Are phone books good inicators of ballistics?
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steveno
Member
how many times have you been attacked by a phone book? unless you have been attacked by one it is meaningless . a reliable gun , watch the front sight and the willingness to use it is what will get you by.
Ive never been attacked by paper targets either
Im just trying to justify spending 20 dollars on a box of Uber Bullets.
i dont have access to ballistic gelatin or any willing participants that would allow me to shoot them.
So i used a couple of phone books. Instead of a mushroom i anticipated the recovered bullet is a slighlty larger disfigured ball.
Im just trying to justify spending 20 dollars on a box of Uber Bullets.
i dont have access to ballistic gelatin or any willing participants that would allow me to shoot them.
So i used a couple of phone books. Instead of a mushroom i anticipated the recovered bullet is a slighlty larger disfigured ball.
Red Tornado
Member
Search around online for making a wet pack. It basically involves soaking phonebooks in water until they're thoroughly saturated (several hours or possibly overnight, I can't remember exactly) and then duck taping them together. You only have about 1/2 an hour after you take them out of the water to shoot them, otherwise they start drying up.
Let us know how that works.
RT
Let us know how that works.
RT
Vern Humphrey
Member
Try a Fackler box. This is a trough, about a foot square and about 6 feet long, open at both ends. It's filled with 1-gallon plastic bags of water. It works about like ballistic gelatin (although won't give exact penetration correspondence).
Double Naught Spy
Sus Venator
Only wet phonebooks are not really living things per say, at least not like any I have seen. I can tear a wet phone book in two, even one of the really thick ones, but I can't tear many animals above the size of a jackrabbit in two and only then it is at the leg. Given the lack of an internal skeleton and lack of an external or exoskeleton, phone books must be like really dense jellyfish, only the they don't swim and don't sting.
You know the trees. They are the boxy trees comprised of pages of names and numbers. Oh wait, I have never seen a tree like that either.
Tell me again, why do people use phonebooks?
spacemanspiff
Senior Member
try shooting a rifle at a box full of dry phone books. at 20 feet my mauser was making huge holes in the first 2 phone books, and then i couldnt find the bullet. someone else digging through the box found it later.
a 230 gr fmj .45acp wasnt getting over 1 1/2 inch penetration on dry phone books for me. but try emptying the mag, that will drive the penetration deeper, and the bullets will start deforming on the other bullets already in there.
i collect up the phone books here at work when they get replaced every year. still have about a dozen or so, might take them out this weekend.
a 230 gr fmj .45acp wasnt getting over 1 1/2 inch penetration on dry phone books for me. but try emptying the mag, that will drive the penetration deeper, and the bullets will start deforming on the other bullets already in there.
i collect up the phone books here at work when they get replaced every year. still have about a dozen or so, might take them out this weekend.
HankB
Member
Wet phone books provide a rough - okay, very rough - indication of bullet performance in uniform soft tissue.
Note that few animals are made of "uniform soft tissue" all the way through.
Note that few animals are made of "uniform soft tissue" all the way through.
TallPine
Member
Depends on how strong of an arm you have and how far you can throw them.
Phone books in general tend to have really poor ballistics. They are not very aerodynamic and tend to tumble and sometimes open up in flight.
However, they are really useful for CQB especially if you have nothing else at hand to use for defense. If I ever absoulutely have to fly again, I plan to take one on board in a backpack.
The trouble with Montana phone books is that they tend to be so skinny sort of like a 22 compared to a 45.
Phone books in general tend to have really poor ballistics. They are not very aerodynamic and tend to tumble and sometimes open up in flight.
However, they are really useful for CQB especially if you have nothing else at hand to use for defense. If I ever absoulutely have to fly again, I plan to take one on board in a backpack.
The trouble with Montana phone books is that they tend to be so skinny
sort of like a 22 compared to a 45.I guess because they're reasonably consistent and proffer a similar medium as ballistic gelatin. I haven't seen any of the hotshot testing houses using variable density gelatin to simulate organ traversal or using chitinous material to test performace after a bullet hits bone[1], so provided a conversion factor can be determined between wet phone books and ballistic gelatin I don't see the problem.
