The IWB in latest configuration is for solids.
Softs can be adequately tested much more simply. I have learned this from Gerard at GSC.

Water is of utmost practicality and consistancy from shot to shot. There is nothing better.

5-gallon plastic buckets with O-ring sealed lids, filled with water and sealed, no air.

Get 5 of them and line them up end-to-end. Two 4x4 pressure-treated timbers make a nice trough to keep the buckets straight.

Shoot into the center of the lid on the first bucket with the chosen softpoint bullet.

Use 3 loads of low, medium and high velocity, like 1600 fps, 2100 fps, and 2600 fps ... or whatever is appropriate to the impact velocity range of the rifle bullet being tested.

This will tell reliability of expansion.
A depth of penetration is very good if the bullet comes to rest in the third bucket with a good dent in the bottom of the third buck.

This is an excellent softpoint bullet test.

Can anyone make a bigbore softpoint bullet get through that third bucket bottom and into the fourth bucket?
I have not done so yet.

There is no better test of softpoint bullets when all factors are considered: Practicality and absolutely reliable consistency from shot to shot.

quote:

Originally posted by RIP:

Can anyone make a bigbore softpoint bullet get through that third bucket bottom and into the fourth bucket?

At what distance are you talking about shooting the buckets? 25ft? 5ft? 100 yards?

20 to 25 yards is supposed to be enough according to some, for the bullet to be "asleep" at impact.

25 to 50 yards would be excellent, and no farther neccessary. Adjust for distance effect on impact velocity in the final analysis.

Rip,

Glad you brought this up…

I priced out the pieces to make my own IWB and it might take me a little while to get it all together…

I’m really more interested in testing soft point & expanding bullets right now anyway…

I actually thought of a similar idea for bullet testing…

I have some huge pieces of metal pipe lying behind my barn…

They must be eight to ten feet long and at least one foot in diameter…

I thought about setting these up on saw horses and loading them with disposable Tupperware containers (something the size of cool whip containers) filled with water…

It would sort of be like a huge bullet test tube…

I’ve got some of AHR mono-metal expanders on the way and would like to give them a spin….

Though I think your bucket test may be more practical to implement….those pipes weigh several hundred pounds each…

I’ll try to post some pics if anyone is interested…

Matt V.

Matt,
You would have to Swiss cheese the pipes to vent them, otherwise the impact explosion would blow your buckets out of both ends, might affect the results even if you numbered and retrieved each container and lid from the landing location.
Whatever containers you have the best access to will decide which way to go.

The standard, 5-gallon, nylon/plastic "paint bucket" with O-ring lid seal is pretty universal.

Ah-ha…

Never thought of that…

That’s what I got you for…

All of that water would have to go somewhere…

@ 25 yards probably all over me and my rifle as I was planning on blocking the back…

Thank God I didn’t already lug those heavy SOBs down to my shooting range…

I like the water bucket train idea…a little less labor intensive and no real fixed costs…just find the buckets fill em and shoot em…

Matt

I gotta confess, long ago and far away I was trying some 90gr 9mm Sierra bullets in my High Power and wanted to see if they'd expand or explode. I cut the neck area off of a 3 liter soda bottle, filled it with Jello (Lime) and let it set up with plastic wrap over the opening.
Took it out in the woods behind the house, set it with the open end facing me and unleashed that Sierra with a healthy load of W231.
I walked out of the woods looking like I'd been slimed.
That liquid has gotta go somewhere when that bullet creates a cavity and 5 yards was a bit too close. Shoot the pipe you're describing with a rifle and you might drown.

Matt,
If you can get around to it, find out if a 600 OK monometal copper hollowpoint can get past the bottom of the third bucket. We know a Woodleigh Weldcore won't.

Anyone using 5-gallon buckets of water will be helping to establish a benchmark for a softpoint "International Normalized Penetration Ratio" for softpoints.

INPR-soft: 3
3 buckets counted if the bottom of the third bucket is marked by the bullet.

Greater than 3 is "Wow!"
Less than 3 is "Ho hum."

