Testing Bullets

R

roger1shot

New member
Hey
My brothers amd I were talking about bullets
and how different bullets expand.
He said that he would like to test fire several different bullets.
I said ok,but what are you going to use to recover the bullet's,
wet newspapers?
I heard this at one time but I never tried it?
What do Ya'll use to test a bullet out?
He was planning to test fire some 308'sfrom his M1A,and a 44Mag.
He's planning to Deer hunt with these.
Thanks
 
What I have done is line up gallon milk jugs full of water. It will give a relative measure of how far a given bullet will penetrate, how much it will expand, and how much weight is retained.

I want to emphasize the "relative" part. How well it does in a game animal might require that you try it in the field.

One test that I remember is the Hornady 300gr HPXTP 44 mag a buddy and I tested - seem to remember eight or so gallon jugs, the bullet opened to about twice its original diameter, and weighted some 298.5 gr when recovered from the last jug...
 
An old method was to line a crate with plastic and pack it with newspaper and soak the newspapers in vinegar until they turned to a kind of gel. That may work, but I wouldn't want it in the house or near steel with the acid fumes coming off. There have to be about a zillion other possibilities. Ballistic gelatin of some kind is needed if you want to simulate soft tissue. You could probably gel water with enough precipitated silica powder to make a thick enough gel that it would hold its shape after stopping a bullet, let you see what you got, then could simply be troweled back to original shape for firing the next round. Powdered clay mixed with petroleum jelly to make a kind of ballistic putty is another one I've heard of, but haven't tried.

Nick
 
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