It's a sign people are interested. Interested people get us things like 147gr 9mm JHPs that actually work. We didn't have that 15 years ago. The more people that are interested, the more likely we'll get an appreciable number of *real* doctors, *real* engineers and *real* stasticians to tackle this subject. Something, I should note, we have a decided lack of right now.
Try to get an Industrial/Systems Engineer to help you develop a data set and analyize it. You can't. There are no academic papers published on the subject[2]. "Hey, help us analyze our database of dead people shot with handguns" isn't a keen way to garner academic support, and without it we're stuck with Facklerites mixing ballistic gelatin in their kitchens. You're stuck with a testing medium that's totally incomparable to the real deal. You're stuck with no mathematical approach or simulation software for modeling bullet performance in living tissue.
So yes, people using phone books is good. It's an improvement. Modeling a complex system like the human body with 10% ballistic gelatin is primitive beyond words, but it's an improvement over "ballistic clay" which is what was used 20-30 years ago.
[1] - Possible, not very feasable, and critically necessary for the next step in the accurate simulation of bullet performance.
[2] - What we have now is a result of Government interest and the interest of organizations like the IWBA. While they have made great strides in improving the very young field of wound ballistics, I can guarantee having interested graduate programs at some of the top Engineering and Science Universities could do much, much more.
Zak Smith
Member
I have third-hand info from a recognized ballistics expert that water can be used to estimate what the calibrated gelating results would be. Divide the penetration by 2 and realize the expansion is "best case."
-z
-z
The Fackler box with plastic bags of water is closer to ballistic gelatin in showing expansion. Phonebooks are reputed to give larger expansion than ballistic gelatin if I remember correctly. Though they too are better than nothing. And yes, they must be soaked.
And yeah, pwrtool45, you are correct. Simple gelatin is grossly over-simplified. But better than anything else. We do need those scientists and engineers getting more involved.
And yeah, pwrtool45, you are correct. Simple gelatin is grossly over-simplified. But better than anything else. We do need those scientists and engineers getting more involved.
Vern Humphrey
Member
I'm not sure what the conversion factor is to go from water to ballistic gelatin. Dividing by two seems a bit high.
One interesting experiment would be to put things in front of and between the bags in a Fackler box -- for example, heavy demim cloth in front, then beef bones behind the first bag, and so on.
One interesting experiment would be to put things in front of and between the bags in a Fackler box -- for example, heavy demim cloth in front, then beef bones behind the first bag, and so on.
Zak Smith
Member
You could ask him yourself over on TacticalForums
Standing Wolf
Member in memoriam
Wouldn't it make more sense to shoot telemarketers than telephone books? Am I missing something?
Warren
Member
Do you have any goats handy?
Warren
Member
Seriously, would not any medium suffice as long as you are comparing rounds to each other?
Round A expands well but round b does not and so forth. That should give you an expectation of which would work better under real conditions.
Right?
Round A expands well but round b does not and so forth. That should give you an expectation of which would work better under real conditions.
Right?
Be sure it's an alpine goat and don't tell PETA where you keep your testing facility.
I once fired a .22 rifle into a box of paperbacks... a sizeable box too. Damn thing almost went through 2 FEET of paperback books.
There was a good lesson on penetration and "cover."
Wet phone books provide 'cheap expansive media' to compare bullets in relation to each other... but it's not ballistics gel.
I once fired a .22 rifle into a box of paperbacks... a sizeable box too. Damn thing almost went through 2 FEET of paperback books.
There was a good lesson on penetration and "cover."
Wet phone books provide 'cheap expansive media' to compare bullets in relation to each other... but it's not ballistics gel.
Glock19Fan
Member
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As long as you are comparing two different rounds in the same medium, I think they are alright.
Just about anything with a high percent of liquid will do. Wet newspaper and water filled plastic baggies wont tell you how much a bullet will expand in a human or an animal, but they are pretty darn close.
