Paper penetration to flesh penetration

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Puncha

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Mornin' Folks!

Owing to the dearth of penetration data out there for the .32 S&W long round, I have tried to conduct my own tests to see how much penetration could be had when firing at a range of 10 - 15 meters.

The problem is that I do not have the facilities or the means to make ballistics gel and it is very impractical for me to soak phonebooks for testing (pls just take my word for it ) hence, the only form of uniform testing that I have been able to do is to take plain ol' dry paper, tape it in a stack and shoot it for penetration.

My latest test indicates that a .32 S&W long 98gr wadcutter at 710ft/s muzzle velocity would penetrate 164 pages of Newsweek magazine at 12 meters.

My question is......are there any resources out there that can roughly estimate how many inches of dry paper penetration would equal ??? inches of penetration in organic tissue? (For example, www.theboxotruth.com estimates that 4 milk jugs of water equal 12"s of human BG.)
 
You'd probably have to use a swimming pool to soak a Chinese phone book, they're so darn big!

*rimshot*

Okay, I know that was a bad joke, and you live in SE Asia, not China, but it was funny in my head.
 
What type of tissue - muscle, bone, tendons, internal organs... ? Main problem is that they're all different, of course, which complicates your task considerably.
 
The easiest way would be to shoot some rounds that have known penetration ranges in other media into paper and try to establish some constant or formula that relates them.

However most folks who shoot wet packs (wet newspaper), or water jugs just use a SWAG. Scientific Wild A** Guess. Basically "round X is supposed to penetrate about 12" in flesh/gellitan, and it blew through 6" of wet pack. Guess that means 6" of wet pack is equal to 12" of flesh."

-Jenrick
 
Even ballistic gelatin is homogenous in ways the human body is not. When substituting other mediums that are not exact, resistance factors are compounded. A dense material like clay will cause expansion that human tissue won't, and paper will not cause expansion where human tissue will. The best you can do is compare rounds to each other shooting through the same medium, but this does not translate as to what it would do in tissue.
 
The only worldwide repeatable "standard" for the average man is water.

It is always the same everywhere, unless you use salt water and I use fresh water.

The same cannot be said about wet paper, dry paper, sand, dirt, mud, wood, or Jello.

rcmodel
 
There is no substitute for a proper gelatin test if you're actually using this to determine ammo suitability. Look for someone's results. For horsing around in the backyard fun, water will work but be overly biased toward expansion making it fairless useless as a real world performance indicator. Still fun though.
 
Gee puncha, can't you go looking for a dead animal in a ditch somewhere? Shoot it in the hams and see if it passes through one or both hams.
 
Dry paper makes bullets expand a lot more than jello.

One thing that will work is a bunch of containers, whatever you can get that are relatively thin-walled, filled with water. Line them up, and see how many the bullet goes through. Pop cans, cardboard cartons, plastic bags, etc. Bullets will penetrate water about 1.6 to 2.0 times as much as gelatin.

Mathematically, anyway, MacPherson's equations estimate a .312", 98 gr wadcutter at 710 fps will penetrate 16.8" in ballistic gelatin.
 
Oddly I get to check on this today, I disected a buffalo heart in A&P this morning, I managed to talk the instructors out of a heart.

I can say from experiance that at 15 feet a .40 S&W JHP will blow a pretty respectable hole in a buffalo's heart (given it doesn't have to go through the buffalo first) cardiac muscle is pretty tough I think it would give you a reasoable idea of how well your chosen round will preform.
 
Dry paper is a bad idea (done it), deforms most HP badly. Fragments smaller rounds consistently. Dry, paper is probably more unforgiving than most materials that you would think would be harder.

You mentioned the milk jugs, why not go with those?
 
RyanM,

Can you direct me to a working website which has a calculator for Mcpherson's equations? I'd like to see the 16" penetration worked out for myself.
 
Can you direct me to a working website which has a calculator for Mcpherson's equations? I'd like to see the 16" penetration worked out for myself.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, no one has the equations or any calculators online. The book containing the equations and other information costs $53.95 USD total, for international shipping, plus any customs fees you may have.

http://www.firearmstactical.com/bulletpenetration.htm
 
Paper comes in different compositions, densities and weights. Newspaper, telephone paper, butcher paper, cardboard, copier paper, etc. all papers are different. They even differ by country and region.
 
You'd probably have to use a swimming pool to soak a Chinese phone book, they're so darn big!

*rimshot*

Okay, I know that was a bad joke, and you live in SE Asia, not China, but it was funny in my head.
Click to expand...

That's okay, my first thought upon reading the title was "What caliber for the mailman?"

:evil:
 
Funderb,

Thus, if I were shooting boards of wood, how much wood thickness would a .32 S+WL 98gr LWC be expected to penetrate at 10-12 yards? :) Thanks for the paper to wood comparison, I almost forgot that paper was essentially wood pulp.

To everyone else:

Can you guys give me a wood penetration estimation?
 
why not make jello? you can shoot it,
Click to expand...

I use trapped hogs for the purpose. I mean, you gotta kill it before you eat it, right? Don't really prove much, but gives me confidence in a gun that can put a 150 lb hog down post haste. If you shoot enough of 'em, you'll find out that .38 works fine, .357 works better. Well, duh, I could have figured that one out on my own. LOL Don't have a .32. I don't know if I want to listen to the hog squeal and flop around that long, anyway, sorta what keeps me from trying the .380 on one, don't wanna be cruel about it.
 
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