The bucket lids and bottoms serve as witness to whether the bullet tumbled or went nose first.
The buckets also may retain the petals if they separate and show where they came off, in which bucket, unless the bucket is badly exploded and the fragments go out the sides, as in the initial impact bucket.

For example:

The copper GSC .395/340-grain HV retained petals into the third bucket (even if all three of three came off at 2600+ fps) and it still hit the bottom of the third bucket, nose first.

The brass S&H .395/310-grain SHark-Velopex with huge nose cavity and six petals: It blew off all six petals in the first bucket (three were found in the bucket remnant) then it tumbled immediately (due to the jagged and irregular nose remnant) and went sideways through the center of the second bucket lid, then proceeded base first out of the second bucket and bumped the bottom of the third bucket with the flat bullet base leading like an FN.
Same penetration, different way to skin the cat, different wound channel would surely show in live game or ordnance gelatin, or Bullet Test Tube of wax.

A cup point "solid ought to get into the fifth bucket.

You better line up 10 buckets to be sure to stop and recover all FN solids. Most will be stopped in the seventh bucket.

Velocity will have less to do with penetration than sectional density. SD is most important for FN solid penetration.

INPR's:
Soft point = 3
Cup point = 5
FN solid = 7
IIRC.


Can a 600 OK 900-grain FN solid at 2400 fps be launched from a shoulder fired cannon?
Could that beat seven buckets?

/

Alf,
Read the rest above, edited while you were typing..
The water tests the reliability of expansion at low, medium and high velocity: Is it a good soft point design being offered?

Penetration and expansion both must be considered with softs.
Sure, with solids, only penetration AND straight line tracking with no overturning!

Yes, water is a great equalizer, harder in proportion to the square of velocity.
Game animals may not follow as precisely, but similarly.

The Woodleigh will expand well but penetrate poorly.

You can read all this from the buckets.

For softs line up 5 buckets.
For Cup points line up 7 buckets.
For truncated cone monometal FN solids, better line up 10 buckets.

I have indeed done all this with .375, .423, .475 and a few .395 and one .510 caliber bullet.

The Iron Water Buffalo with plywood boards and shallower water buckets, will stop them in a shorter linear distance.

IWB for solids.
5-gallon water buckets for softs.

The IWB water and wood compartments are 10" deep times 10 in a row.

The 5-gallon water buckets are 14.5" deep and can be lined up end to end: 5, 7, 10 in a row, as needed.

A .375/270-grain FN at 2900 fps does not penetrate as well as a .375/300-grain FN does at either 2500 fps or 2700 fps.
This is getting off on a solid tangent, but just an example of what can be learned from buckets of water or plywood and water.

It is similar to bullet behavior in game.

Definitely this stuff is helpful for verifying the functionality of a softpoint design.

Just ask Gerard if you don't believe me.

Consistency.
You cannot get that from shooting live or dead animals, and ordnance gelatin is just too fussy with temperature and mixing variations and BB-calibration, etc.

RIP,
I'll try posting some pictures later tonight as I'm currently looking to find a test medium for comparing projectiles.

I've shot into wet phone books (soaked 3 days ... allowed to drain for 24hours) and 3L milk containers full of water and in series and gotten very different results. The water being the "harder" test.
Cheers...
Con

/

quote:

how on earth did we manage to kill so many with so little?

So are we talking about little Clubs and Rocks back when you were hunting or what??

quote:

how on earth did we manage to kill so many with so little?

The common denominator seemed to be that shot just on the foreleg line, one third up or two thirds down depending your view..... as long as they penetrated about half ways or more in the chest all animals died.

So whilst we can beat our collective chests that so and so's bullet can penetrate 3 or 5 buckets of water the real killer is no more than or about half of 24 inches in the chest. And if anyone disputes that we can get them all together, every bullet make and brand and line up a goat or two and do the test, betcha all will be dead when shot behind the fore leg. The shitty old bullets included !

Respectfully, I beg to differ. After seeing several thousand animals shot with most calibers and every concievable bullet made, taking that foreleg line shot is precisely what made me find a better way.

So and so's bullet that penetrates 3 or 5 buckets of water is called a margin of safety. The insurance that the bullet will perform, always, not most of the time. It is called consistency that can be relied on to do the job in the same manner every time, not most of the time.