And yes, the best thing is it will be able to tell you if bullet A will perform better than bullet B or C.
And just a FYI, but wet newspaper does not force bullets to expand. Several months ago I tested various .22LR and .22WMR rounds in wet newspaper (it was soaked in a large tupperware container for 2-3 hours). I tested several different designs from two different guns. Remington subsonic, Remington Golden Bullet, Winchester Xpert, CCI Stinger, CCI Velocitor, Remington .22WMR Vmax, CCI .22WMR Maxi Mag JHP, and CCI .22WMR TNT.
Every HP I tested in .22LR expanded, even from a 6 inch barrel (the most impressive from both guns was Winchester Xpert .22LR which expanded to .42 caliber and CCI TNT .22WMR which expanded to a little over .34, but fragmented pretty well).
However, the Remington Vmax and CCI 40 grain MAXI MAG JHP both failed to expand at all. The Remington Vmaxs polymer tip was forced out and the cavity clogged with newspaper. It was the same for the CCI. Both were traveling anywhere from 1150-1450 FPS.
The Xpert, which was traveling 1000 FPS expanded while the magnums didnt at 300 FPS faster.
So, newspaper doesnt make bullets expand.
(if anyone wants to see the pictures I can take a few and post them).
Just about anything with a high percent of liquid will do. Wet newspaper and water filled plastic baggies wont tell you how much a bullet will expand in a human or an animal, but they are pretty darn close.
And yes, the best thing is it will be able to tell you if bullet A will perform better than bullet B or C.
And just a FYI, but wet newspaper does not force bullets to expand. Several months ago I tested various .22LR and .22WMR rounds in wet newspaper (it was soaked in a large tupperware container for 2-3 hours). I tested several different designs from two different guns. Remington subsonic, Remington Golden Bullet, Winchester Xpert, CCI Stinger, CCI Velocitor, Remington .22WMR Vmax, CCI .22WMR Maxi Mag JHP, and CCI .22WMR TNT.
Every HP I tested in .22LR expanded, even from a 6 inch barrel (the most impressive from both guns was Winchester Xpert .22LR which expanded to .42 caliber and CCI TNT .22WMR which expanded to a little over .34, but fragmented pretty well).
However, the Remington Vmax and CCI 40 grain MAXI MAG JHP both failed to expand at all. The Remington Vmaxs polymer tip was forced out and the cavity clogged with newspaper. It was the same for the CCI. Both were traveling anywhere from 1150-1450 FPS.
The Xpert, which was traveling 1000 FPS expanded while the magnums didnt at 300 FPS faster.
So, newspaper doesnt make bullets expand.
(if anyone wants to see the pictures I can take a few and post them).
Vern Humphrey
Member
Quote:
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Seriously, would not any medium suffice as long as you are comparing rounds to each other?
Round A expands well but round b does not and so forth. That should give you an expectation of which would work better under real conditions.
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The problem is, you only know how they perform in the selected media. That fact that a round expands in dry telephone books doesn't mean it will expand in flesh. Similarly, a round that disintegrates in a telephone book may expand well and penetrate deeply in flesh.
The closer the medium is to the intended target, the more valid the comparison. Calibrated ballistic geletin has been shown to be quite similar to flesh. The addition of clothing and bones may make it a bit more like a real body (human or animal.)
-----------------------------------
Seriously, would not any medium suffice as long as you are comparing rounds to each other?
Round A expands well but round b does not and so forth. That should give you an expectation of which would work better under real conditions.
-------------------------------------
The problem is, you only know how they perform in the selected media. That fact that a round expands in dry telephone books doesn't mean it will expand in flesh. Similarly, a round that disintegrates in a telephone book may expand well and penetrate deeply in flesh.
The closer the medium is to the intended target, the more valid the comparison. Calibrated ballistic geletin has been shown to be quite similar to flesh. The addition of clothing and bones may make it a bit more like a real body (human or animal.)
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