Nothing but Paper and Powder

We've known since conception of our products that things like drywall offer almost zero defense against projectiles such a bullets and explosive born projectiles. While keeping up to date around the web on the latest research being done on our topics of interest we came across a site we thought worth mentioning. 

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. 

Ammunition Drywall Penetration Test

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.

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.