round, and whether another half inch of barrel could put you into an ideal performance envelope, but I just had a masonjargarita and can't take that line of reasoning much further.


I mean obviously (or at least I hope it's obvious) I wouldn't be the guy pretending to need a threaded barrel to go with my suppressed beard, if I grew a beard, and threaded a suppressor onto it. But I can imagine that if you wanted to do the detail work on figuring out the ideal velocity of a given projectile you could certainly tailor it to perform in a smaller, more hikable, and thus more huntable, package. I realize now this paragraph is constructed of initially two, and now three, totally disconnected sentences, and I apologize.

[GJM]

My field loads, whether the Buffalo Bore .45 Super, 230 FMJ-FP or the Lehigh Xtreme penetrator, don't expand. At service pistol velocities, more velocity is a good thing in achieving penetration. For example, the Buffao Bore .45 Super load chronographs at only 1,060 in my USP 45 full size. I have not had a chance to chrono that load in the HK45C, but I bet it is only high 900's, and extra velocity would be welcome. Garrett Cartridges, for example, makes their Defender load for the .44 magnum Scandium revolvers at 1,020 out of a four inch barrel. That load, though, benefits from a big meplat, and being hard cast. More velocity from an extended barrel in the 45C or USP 45 full size, might allow me to get the same velocity out of the Underwood Lehigh penetrator load in 45+P, for example, as I get from their 45 Super load.


Tony at JM can leave the bottom of his appendix holsters more open, easily accommodating the extended barrel while maintaining the general footprint of the pistol with its regular barrel.

[ReverendMeat]

It will prevent your gun from going out of battery in the event of a contact shot.

I don't see how a threaded barrel would do that.