Test 5: Penetration, Expansion And Weight Retention
Any rounds meeting all criteria for reliability, consistent velocity, accuracy, and controllable recoil are then fired into water. According to Ed Sanow in Handgun Stopping Power, the book he wrote with former Detroit Police detective Evan Marshall, water generates the same results, vis-a-vis penetration and expansion, as 10-percent ordnance gelatin. It just slightly overstates expansion and penetration.Take the expansion and penetration results in water, delete 10 percent, and you know what a bullet would do in gelatin. Water also correlates very well to what a bullet can be expected to do in living tissue, especially lungs. Even large police agencies using sophisticated gelatin techniques for ammo testing often doublecheck with water as a failsafe.
Before we go further, we should make it clear our water testing gives only a rough estimate of penetration to the nearest 3 inches. This is not a protocol that will tell you, "Ah, yes, precisely 8.3794 inches of penetration." It's more like, "Ah yes, 9 inches." Or 12, 15, etc.
If you want to check our results at your range, gather a number of empty gallon milk jugs, at least three per load to be tested. Fill with water and cap them. Line them up in a row, 10 feet from the gun muzzle. Ask the permission of range personnel before doing any of this, of course. Some people who water-test bullets actually build "water boxes" to hold the jugs in a row, but it's not really necessary.
Carefully align the gun so the bullet will travel through the bottom "fat" part of every jug. Fire the gun. Water will fly everywhere. (This portion of the ammo testing is done on an outdoor range, for obvious reasons.) The bullet will wind up inside one of the milk jugs. A gallon milk jug measures 6 inches from front to back. If the bullet is inside jug 2, you've got a hole in the front but no penetration in back, count that as 9 inches of penetration (6 inches for the first milk jug, then figure half the second jug equals another 3 inches). If you have a hole in the back of jug 2 where the bullet whacked and penetrated, but the bullet is still inside that jug, count that as 12 inches of penetration. And so on.
Uncap the jug, pour the remaining water and bullet out into your hand. Voila! You have an expanded and recovered bullet. Take a plastic trash bag with you to the range and carry away the shredded milk jugs, to keep the range clean. The only sign you were there will be a bit of water on the ground that will swiftly evaporate. At Gun Tests, our prejudice is that, for a self-defense load, we would prefer the bullet come to rest in jug 2. Stopping in jug 1 would equal 6 inches or less of penetration (about 5 1/2 in gelatin), which could translate into a failure to reach vital organs on an oblique shot, especially if an arm or other barrier was hit first. We could live with having the bullet stop in jug 3, though that would be toward the deep end for our preferences. If the bullet totally penetrates all three jugs, it is dangerously over-penetrative for self-defense and dangerous to innocent bystanders. The only situation in which we'd want to see the bullet travel beyond jug 3 is if we were testing rounds for hunting and deemed more penetration desirable than would be appropriate for an antipersonnel load.
The recovered bullet is measured for expansion with dial calipers, and on an electronic scale for weight retention (i.e. how much of the bullet is left after penetration and expansion).
He's already stated it's his zombie load.
