SKB, thanks for the insiteful comment!

I chose milk jugs because they are plentifull, cheap, consistant and fairly easy to trans port,(read not heavy). The most important thing is the ability to duplicate, with little or no error, results from one time to another.

Without an expansion medium of some sort, you have to rely on theory to predict how a bullet will expand. I read once that Joyce Hornady used wet lap to test his early expanding bullets. Grand Island Nebraska is a paper town. Pulp form the paper industry is what wet lap is. He formed bullets, loaded them and fired into the wet lap to see what changing jacket/lead core design did.

George C. Nonte Jr. used dux-seal for testing handgun bullets. Others have used clay, wet phone books/newspaper. The FBI and other law enforcement agentcies use ballistic gellatin. Corbin has come out with a gellatin like medium called sim-test, that can be re-molded after bullet recovery and wound channel observation. http://www.corbins.com/sim-test.htm

With milk jugs, it's impossible to judge a wound channel. Penetration can only be measured by how many jugs the bullet went thru. I'm mostly interested in degree of expansion and weight retention.

Ive got a bunch of jugs in garbage bags that I intend to blast when time allows. Ill be watching for weight retainment and mushrooming characteristics from several different bullets at velocities from about 2300 fs to 3100 fs. If they all look the same then it will all have been just for fun, but I dont expect that will be the case.

A writer, webmaster, and shooter I really like has written about shoooting through an old log cabin for penetration testing.

Without trying to ruffle anyone's feathers, I regard shooting jugs of water and killing old log cabins as about equally useless for bullet testing.

And I shoot useless media too, such as sand and hardened stumps. Very unscientific, but we have to test on something, don't we?

I find that wet phone books come closer than anything else, short of balistic gelatin, for bullet testing. Bullets I have recovered from game look sim. to the same ones recovered from wet pack. NOT the same as shooting live animals, but for comparing bullets, it's repeatable, cheap & somewhat reusable as you can get 4-5 shots before changing phone books, depending on caliber/vel. of the round.



left is wet pack, ctr. unfired .338/210gr & right is from a kudu bull.

This is not to start and argument, but instead some one who wants to be educated.

Grizz did a test on an accubond bullet and at 100 yds, it penetrated and damaged 3 out of 4 milk jugs with a MV of 2900 fps.

I helped a guy set up a test like this 4 or 5 yrs ago, where he did the same thing, except he was using a 30/30 with a 170 grain bullet, and with factory ammo, if I remember correct.

His bullet went thru a lot more than just 3 milk jugs, at 100 yds.

So I am missing something, unless it is the fact that, the water will stop the faster bullet and allow you to recover it in the water jug and see how it mushroomed?

NO insults meant to anyone. Thanks for the answers and explanations.

Cheers and Good shooting
seafire

I always thought it was just fun watching the jugs blow up

Jeff

I once did a "test" in which I set up two 1-gallon cans of orange juice at 100 yards with the ends pointing at the shooting bench. I then fired a 55-grain .224" softpoint at max velocity (3310 FPS MV) from a .223 Rem. into the end of one of them, and a 130-grain .277" bullet from a .270 Win.

into the end of the other one @ 2950 FPS MV for a comparison of "destructive effects" of the two loads. Well, the .223 blew the can open nicely, and splashed OJ all over the place. I was pretty impressed until I fired the .270!! The 270 absolutely blew the can to smithereens. No remaining pieces of it were bigger than a quarter, except for the end that was facing me that the bullet entered. It had a .277" hole in it, and it landed about 15 yards in front of my shooting bench, having been blown toward me about 85 yards from where the can had been!



Based on this test, I concluded that there is NO COMPARISON between the terminal ballistics of the .270 Win. vs the .223. Give me a .270 any day! Now, is this a valid conclusion? Maybe not. But it sure is if you are shooting cans of orange juice!!

I have recovered bullets and notes that show the retained weight, amount of 1/2 gallon paper containers blown up and how many penetrated shot into water that goes way back.

The data is for comparison purposes and indeed some bullets don't go that far and fall apart. Others go far and stay together somewhat. Most of the conclusions are those that you know today but I knew them decades ago.

Some of this information is that Barnes X bullets loose their petals at close range from magnums and only have a bore diameter bullet left and premium bullets do penetrate further.

Observations that I have not seen are that heavier bullets for the caliber expand to larger diameters than shorter, lighter bullets.

It's much easier to set and clean up paper cartons for me. Don't put the jugs or cartons on a nice board as the force will break it. Level the cartons with sticks and stones.

could be valuable info. when a guy is hunting milk jugs

.....I have to believe that if you hit the milk jug exactly where you want to.....it matters far less what you hit them with.

Bob,

When I went to Alaska in the summer of 1989, in the Yukon Territory I came across and old dump. I had taken my 444 Marlin with me. IN the dump was two 5 gallon metal jugs of some sort of oil.

Just wondering what the 444 would do into a wet media like that, I shot one jug, sitting on top of the other at a distance of about 50 yds, from off the hood of my Toyota truck.

NOT only did the jug EXPLODE!, but it felt like it was raining oil all over the 5 acres the dump took up. These were sealed containers, so they literally exploded. Definitely an impressive show of distructive power.

