Rangefinder
New member
So there I was, minding my own business, thinking about ballistics, penetration, expansion, etc...
I've been playing with my BP and muzzle-stuffers a bit more again, and was curious as to the penetration and expansion factors on my 1851 Navy. So in true red-neck fashion, I headed out to the shop to "find out". Catch medium was dry phone books--dry because I wanted to see how the RB reacted--not what it did to the target. Cast three .451 balls. The one on the left is dead-soft, middle is dead-soft sweetened with a touch of tin only, the right is straight WW alloy. The charge was a mild 18gr. FFFg at a range of about 10 feet. Dead soft penetrated aprox. 1" before flattening and flowing into the page cracks. Tin added reached about 1 3/4" with less but visible flow into the page cracks. WW alloy took a little scuff on the nose and punched just shy of all the way through the first book at 2 1/2". Had I not had several books stacked to offer more resistance, the WW would have kept going.Now for comparison I popped a few from a couple center-fires that I cast for. Back right is 93gr 32ACP from WW. It reached 2 1/2" with a little dent in the book behind it. Middle back is .40S&W 180gr. from WW. It reached apr. 4" with split pages in the dent at 5". Back left, just for fun is my .40S&W HD load--It's jacketed, modified HP, and I'm gonna leave it at that. It penetrated just over an inch to 1 1/2", and opened up to.912 across the widest point and retained 80% mass intact, and left a shredded crater to the back of the first book at 3" (it reacts a little different in soft tissue tests, but this was fun and interesting anyway).
This is what happens when I get a little bored and have a little time to kill...