I have many phonebooks...

[possenti]

My wife cleans an office building at night, and she just brought home about 3 dozen old phone books - the thick ones. God bless my little garbage-picker!

I want to use them to do penetration tests with various calibers/bullet designs. How do I go about preparing the books? I've read that some people shoot them wet, others dry. What about fastening them together? Is duct tape a simple method, or should I go with something more elaborate? About how many books should I use for small to large calibers?

If anyone has done this with successful results, please give advice.

I'd like to make a day of it, shooting everything from .22 to .308. FMJ, JHP, Glasers, etc. Of course, I'd need to have a buddy over to fill in the calibers I don't have. I might even take pictures of the results...

 

[Snowdog]

God bless my little garbage-picker!

Though I don't use wetpack as a medium unless provided by someone else, the use of it does provide excellent results for JHPs.
From my understanding, you'll want to remove the covers from the books and soak them overnight in detergent-treated water before binding. The newspaper wetpack that I've had the opportunity to use in the past was bound with twine and worked splendidly.
Remember to take your camera.

 

[yesterdaysyouth]

I'd need to have a buddy over to fill in the calibers I don't have

i'm on it....

 

[Greg L]

[raises hand too ]

(Note to Mods - what's this "message too short" stuff ?)

 

[griz]

Soak them completely. The longer the better, up to about two days. Then they get too gooey. Don't bind them before soaking. The books will expand when wet and binding, or compressing under a weight, will cause the interior to stay dry.

If you are going to take a while, try and find a container to keep them soaking until ready for the shooting. Lacking that, at least keep them in a plastic bag to reduce drying. The dryer the paper, the quicker it stops the bullets.

Besides a camera, take a tape measure, paper, and pen for notes. Write down the load, penetration, distance to target, expanded bullet diameter, shape of the damage*, pretty much anything you think could be useful. You will forget much of what you see right after peeling apart the books.

As you can probably tell, I like to use wet pack for bullet testing. Compared to recovered bullets from game, it usually gives you a symetrical "picture perfect" bullet.

* Some bullets will open up early and give an enlongated pear shape, while others don't have that initial impact and plow nice even holes all the way to the end.

 

[QuickDraw]

A little off topic but I keep an old phonebook
in my truck.The darn cell phone outfit charges
something like a buck twentyfive for a call to
411!!As a contractor,I need to make calls all the time and don't
always have the number.$1.25 here,$1.25 there,pretty soon we're talking serious ammo!

QuickDraw

 

[possenti]

griz, Thanks for the good advice.

There's a creek right next to where I shoot. Maybe I'll find a good spot to soak 'em overnight, go back the next day, bind them up and blast away.

I want to keep this as controlled and scientific as possible, so a tape measure and notes are a great idea, as well as the camera.

 

[P95Carry]

Note to Mods - what's this "message too short" stuff

Greg - the software needs to see some text - even if a simple period!!! Tho usually a smilie does the trick on its own.

I have used newspaper for wetpack - but anyways - yeah, remove covers if hard - and tie them loosely - very loosely. They will expand as has been mentioned. 24 hrs will do but twice that is better. I like to take them out of water an hour or two before going to range - let surplus water drain out.

I do like after shooting to ''dismantle'' the layers and recover all bullets - it is also I found useful to use marker pen and divide front face - into four or five zones and ID those with bullet/ammo type. Then when you dig you can better ID the bullets.

It takes time but - results are IMO quite useful. Try and shoot as close as possible, normal to front face.

 

[Greg L]

Chris, that's what I figured as well.

My original reply was just: "[raises hand too ]" but I got the too short message.

I guess the software thought I screwed up a html tag & was too stupid to post anything else .

 

[Dave R]

I did the same thing a coupla years ago. Got all the recycled phone books and did penetration testing. FWIW, here's how I prepared them. Worked for me.

1. I put all the phone books upright in a Rubbermaid tub deep enough to cover them.

2. I added water (several times!) over the course of half day or so until the phone books were soaked through.

3. This is the hard part. I turned the tubs over to let the water out. HEAVY. I let the books drain, with the tubs still on top, for a couple of hours.

4. Removed the tubs, tied the books together in bundles, transferred the bundles to cardboard boxes for ease in transport, and loaded them into the back of the wagon, with a plastic liner to catch the seepage.

5. Shot them up.

Among the things I discovered:

-Remington's 102gr. Golden Sabre in .380 acp makes a "wound channel" about 75% of the size of a 9mm Win Silvertip 115gr. Better than I would have thought.

-.223 FMJ's do fragment and its hard to recover the fragments.