Cheers and Good shooting
seafire

As far as a spectacular splash goes, I don't get to see them pop. If I peeked I would probably miss! I do see shards of the first jug in the air. Some pieces can go as far as 25 feet either side of the set-up.

A local range has what we call a jug shoot. Jugs are hung from a "T" stand with a heavy wire. They are free to swing in the wind. Gallon, water filled milk jugs are used. Off-hand shooting with no artificial support, other than a sling, is the rule. Ranges from 50 to 100 yds with 5 jugs at about 12.5 feet between them. Timed at 5 shots in 1 minute. 20 jugs in total, there's only been a half dozen perfect 20X20 in the last 15 years!

It's fun to watch other shooters bust the jugs. Any rifle legal in WI for deer hunting can be used. Also a pistol relay is offered, with the max range being 75 yds.

One guy wasn't satisfied with his results with his 300 mag. He brought out his 460 weatherby with 350 grain HP Hornady bullets at incredible,(I don't remember how fast), velocities. Wow that was the most fantastic display of power yet! It's a good tune-up for deer hunting, or whatever you may hunt where an off-hand shot may be possible.

Griz,

that is kinda of neat idea just hanging them from a wire, and try off hand shooting at them.

I can see doing that in the forests out this way, and just hang them from tree branches and go back 100 to 150 yds or so and shoot them off handed and see how one does.

I bet that would tighten up some off hand shooting for hunting season a lot.

Thanks for the idea. My wife will be happy she doesn't have to worry about recylcing her milk jugs anymore.

Cheers and Good shooting
seafire

The purpose is to compare terminal ballistics of different loads using a cheap, readily-available medium.

I also like wet newsprint/phone books better, but sometimes its easier and faster to just fill the jugs and go.

I wanted to compare the terminal ballistics of .308 NATO vs. .308 hunting round (150gr. Rem Core-Lokt, in this case).

Set out 2 rows of 5 X 1gal plastic milk jugs filled with water. Shot both at 25 yards (too close by hindsight).

Shot the first with .308 NATO. Thought I missed. Then I saw water dribbling from a .308 hole. Went through all 5 jugs and the last one hada .308 hole in the back. Not very dramatic, but coog penetration.

Shot the 2nd row with the Core-Lokt. BIG explosion. First 2 jugs were shredded. 3rd jug was ripped wide. 4th jug had a good rip in it. Bullet yawed and exited the 4th jug, did not enter the 5th jug.

Proof that you shouldn't shoot game with NATO FMJ, I guess.

Earlier I simply left a link to the general comparison page. I have received email asking me what can be found there. (Why they just didn't click the link, I don't know.)

The link below is to the .45 ACP portion of that page. It will serve as an example of what is found there...

http://stevespages.com/page8f45acp.html

Steve, your pages are chuck full of info. Once in the past, you replied to one of my tests with the link to Carmon Crapson's test pages. I spent way too much time there, reading with interest, his results. Mr Crapson sent me several e-mails in response to the posts of my results. Now all I need is a camera like his to take better close up pics of the recovered bullets!

One thing Ive considered doing, and think would make a good bullet test medium, is to fill some garbage bags or something similar with wet clay. If you go to the right area it is a simple scoop with a shovel and just add water.

I did all the picture taking and formatting. Carmon supplied me with the raw data and the recovered bullets...

I have been doing milk jug experiments with the 44 magnum, and Speer Gold dot Bullets. The results are impressive and the Gold Dots really expand and hold together.

My question is this and it may sound silly but it is serious. Do you remove the caps from the jugs? All of my testing is with capped jugs and the pressure destroys the first few jugs. I was wondering if removing the cap would give a better picture of the wound channel. It might increase penetration of the jugs due to increased pressure.

here's my set-up for the testing I've done,



Setting them end to end makes maximum use of the water column. As such the caps must stay on. I don't think it takes much internal pressure to pop a cap off, considering what it takes to shred the jug. The jug where the bullet ends up always has the cap still on it. It has mostly expended it's energy by then, so it don't pressurize much.

I have and will continue to use them! First, I wanted to compare different bullets I hunt with. I don't get to recover many so catching them was about the best bet. Second, they are readily availabe, easy to clean up ( I hate finding paper, phone books, other trash) when I'm done.

Finally, although the resulting mushrooms are not the same as it will/may be when shot into game it does allow for comparison. I weigh them and compare the shapes. It's interesting to me how similar they are to each other brand to brand and weight to weight. I have even recovered a Nosler Balistic Tip that I have been told was way to "explosive" to use on deer. Don't believe all you hear! It does work on deer and the captured bullet from the water told me more than the dead deer as it passed through.
I don't expect to have a wound channel match the destruction of milk jugs but if you have a known performer and compare it to a "new" bullet you might want to try, it will give you an idea what to expect.

Back in 1963 when I was 12 years old I read a magazine article with dramatic pictures showing how a 300 Weatherby blew 5 gallon water cans wide open, while the punny 30-06 made a clean hole.

At age 12, I knew a poorly controlled experiment when I saw it.