Entering a new era…
It takes a certain amount of horsepower to shoot bowling pins off the tables. However, excessive power is not needed so much now in the modern era of pin shooting.
Today, there are two arrangements of pins on the tables, called their sets. There is the Major set and the Minor set. The arrangement of the pins, the spacing and number, will vary in some Events from year to year. But the power needed will not be.
Major set:
With the new organization of the Events, there are only four handgun Events, two Main Events and two Optionals, that will still require a Major Power Factor. The Mains are the classic and original Events;
Stock Gun and Pin Gun. All other Main Events, and the pistol-caliber Optional Events have been re-designed to be Minor-set Events, with two Optional Event exceptions. Those exceptions are Revolver and Two-Person Team. They both still use a Major set, and the Revolver Optional still requires a reload as part of the shooting. Power Factor is the weight of the bullet, in grains, times the velocity it generates, in feet per second, divided by one thousand. So, a 200 grain bullet, at 1,000 fps, is 200,000, divided by one thousand, becomes 200. A 200 PF.
USPSA competition requires a 165 PF to be scored Major. The Minor PF in USPSA is 125. At The Pin Shoot there is no chronograph stage. Neither your velocity, nor bullet weight, are recorded. The pins do the job of measuring your ammunition. If your ammunition is not powerful enough to push the pins off of the table, the pins won’t leave, and your score (the time it takes to shoot them off) will suffer. There is no re-shoot, no objection to be noted, or entreaty to be made to the timers. Your ammunition wasn’t up to the task, the pins are unforgiving in that regard.
What horsepower does it take? Long ago, competitors experienced at shooting pins determined that the threshold of “good pin action” for a Major set was at a 195 PF. So, that 200 grain bullet needed to be going 975 fps in order to work well on pins. More is better, until the recoil becomes too great for your skills, and then the excess PF becomes contrary to fast times.
What calibers will manage this task? All revolvers .357 Magnum and larger. 10mm, .45ACP, and .50GI pistols. The 40 S&W is notable for not being able to manage the task. On paper, and in reloading manuals it might seem like you can make it, but years, indeed decades, of shooters trying the 40 has shown that it just doesn’t work.
So, with a 195 PF as the threshold, what velocities are needed to make Major with the common bullet weights of the big bores?
These velocities are easily managed by the revolver cartridges at or above .357 Magnum. In fact, something like the .45 Colt is almost to the power of a Pin Load with some of the soft-recoiling cowboy action factory offerings. The .41 Magnum and .44 Magnum are running barely above idle at 195PF. The .44 Special makes it with almost any factory load. In .45 ACP it isn’t even necessary to go to a +P load to make a 195 PF. The trick with the 10mm is finding a factory load that isn’t a lot more powerful than the needed 195 PF.
But the 40 S&W just can’t make it. No factory load makes the needed velocity. Only a long-slide pistol, and careful loading at the top end gets close. It is far easier to just switch to a 10mm or .45ACP.
What of the new Pin Shoot Events?
With the new Minor pin set, all events at The Pin Shoot are now scored pins off of the table and onto the ground. The tip-over events are a part of history.
The new sets, made to create 9mm-friendly events, do require a full 9mm effort from your ammunition. Typically, this means for a common factory load of a 124 grain FMJ, you’ll see a muzzle velocity of 1,050 fps. This is a Power Factor of 130. This will take a pin off of the table in the Minor set, but it will move off slowly. There are factory loadings that offer more velocity, but they will typically use premium bullets meant for defensive use, and cost as much as twice that of the 9mm ammunition loaded with plain FMJ bullets. Competitors who want more power, but not the cost of expensive JHPs will typically load their own.
The Power Factor that will briskly move pins off, and not create too much recoil begins at 140 PF, and the pressure limits of 9mm usually mean that anything past a 150 PF is too hot and should be avoided. With that in mind, here are the velocities needed to create a 140 and a 145 PF:
The 115 grain bullet velocities are at the maximum of what the 9mm can be loaded to, so the most-common “light” 9mm bullet weight in use is 124 and 125 grain. The choice is often made either on cost (what bullet is least-costly) or accuracy (which bullet is most accurate in my pistol?).
Interestingly, it is possible to load a .45 ACP, 10mm or 40 S&W down to the levels needed for a Minor set. The trick here is keeping velocities high enough to have the bullet fully enter the pin, and not leave the base exposed. The best choice here is to have a load with at least 750 fps muzzle velocity. It is possible to find coated bullets for the .45ACP as light as 160 grains, and for the 40/10mm of 165 grains.
The velocities for the larger bores, to a Minor set power level:
You can see that creating a Minor-set load, in a .45, 10mm or .45, with a bullet heavier than 185 grains is getting on the slow side, and could create bounce-backs. There’s also the matter of just how consistent a load could be, using a heavier bullet, and a tiny powder charge, to create a mere 140 PF load.
The approach of using a larger-bore-than-9mm pistol to shoot in the Minor-set events is one taken only by those with a huge supply of 40 or 45 brass. (The cost of 10mm brass would make it a not-good idea.) If you have reloaded 40 or 45 in the past, and still have buckets of that brass on hand, then loading up Minor pin loads in that brass makes sense.
For everyone else, 9mm is the cartridge of choice.