I have seen my share of bullet failures with bullets that work most of the time and I have experienced failures that required me to pay and go home empty handed. That stopped in 1993. I have taken bad shots since then and have had to do a few follow ups for a short distance, but a three to five bucket bullet usually makes job number one easier (shot placement) and it surely eliminates the uncertainty of whether the bullet will be able to finish what I started.

I no longer even cull with soft bullets. Sooner or later a head shot goes south and, when you have little time to take a going away shot, that margin of safety cuts down on a lot of heartache.

The simplistic argument of why old style bullets suddenly don't work anymore is almost moronic. Just as I have an old IBM 264 that still boots up and works every day, and still does exactly what it did in the early nineties, I would not try to run design software and cad programs on it. A better way has come along, as it does in most technical areas all the time.

Remember that it is human nature to hold on to good memories and to conveniently forget about those dreadfull occasions that ruined a hunt. The number of times a bad bullet caused the comment from one of the hunting party, "I missed cleanly!" only for the farmer to phone me four days later, when the vultures start circling, were many. I am glad that, for me, those days are gone.

/

Alf,
"The marginal shot" is what it is about, e.g.,
rear end shots on buffalo going away.
You have made the case, thank you.
Trust and verification of trust in a bullet make may be what this is about.
Three buckets and good expansion at low velocity and high velocity is what it is about.
Good enough.

Far more cost effective will be to take one piece of the aforementioned pipe, mae a rack for it to sit on so firing into it will be easy, use two pieces of old tractor tire inner tube to stretch over the ends and held in place by pip-band. A filling neck will have to be placed somewhere on the top of the pipe. Fill'er up and take your best shot. Only the rubber taking the bullet needs be replaced, and a tape measure will determine depth.

quote:

Originally posted by Nitroman:
Far more cost effective will be to take one piece of the aforementioned pipe, mae a rack for it to sit on so firing into it will be easy, use two pieces of old tractor tire inner tube to stretch over the ends and held in place by pip-band. A filling neck will have to be placed somewhere on the top of the pipe. Fill'er up and take your best shot. Only the rubber taking the bullet needs be replaced, and a tape measure will determine depth.

Witness partitions are needed to track tumbling and path of flight, and to provide a definite stopping point when the bullet reaches a snail's pace of forward motion.
The bullet fired into a pipe filled with water can drift slowly forward until it skids to a stop on the bottom of the pipe due to gravity mainly ... Find a metal bullet in a metal pipe with a what detector? Oh, yeah, the pipe was drained by the shot so you just look in with a flashlight and snake your tape measure up to it.

Also, you do not want to constrain a bullet with sidewall ricochets inside a metal pipe. You want to know where it tumbled off course and exited into the wild blue yonder as roundnose FMJ's are wont to do in the buckets and wood and water sandwich. You want to know if a softpoint expander does anything squirrely too.

Expanding bullet tester: Bucket Brigade




Solid bullet tester: Iron Water Buffalo, the old configuration of 1" plywood to 7" of water. This is the way to catch bullets like Superman's teeth. Below is a GSC FN that stayed nose first to the very end, shown where it is poking through the 8th partition, having traversed 16 boards of 1/2" plywood and 56" of water held in plastic trash compactor bags:

Nawww...you don't want to do all that do you? So much trouble. Shoot the pipe.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RIP:
Alf,
"The marginal shot" is what it is about, e.g.,
rear end shots on buffalo going away.
QUOTE]

RIP/Gerard/ALF,
Can I ask a serious question which is not meant as "bait" for a flame war.

Why not use a solid for all shots? Make it a larger bore of say 35cal plus to give you some wound diameter and then drill it through for complete penetration ALWAYS aiming to traverse vital organs?

I'm kind of wondering on soft non-dangerous game of around 200-300kg ... why use a 225gr soft in my 358Win when I can use a 225gr FMJ and guarantee penetration from all angles? My responsibility as always being to place it so that it traverses vital organs.
Cheers...
Con

Con,
Not everyone is as good a shot as you. They need collateral damage inside the animal with the wider wound channel of the soft, and they want no collateral damage outside the animal by a pass-through killing the cow standing behind the bull, for instance.

