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Old December 11, 2004, 11:16 PM   #1
Slasher42
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Ammo/Testing question...

Hey, I've been reading the forums here for about 2 weeks now. And I am looking for some info.

Does someone know where I could find pictures or videos of ammo testing? Such as a comparison between FMJ and JHP ammo against "soft targets" I was thinking of conducting some tests myself, but was unsure on what to use as the "soft" target. The best thing that came to mind was a Watermelon...

Any info, links, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

BTW - I am looking for info specific to 9mm, but anything would be helpful.
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Old December 17, 2004, 09:29 PM   #2
Ozzieman
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The best thing for testing on a cheep expence account

Find a 55 gallon drum and fill it with water. Get up on a ladder and shoot down into it. You might get wet but water is easer on your shirt than mellon.
You only get one round with a mellon.
But if you really want to see how rounds work once you have fired several into the water. Place a heavy jacket and a sweter and teashirt and what ever over the top of the tank and shoot through it.
I love all these gelleton mold shots, and If I am ever attacked by jellow then I know what bullet and gun to use.
But if you add cloth you might be surprised how poorly some bullets work and some when the end is filled with cloth actualy turn inside them selves.
This is actualy the way that the Indiana state poliece balistic tech tests guns in northern Indaian. He is a good friend.
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Old December 17, 2004, 10:51 PM   #3
sarmstrong806
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Stephen A. Camp has a good site with handgun and ammo testing.

http://www.hipowersandhandguns.com/
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Old December 17, 2004, 11:03 PM   #4
Danindetroit
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www.firearmstactical.com

Oz most sites have the tests with clothing, on them usually denim, the law enforcement sites, usually also have sheet metal(car door), plywood, plaster board, and auto glass.

You are just testing how well your bullet performs if attacked by a 55 gallon drum. The metal will likely turn the bullet into a cylinder that will act like a SWC, not necessarily bad, but nothing like human flesh.

The ballistic gelatin, tries to reproduce, human flesh, it can not reproduce skin, and skin is tough, and on exiting is very tough, equivalent to 4 inches of flesh. The gelatin, can be reproduced, under laboratory conditions, so that sven in norway, can do the same test. The scientific method calls for repeatability. So somebody that can come up with a better substance, will make a fortune.

You are right it proves nothing about if the attacker is going to die, laugh, or, the charleston, but it does help to see how the bullet will perform in the human body reasonably well, meaning will it expand or not.
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Old January 8, 2005, 03:54 PM   #5
Para Bellum
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My own Test, see: http://www.raoulwagner.com/9mm.htm

My business partner was stabbed in the head by a schizophrenic-paranoid until the knife broke on my partner's head. He made it. After 7 operations he's back to work. Other than me he is a pacifist. I practice hand-to-hand combat as a hobby and since that incident I carry a gun.

Since there is no reliable information on bullet-performance out there and the subject is too vital to trust anybody else, I did my own ballistic tests. After studying whatever material I could find on the web, shooting .45s and 9x19mm pistols, I decided that the 9x19mm Glock 19 is my gun.

Then I went on to search for the most reasonable defense load. I live in Vienna/Austria (Europe) where hollowpoints are illegal. The Federal EMFJ isn't, frangible bullets are neither. So I conducted my own wetpack-Test of the Federal EMFJ and Fiocchi Frangible Ammunition in 9x19mm. I published the result with many pics on my website: http://www.raoulwagner.com/9mm.htm
The EMFJ did remarkably well: When I look at the 18mm (0,70") expansion, the 11,5cm (4,52") penetration (hard wetpack) and the shockwave with a diameter of up to 6,5cm (2,55"), I believe that this bullet is very likely to
1. transfer all its energy to the first body being hit (and doesn't endanger my family or employees around);
2. cause significant tissue destruction, pain, blood-loss, shock, and punch;
3. penetrate deep enough to fatally damage vital organs and central nerves.

More penetration would not be acceptable to me; I assume that in the real world I would not be firing at anybody being farther away than 10m (30ft). I even think that the actual self-defense range is 0 to 3m (up to 10ft). Therefore I think that aiming is not the problem. If he moves towards me, he will be close enough to be hit when I fire. If he moves away, I call the police from my cell phone. If he moves towards somebody I want to save, so will I. some IPSC-practice taught me to run and accurately aim and shoot (at short distances) at the same time.

More penetration than e.g. the EMFJ provides seems to cause an extreme risk of (i) not punching enough, since not all energy is being transferred, and (ii) killing a good guy behind the bad guy or behind the door, window or wall behind the bad guy...

The Glaser, Magsafe and Corbon sound interesting to, but nobody imports them into Austria (any salesman listening?).

Stay safe.
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Old January 8, 2005, 09:51 PM   #6
infrared35
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Wetpacks are relatively easy to make and use, if your range allows it.

