What we all know about the round ball.

22+inches ain't bad penetration. I was surprised he got that much.

Did he indicate the distance from the muzzle to the gel? I didn't stay long.

penetration

Considering the average human body is only about 10 to 12 inches thick
why this infatuation of penetration twice as great.
If I was needing to shoot a human with my BP or any other modern firearm, I would not want more than 6 to 8 inches penetration.
Yes a big exit hole might be nice.
But passing clear through too quickly reduces the impact shock and knock down power.
I want that round ball to stay inside and continue to slice away with every body movement.

Shot my deer in the chest this September and found the ball in the rear ham.

DD4lifeusmc said:

Considering the average human body is only about 10 to 12 inches thick
why this infatuation of penetration twice as great.
If I was needing to shoot a human with my BP or any other modern firearm, I would not want more than 6 to 8 inches penetration.
Yes a big exit hole might be nice.
But passing clear through too quickly reduces the impact shock and knock down power.
I want that round ball to stay inside and continue to slice away with every body movement.

Click to expand...

1. Because if you have to shoot somebody they often have their hands out pointing something at you, and you may end up going through quite a lot of arm, etc. before getting to their torso.
2. People aren't made of gelatin, or meat for that matter. There's skin, bones, etc.
3. The most useful numbers are after penetrating clothing as well. Depending on your assumptions about the weather, etc. you may want quite a few layers in there.
4. Some people (LEOs) want to be able to shoot somebody, say, in a car, so you have to be able to factor that in as well.

penetration

@Eljaysl
Now you are throwing a lot of what if's into the occasion that may not be there.
We are NOT talking about LEO's and having to shoot through a car door and such with a modern high velocity high power weapon.
We are only talking about an 1850 - 1870 era Black Powder weapon with most likely a round ball.

I don't have any scientific proof to back this up, just observation.
Presuming 30 to 50 ft to target range with the 30 grains of BP and it goes BOOM like it is expected. It really is not going to matter if he is bare chested, wearing a T-shirt or a heavy parka.
At that range that little amount of cloth isn't going to stop that bullet from penetrating at least 5 inches into a human body.

You want to prove or disprove? go get 4 to 6 inches of steak meat ( closely resembles human fleah and muscle). put a layer of parka over it.
Attach it to a 1" thick pine board, and have a good back stop.

You are going to find that that round ball from one of our 44 cal BP revolvers will have passed clear through the parka and the meat, and more than likely the board also.

Reason I know this. Bunch of us did this little experiment back in the 1970's.

So I stand by my earlier statement. I do not see the infatuation of trying to obtain 22 inches of penetration with these revolvers against a human target.

While these guns are capable of taking down big game, hogs and even coyotes with proper shot placement, there are much better weapons of choice, better designed (even in BP) for that chore.
So again I still don't see the infatuation of getting that much depth.
Yeah it's nice to know that it is capable from a curious point of mind, but that's it.
Most states don't allow big game hunting with a black powder 44 revolver, so not going to be doing it anyway, so it really don't matter.
My 2 cents on it.

How many of the backwoodsmen were using round ball when Major General Pakenham embarrassed his brother in law the Duke of Wellington by having his Black Watch regiment wiped out to a man in New Orleans circa 1814? How many Confederates used pistol ball to execute the defenders after the taking of Fort Pillow?

One of the things we know about round ball is they used to fight very effective wars with them.

Crawdad1 said:

His testing could have been more scientific recording distance and all but it is eye opening how much that 457 ball blasted its way through the gelatin. Great results with 30 grains of powder from a ball.

So do numbers mean anything, really????

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Some numbers do. Knock down power is not one of them. The ideal shot is one that has a bullet that has an original diameter that will produce an adequate wound channel and completely penetrates what ever body you are shooting. A hole on each side induces pneumothorax and a copious blood loss. Another poor number is "energy" as applied to a bullet.
If you can find it there is a very long and exhaustive study called "Wounding" that addresses this subject in great length showing actual wound channels of many of the calibers in use today and some of the obsolete ones. If anyone knows of this study, I'd like to have it again. I lost it a couple of computer changes back.
It shows, graphically, why a large caliber at a relatively slow speed is as effective if not more so than a small caliber a high speed. In all cases, two holes are better than one.

