Pine verses the Gel monster?

[kBob]

Been ruminating again. You would think I would learn.....

In the way back....when dinosaurs ruled the earth and all gun knowledge came from folks like WHB Smith and J Hatcher..... one of the standards for handgun power was "number of boards penetrated"

Now a days we use the much more repeatable penetration of Ballistic Gel.

Anyone done a comparison of "one inch" soft pine board with one inch spacing verses Gel with a broad range of cartridges?

Anyone willing to?

-kBob

 

[DPris]

I had a penetration box with 20 slots for one-inch (actually closer to 7/8-inch) pine sections built years ago, but only for comparisons between loads & calibers in pine.
Still out in the garage somewhere.

Doing gel properly has always been more trouble than it's worth to me, so I've never compared the two media for correlation.
Denis

 

[strambo]

I'd say it doesn't matter. The science of terminal ballistics and wound performance has gone far beyond raw "power" mattering. Once a caliber has enough oomph for its hardball load to pass through a human, it becomes all about bullet design and performance in tissue. A pine board isn't going to tell us squat about that.

For hunting with solids? Sure, that would probably be a good home built method of comparison for raw penetration.

 

[481]

Been ruminating again. You would think I would learn.....

In the way back....when dinosaurs ruled the earth and all gun knowledge came from folks like WHB Smith and J Hatcher..... one of the standards for handgun power was "number of boards penetrated"

Now a days we use the much more repeatable penetration of Ballistic Gel.

Anyone done a comparison of "one inch" soft pine board with one inch spacing verses Gel with a broad range of cartridges?

Anyone willing to?

-kBob

I ran across some data back about ten years ago, I think that it might've been done by the Canadian military, for 9mm and .45 ACP penetration in pine boards. IIRC, .45 ACP ball was good for about 6 inches.

 

[JohnKSa]

I think you might be able to come up with a decent comparison table for non-expanding bullets, but I don't think it's going to be possible for expanding bullets. Expansion makes a huge difference in gel penetration (and tissue penetration) but since wood doesn't cause most expanding bullet designs to expand it's going to provide misleading results.

 

[chicharrones]

I used to do informal ammo penetration comparisons with stacks of phone books duct taped together.

I always used dry phone books, but I have heard of others using wet soaked phone books to try and show expansion of bullets.

Dry phones books don't show expansion well, just penetration.

Good luck finding enough phone books now days, though.

 

[Drail]

I am in the "it doesn't matter" camp. If you can put the bullet where it needs to go the type of bullet is really not that important. Penetration tests give you a very rough yardstick but shot placement is MUCH more critical than ammo selection. Phone books or pine boards (which are all different from every other board) have nothing in common with human flesh and bones containing a central nervous system.