Get about a 12-18-inch-tall stack of phone books and use heavy duty tape (packing tape or duct tape, etc.) to tape them tightly together. Don't be shy with the tape, as the phone books expand when wet. But don't cover so much of the books that water can't soak in, either. Once the stack is secured, soak it in a tub of water (deep enough to cover the entire stack and then some) for around 18 hours. Do your tests as soon as you can after removing the wetpack from the water.

Wetpacks are highly unscientific, but at least they allow you to compare the relative expansion and penetration of two or three different loads per wetpack. Fire three rounds of each type and average your measurements. I usually fire three rounds each of three different types into a wetpack; the size of the phone books will determine how many rounds will fit.

I did some comparisons between known loads tested by the FBI in gelatin versus the wetpacks I had made. It appeared that the wetpack was roughly four times as dense as ballistic gelatin, so if a round penetrated to six inches, that meant it would penentrate to roughly twenty-four inches in gelatin.

Again, highly unscientific, but cheap and easy. It's interesting to see how a given bullet will perform under "ideal" circumstances.

Just be sure you still have a safe backstop in case a round manages to penetrate all the way through (or exits out the side).

And of course there are variations to make the tests a little more "realistic" such as covering the wetpack with several layers of denim or cloth, etc...
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Old January 8, 2005, 10:50 PM   #7
Jeff Loveless
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InfraRED,

I tried your setup once, sorta. Our phone books are but 1/4" thick and I couldn't steal enough of them to make a wet pack. What I did have plenty of were my wife's various glossy magazines. All taped together and soaked over night they provide a very tough medium to shoot into. Too tough I guess. I got hardly any penetration with 45 or 357 ammo of different weights. Just to show those magazines who was boss, I shot a pack of them with a 243 soft point. It disintergrated within an inch.

Don't use soaked women's magazines. They could double as soft body armor.
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Old January 8, 2005, 11:47 PM   #8
gifted
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I was shopping for a range trip, NMShooter over on THR said we were't going to an official range. Go through the food section of Wally-world, I debated ham or baby ribs to mess with. Didn't, as there was no way to keep them on the four hour drive. But it's something that might appeal in the future.
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Old January 10, 2005, 12:35 PM   #9
infrared35
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I'm kind of lucky with phone books - there's a small airport near here that gets a stand full of them every year, but nobody goes to the airport to pick up a phone book since they're also delivered door-to-door. So the airport has plenty of old ones left when the new ones come out...
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Old January 14, 2005, 10:11 PM   #10
TomNash
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I started out testing ballistic gelatin (because, like one of the original posters, I didn't easily trust other peoples results) with an issue of the IWBA journal with tabulated data for a 2.75" barreled 380acp shooting various loads into ballistic gelatin. Quite surprisingly (at the time), most of the bullets out of a similar 2.75" barreled gun failed to perform even closely to those in the tables.

One reason for this is that the design of bullets change over time, often without notification by the manufacturers themselves. Any change in a bullet design can increase expansion at the cost of shallower penetration or vice versa.

Also, different guns shoot different loads 'faster' or 'slower' due to manufacturing variations. Pistol ammunition is greatly dependant upon velocity in order to expand and this can be illustrated by any type of ballistic test.

Utilizing a test medium other than ballistic gelatin cannot do anything with acceptable accuracy other than show whether or not a bullet is likely to expand in a muscle tissue medium. While expansion is inarguably a great characteristic to have in a defensive bullet, greater effect is realized by bullet penetration to a suitable depth in the human body. More people have likely been killed in the United States by the .22LR (and lesser) cartridges than by all of the other cartridges combined. Most of these shootings probably didn't involved voodoo expanding bullets of any kind - a round nose .22LR can reach the FBI minimum depth in gelatin, 12 inches, whether fired from a pistol or a rifle - call me crazy, but I see a connection here.

Water tests are great in that they allow the bullet to expand to almost exactly the same dimensions as it would in ballistic gelatin. The accuracy is +- 10%. A good way of doing this is to shoot a 0.5 gallon cardboard jug filled completely with water. Back the single milk jug with a long cardboard box filled with old pillow stuffing to recover the bullet. I find this method good for quickly and conveniently evaluating the bullets that I would like to shoot at a gelatin block. If they don't expand in water, they likely will not expand in calibrated ballistic gelatin either. Shoot slow and good... Tom
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Old January 14, 2005, 10:47 PM   #11
Ozzieman
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If you live in the country

Find a 35 gallon barrel with one end open and cut a screen the same size as the barrel. attach strings to the screen and drop in to the bottom of the barrel.
Fill the barrel with watter. get up on a ladder and shoot down into the barrel.
Pull the screen up and you have your bullet test.
A 35 gallon barrel will stop everything up to and including top 44 mag.
This is what the Indiana state balistic expert uses for testing guns.
Be warned, you will get a little wet.
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