Well here is my perspective.... I've only ever had one lead bullet remain in an animal and that was 250 or so pound pig and the bullet there was a Lyman 577611 that penetrated all the way through to the offside hide and opened to almost if not an inch and flatter than a pancake.

Round balls have never stopped. Granted, I shoot generally 20 to 50 yard range max with my black powder... this pig was maybe 20 yards and the perfect setup.... dropped on the spot.

Ain't no such thing as knock down power, at least in handguns. A bullet can not hit any harder than the recoil hits you. You can hit someone with your fist much harder than a bullet hits. As far as the 22 inches penetration, I didn't say it was good, bad, or ugly. I just said I was surprised it was that much. IMHO the only thing gel testing proves is one cartridge penetrates more or less than another. But it is fun to watch the tests. If the video was meant to be scientific then I missed that part. All I saw was, "Hey, let's see how this old gun does."

Reason I know this. Bunch of us did this little experiment back in the 1970's.

Click to expand...

Nobody's ever learned anything about ballistics in the last 40 years so you must be right. Shame the FBI went to all that effort developing newer protocols.

I always figured I can put 2 and 2 together and figure out that a round ball is nothing to be taken lightly in terms of lethality.

Sometimes you don't need science to figure some things out. This test video was great and I appreciate the effort the testor put into making it and am thankful to him for sharing his results with everyone.

Several thoughts:

1. All the westerns where the Doc says "Its a clean wound. The bullet passed all the way through."

2. All of the Civil war post-op deaths from infection from soiled bits of clothing left in the wound channel.

3. With recoil, you have a heavy piece of metal and wood in your hand reducing the bullet's force on you as well as the time it takes for the bullet to reach full velocity but whatever is on the receiving end is not usually so lucky.

4. Neat video, thanks Crawdad1.

reconsidered

I wonder how a .54 round ball at 1800 FPS would do from a Hawken rifle!

I wonder how a .54 round ball at 1800 FPS would do from a Hawken rifle!

Click to expand...

This exit hole was made by a .54 round ball at about 1,700 fps. It was fired from my TC New Englander.

J-Bar said:

reconsidered

Click to expand...

No guts, no glory.

The round ball is awesome even at low velocities. Hickock never had a problem with his .36s.

It was claimed, perhaps on this site, that Civil War veterans thought a round ball from a revolver was more effective than the issued conical... Perhaps to do with velocity? Apparently some soldiers loaded either loose powder and roundball (or made their own cartridges) if they had no issued paper conicals left in their pockets...

A lot of the pictures I've seen show a very pointy conical. This design, coupled with a low velocity, would more than likely push tissue out of the way as flesh has a lot of give. Even the more RN type, such as Lee's version, would possibly not create quite the wound channel that the somewhat more blunt RB would.

This is why I created my cap n ball conicals with a very wide meplat like this:

http://accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=45-195C-D.png

If I were to get no expansion it would still cut a nice wide hole. And if it does expand it begins from those dimensions instead of the smaller area of a ball.

And speed being a part of expansion I created this projectile to take up no more room than a ball as it's only .460" long.

I'm longing to use this on a deer! It does quite well from my ROA with 35 grns of T7 or Olde E, and with 30 grns from my Pietta Remington '58. With 35 grns of powder I anticipate that it gives me nearly 475 ft/lbs comparing it to Mr Beliveau's testing with T7 and a Lee conical in a Ruger.

I had to modify my Pietta even for the shorter 170 grn version that's basically the same but .400" long cut off of the nose.

I found that it really wasn't difficult or time consuming, though I never reblued it.

I also made a 285 grn bullet that's quite similar for my Ruger that I hadn't taken into consideration the width of the meplat for and had to modify too. I really didn't want to do that to my Ruger, but seeing that the Remington looks nice enough...

I had read many threads stating that the Pietta's had a slower twist for RB's and figured the .400" long 170 grn bullet would do nicely, but found mine to have the same 1:16" twist as my Ruger as it was newer and apparently updated.

I had to do quite a bit of work on my Pietta, but that would hijack the thread...