Can you shoot .40 S&W out of your 10mm Auto. - RangeHot - Expert Firearms Reviews & Guides (2024)
Can you shoot .40 Smith and Wesson out of your 10mm Auto pistol? Yes, but you should not. Ever.
Straight walled pistol cases headspace off the case mouth. The .40 S&W is .142″ shorter than the 10mm Auto on average for in spec ammo. In case you do not know what headspace is, it is the distance measured from the part of the chamber that stops the forward motion of the cartridge to the breechface. With the .40 S&W being so short, the case mouth never reaches the beginning of the chamber and thus it headspaces off the extractor. I am not saying if you inadvertently run a few .40 S&W rounds through your 10mm you will have immediate issues. this is all based on prolonged use over time.
As you can see, the left photo is a Barnaul .40 S&W round in the chamber of a Dan Wesson Razorback. On the right is a Hornady 10mm round in the same chamber/barrel. Without the extractor holding the case head to the breechface, you can easily see how much further the .40 S&W drops into the chamber.
The extractor is now responsible for holding the case tight to the breechface allowing the firing pin to strike the primer. It is not designed to perform that task and will accelerate wear and significantly increase the chance of a malfunction. The extractor is meant to extract; it seems so simple yet so many do not get it. Extractor….extract…. see how they sound similar?
With even occasional use of .40 in your 10mm, the end of the chamber will begin to flame cut. Since the bullet has a bit of a jump before the chamber it may enter the barrel off-center wearing on the sharp edges of that chamber, that along the burning powder abrading against those sharp edges, the chamber will be eroded causing excess headspace in the pistol. Excessive headspace is a dangerous condition in any firearm and will need to be remedied before operation is resumed. Before you have to deal with excessive headspace all that jacket material and fouling will build up at the end of the chamber so when you decide to return to shooting the correct cartridge out of your handgun reliability, and overpressure conditions will arise, yet creating more opportunities for an unintentional field strip, ie catastrophic failure.
I know the argument of .38 Special being shot out of a .357 Magnum revolver; however both cartridges are rimmed, and they headspace off the rim. There is no chamber cut into the cylinder for a rimmed cartridge. However, a Ruger Blackhawk in .45 Colt with a .45 Auto conversion cylinder, the .45 Auto cylinder, has a chamber is cut into each of the cylinder holes allowing the .45 Auto to headspace off the case mouth. When running out of spec short cased .45 Auto ignition can be erratic, showing again how important correct headspace is paramount.
A revolver in 10mm Auto that utilizes moon clips will allow safely running the .40 S&W, as the moon clip serves as the rim on straight-walled pistol case. It is advisable when running .38 Special out of your .357 Magnum revolver or .40 S&W out of your 10mm revolver using moon clips to clean the chambers thoroughly before going back to the longer cartridges and issues may occur, just as talked about above.
If you insist on running the .40 Short and Weak out of your 10mm Auto pistol have a .40 S&W barrel fit your handgun; otherwise, you are just plain wrong. Please do not send me your thesis on how long and how often you are running .40 out of your 10mm, as that is anecdotal at best and is about as far from empirical evidence as one can get.
It is safe, as 10mm operates at higher pressure than . 40 but even with the extractor holding the rim of the cartridge, there's no guarantee it will fire reliably.
The answer lies in cartridge case length, not in bullet diameter. The 10mm Auto has a cartridge casing length of 25mm, while the .40 S&W has a case length of 22mm. Both cartridges are rimless and possess the same base dimensions.
Clearly, the 10mm is more powerful, but that power comes at a cost – The recoil is huge and that can play with accuracy, especially in the second or third shot with quickfire situations.
Although it was selected for service by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1989 in the aftermath of the 1986 FBI Miami shootout, the cartridge was later decommissioned (except by the Hostage Rescue Team and Special Weapons and Tactics Teams) after their Firearms Training Unit eventually concluded that its ...
They are each just slightly different. Those differences give one strength over the other as the circ*mstance changes and the stronger one is not always the same round. The 10mm will be superior in some scenarios, and the .357 will win out over the 10mm in other scenarios.
40 caliber Smith & Wesson quickly became a favorite among law enforcement agencies and citizens. Developed as a middle ground between the 9mm and the . 45 ACP, it was designed to provide more stopping power than the 9mm while offering higher magazine capacity than the .45 ACP.
m.b.H. were commercially available ahead of Smith & Wesson in 1990, with pistols chambered in . 40 S&W (the Glock 22 and Glock 23) which were announced a week before the 4006. Glock's rapid introduction was aided by its engineering of a pistol chambered in 10mm Auto, the Glock 20, only a short time earlier.
The 40 S&W fires a larger bullet (124 gr vs 180 gr) that will theoretically create a larger permanent wound cavity and incapacitate a bad guy faster. However, hollow point technology has advanced since 1990 and JHP 9mm loads are considerably more effective, closing the gap between 9mm and 40 in terms of stopping power.
.40 S&W can be fired in 1911s chambered in 10mm, but to do so means that the case is headspacing on the extractor rather than on the case mouth. Accuracy may suffer, and if it's done frequently it may result in extractor failure.
The 10mm has too much recoil for a personal defense weapon. The FBI ordered pistols in this caliber after the 1986 Miami shootout. The weapon had too much recoil so the FBI ordered less powerful ammo and it still had too much recoil.
Just as with the . 45 ACP, some people believe the 10mm has magical powers it just doesn't have. It is nowhere near a "guaranteed one-shot stopper" from a pistol. However, it is one of the most useful handgun cartridges in terms of all the applications a person could use one for.
Because all other external dimensions are the same, you can use the same dies for both 40 S&W and 10mm. When changing from 40 S&W to 10mm Auto, all dies must be “raised” by the difference in brass length *except* the sizing/depriming die which remains down in contact with the shellplate.
On average, a 230-grain 45 ACP round has 7.5 ft-lbs (foot-pounds) of felt recoil, while a 180-grain 10mm load has 11.4 ft-lbs. That means the 10mm has over 50% more recoil than the 45 ACP, which is pretty substantial for many shooters.
41 Mag is capable of significantly more power when loaded properly. A more appropriate comparison would be to compare the 10mm to the .357 Magnum revolver cartridge, which is known to be a hard-hitter in defensive situations as well as a capable hunting round with the right loads.
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