Have you ever shot at a phonebook? How far did your round make it? I shot a phonebook with a 44 magnum, and it stopped my round halfway through. 9 mm did not do any better but watch out for the 22 LR round, it punched through.
We taped the phonebooks we collected and stacked them in one of the rooms in the house. We had three layers of phonebooks alternated covering the whole wall.
Then we set up targets and we had our indoor range.
The problem I see about doing this now is as my kids asked me, āWhat is a phonebook?ā
Actually, we hear a lot about bullet penetration and what is going to stop that round, and I thought about shooting the phonebook to see what the rounds do. The thickness of the phonebook with duct tape tightly wrapped around it provides a durable bullet stopper and can allow you to see for yourself the power of your rounds. Instead of shooting a ballistic gel to see what the round does shoot a phone book, what will a hollow point do? I know you are curious!
Now if you want to bullet proof a room well, you will have to go back in time and get some phonebooks. Back in the 80ās we would go from home to home and collect the old phonebooks no one wanted anymore.
Does anyone have any other objects of curiosity that would be fun to shoot at that would be revealing about bullet capabilities?
They are a lot of fun when they are soaked in water for a few days! So are stacks of old newsprint or magazines. Iāve used them to do comparisons between carry loads. Not because they behave like tissue but as you said they give you an idea of differences in penetration, expansion etc.
I also like shooting gallons of distilled water that I get ultra cheap at Walmart. Fun to see how many gallons a .44 mag will go through as opposed to an old school 45-70 rifle round out of a rifle or a newer .444 Marlin.
If you ever have a chance and the right place to do it, shooting at LCD screens on large TVs is an enlightening experience. Many SD rounds will NOT go through them. A good thing to know if you ever need actual cover inside your house.
And a laptop with a thick notebook in front of it inside a heavy nylon day backpack worn in reverse in front of your body is a pretty darn effective ballistic vest. Nice to know if you happen to be in a hijacking scenario in a plane and good info for your kids in college that may need to get out of a mass shooting incident.
You can buy cheap old non-working laptops at Goodwill where I also get my cheap t-shirt ātargetsā as well as briefcases, backpacks and all sorts of things that are fun to test! I think the guy at my local store thinks Iām a hoarder
I have a stainless-steel cylinder liner from a 3406b MODEL CAT we are going to drag to the range here in a month or so when the weather cools down. The bore is 5 inch, itās about a foot long and the walls are about 1/4 inch thick. It weighs about 15 pounds.
The arsenal available covers a fairly wide range of calibers from a 22-250 up to 450BM. The largest caliber I would have been able to shoot - before the unfortunate Stripper/Mudslide incident in Bora-Bora - was my old British .303 SMLE No.5 mk1 Jungle Carbine. With an original military round - 174g steel jacket boat tail - or a Hornady match round I know I can penetrate 1/2 mild steel at 100 yards. Those rounds are hard to come by these days, and since I lost the rifle, it is a moot point.
Sure would be nice to see what I could do against the cylinder liner.
