Just for fun, here is a pic of a 7.6mm (0.3 inch) steel plate shot up close with a 55gr bullet from my hornet. I was using steel plate and wet wool to gauge load performance.

Nice! How close were you when you did that? I like the idea for wet wool, I bet that helped a lot with "back splash".
You know I found it very interesting on what will do such things. Like say you would think gun A would do the job, but upon testing it epically failed. But gun B completely passed all expectations and just annihilated the target. Its been a while sense I v put any of these to the test. But one thing I did find is that people under rate what cast lead can do all the time. But as for you and I know very well how great it works, 303guy.

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How close were you when you did that? I like the idea for wet wool, I bet that helped a lot with "back splash".

This was inside my 'firing tube' - real close!

Wet wool works great for assessing bullet performance.



And as the power of the load goes up.

The 'loaded' firing tube. Wet wool is packed into a can with the end removed and placed inside a steel tube in the 'firing tube'.

Long ago when I used a .220 Swift for varmints, I found bullets would blow up on a blade of grass in front of my target. A crow hit at 350 to 400 yards would vaporize with just the wings floating out of the tree.
But the bullet would bore a hole like that through 1/2" steel.
I had a lot of fun with that rifle.

That is certainy an interesting method, and I am sure the wet wool gives a fairly decent representation on on-game performance, particularly if you'd set it up at various ranges to assess varied impact velocities.

But what a bullet does on steel or fired into/through wood gives no realistic bearing of on-game terminal performance potential.

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Originally posted by Bobby Tomek:
That is certainy an interesting method, and I am sure the wet wool gives a fairly decent representation on on-game performance, particularly if you'd set it up at various ranges to assess varied impact velocities.

But what a bullet does on steel or fired into/through wood gives no realistic bearing of on-game terminal performance potential.

You have a very good point there.

303, how did you set up your test tube?

I have been looking into setting up my own test gel mixing knox gelatin.

James-

A repeating setup consisting of 1" partitions of wet newsprint, water and air pockets works extremely well. The recovery box was a little difficult to make and is a bit of a pain to set up, but it works incredibly well and gives a very close sampling as to what one may expect on game.

When I had a 375 H&H I once tried to shoot a 4 inch piece of pipe that was sticking up out of the ground. The 270 grain remington corelockt bullet would go right through both sides.

A 7.62x39 steel core would make a dent and blow up on the save pipe.

Which I had thought to make a photo of both.

The 30-06 black tip (military
AP) would go through the thin part of a railroad rail

I was using the steel plate to test for relative velocity. I also used thicker steel plate but it is difficult to assess small differences. Ironicaly, a higher impact velocity on thick steel produced an apparently shallower crater! Thats because the 'crater rim' gets blown off. Then there is denting of the whole plate which is absorbing shock and it is the shock that punches the hole. I have had one or two craters that have captured the bullet remnants. With the wet wool, I tried to keep the medium consistant to gain some sort of comparison. Bullets that disintegrated altogether were of concern since at the time I was using the hornet for feral goat hunting. But come real live goats, the bullets performed beautifully with through and through side on shots and massive internal damage with small entry and exits holes. These were 55gr Hornady spire points. I did do a range comparison between the hornet and a 223 and found the 223 produced a similar hole at 150m to the hornet at 50m. At 150m, the hornet was only just punching through 6mm plate.

I compared 8mm plate and 10mm plate in the 'firing tube' and found the hole in the pic with 8mm plate and a rather shallow crater in the 10mm plate.

All in all, I had a hole lot of fun and got the hornet to perform rather well with a surprizing accuracy for its rust damaged bore. Wind is the major inhibiting factor for accuracy. But it was so much fun getting that tiny little cartridge to perform and that without case stretching and over flattened primers!

using a steel plate like that I tested out some 55 grain bullets at 100 yds, from a 223 loaded to about 2400 fps MV....

just like your result they walked right thru the steel plate...

this was 3/8 thick...

I was using regular generic bulk 55 grain SP...

A long time ago.....

We'd found the rear hatch from a M-113 Armoured Personnel Carrier (I guess someone was driving a sorta "New Age" convertable around the manuver area....)

Had one of the Welders cut out several "Chicken" sillhouetts; thinking we'd just received a "Gift from Heaven".

At the range on Saturday a.m. we proudly placed our newly manufactured piece at 100 yards and my Buddy pulled out his .22 Hornet Contender pistol.

Yup, you guessed right - first shot put a 1" hole right through the center of the "silhouette". oh, well - back to the drawing boards.....they looked great but were sorta the original disposable Chicken Silhouette target; shoot once & throw away.

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this was 3/8 thick...

At 100yds and MV of 2400fps! Thats thicker than my test plate! Are you sure of that MV? According to bullet drop and all that, my hornet should be doing close to 2700fps. Could I be that far out? Mind you, I've made bigger mistakes than that before! Still, the amount of powder and the trajectory and .......... !?

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first shot put a 1" hole right through the center of the "silhouette".

Just as well those boys inside the Armoured Personnel Carrier didn't have to face such powerful weapons in their day! I've seen some catapillar track section shot at with all sorts and not a mark! They be useless for silhouettes as they are full of gaps and they can't be easily cut by any means.