Also, here in the USA it is usually illegal to hunt big game with solids.

............O K, RIP ;;;;I always figured you were a smarty pants ,,,but you definitely went over the top using the precut , Home Depot special,, stair stringers to hold the 4x4,s ......... ....You da Man ... ...I see you thot it too wobbly with one per end so you doubled them up .......Just what I would expect from a man who would carry a 500 A-Sq. /510 JAB on Hinchinbrook Island as a bear gun .....

Nitroman,
Stop your mischief. I suspect that you know what will happen if they shoot a pipe.
I built 116 gr HV bullets for a guy in Arizona with a big 7mm. He was very happy with what we did and, after shooting some animals, wanted to see what the bullet would do into water. Iirc he was running it at close to 4000fps. He had his brother lift him in the bucket of a front end loader and fired a shot straight down into a 40 gallon plastic drum filled with water. The drum exploded and he got a shower.

Then they decided to use a 10ft length of 10" daimeter high pressure plastic pipe. It had a wall thickness around half an inch. They screwed an end cap on to one end, supported it at an angle that would allow a shot straight down the pipe and filled it with water. He said that, on impact, it exploded into small pieces and they recovered the bullet from the remaining short section with the end cap on it.

This supports my own efforts at capturing bullets where I quickly found that confining the test media or water was not the best idea. An open sided affair, like the IWB, is by far the best if you want to re-use the contraption. A single compartment always loses the war with the bullet and multiple compartments, with space for dissipation of the water, is the only way to fly.

Con,
Many areas do not allow hunting with a non expanding solid. Apart from that, ogived bullets that do not expand, have a nasty habit of turning in the target. Although the bullet may be placed in the right spot and at the correct angle, if it turns on impact, you have lost before you started. The two antelope below were shot with softs that turned on impact and, although the outcome was good, in terms of dead right there, a failure like this on a larger animal often results in an animal that escapes and dies later. Alf, this is the type of bullet failure that I saw too often and what I was referring to.

In the case of conventional solid type bullets, there is also not much BC to talk of. Putting a solid through the vital organs is quite viable but will confine you to shorter distances because of the low BC values. It does not make for a very versatile hunting bullet.

gumboot458,
You got it!
Thanks for remembering Hinchinbrook.

Gerard,
Good points about the veering spitzer and roundnose solids, or even a softpoint spitzer that does not open up.
The FN solid or Cup point solid would have best ability to stay on course if one had to use a "solid" for everything.
Limitation of range is then a factor, ja.
I think there is still a need for good softs like the HV.

There is especially a need for more .395/340-grain HV's, the bullet by which all other softpoints in the universe must be judged in comparison.

My hunt booked for next year in Namibia requires softs only for plains game. Every state that I know of requires expanding bullets for game hunting. Contrary to many on this forum, I would worry personally about over-penetration and hitting another animal. Saying that, I still want two holes, in and out. Even using Macifej's bullets on elk this year, I was concerned about possibly hitting another cow elk, so waited until one was clear and nothing behind her. Good thing I did since the back half definitely went out the other side.

/

quote:

Originally posted by Gerard:
Nitroman,
Stop your mischief. I suspect that you know what will happen if they shoot a pipe.

Well....ok, but only because you asked nicely.

I used a three-sided water-trough made of scavenged plywood approximately 18 inches (1/2m) square and 4 feet (1.2m) long, filled with large trash bags holding water. I cut a round hole in one end to fire through. I only used it once as I was too close and the shot blew everything to smithereens. I found the bullet at the far end, and yes it made a little dent in the far-end plywood. I posted this experience here in the forums years back and was excoriated as it was not considered a valid test for anything. I attempted to make the case for water being of consistent density all over the planet, as is 1/4 inch (4mm) plywood, and relatively inexpensive and easy to find. All for naught.

Considering that buckets are $7.49 + $3.49 USD for lids, testing can get expensive at $22.00 USD per squeeze on the joy-lever. But I will readily admit it is a lot easier to carry your testing equipment around in discrete units (the buckets).