It comes from our friends over at 230grain.com and it's called "Ammunition Drywall Penetration Analysis Test". Naturally anything with the words ammunition and analysis peaks out interest but this entry is a good one. Check out the full post at the address below.
We've also included the highlight for our readers who are the attention span challenged types, I of course fit into this category as well.
The test conclusions:
The most notable thing learned from all these tests has
nothing to do with cartridges at all, but with testing methodology. The tests
were run in a somewhat ad-hoc manner due to the fact that other people
selfishly insisted on using the range at the same time, so it was not always
possible to call a cease fire every three shots. This forced us to do shooting
and photography by batches, which led to come confusion when sorting through
the photos afterward.
Confusion was also caused by the amount of sharing the
limited quantities of drywall necessitated. It can be tricky to precisely
characterize the fragmentation behavior of a round when a section of wall is
already covered in the spattered remnants of another bullet. The subtly
different behavior seen in different softpoints suffered the most from this.
Because the test results were so surprising and interesting,
it's clear that another round of drywall testing is required, but this time
with improved test mechanisms based on lessons learned from the initial test.
For starters, it would be handy to have a way to pull all
the wall sections back over the line without calling the range cold. This would
allow photographing the holes for each shot without irritating the other
shooters at the range or requiring an inordinate amount of time for the entire
test. Adding the ability to clamp and remove wall sections from the studs could
allow photographing both the entrance and exit holes (even inside the wall sections),
thereby providing a more detailed view of how and where fragmentation or
tumbling occur.
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| Now this looks like a box-o-fun! |
Finally, there are a lot of cartridges out there just
begging to be blasted through drywall to reveal their no-doubt fascinating
behavior. 5.7x28mm comes to mind, as does 5.45x39. What about #1 buckshot, or
reduced-recoil 00 buck, or softpoint bullets in other calibers, like 7.62x39 or
even .308? With so many questions left unanswered and so many walls yet
unshot, it seems clear that there is another article yet unwritten.
