Thanks for sharing. Hadn't read the article from the everydaymarskman on the history of Terminal Ballistic Research. Good Stuff
Has anybody seen the old poster from Handloader Magazine showing various bullets expanded at different speeds? If so, does anyone know where one could find a legible resolution copy?
View attachment 851514
Quite an image. So much data there to measure and we didn't measure it.
And what to do with that data if it were measured? Go all Bill James on it to show the relationship of bullet transformation to energy transfer across varying impact speeds, rates upon rates, in relationship to not just work transfer but over a certain distance. Relationships and rates to them, numbers. Cute pictures though, Bill James would laugh if asked to look at this stuff and say it's still at infant stage, call me back when you have some numbers to work with.
No, organic gel is closer in density so penetration, bullet upset, and general shape of the temp cavity will be similar to soft tissue. However Gel tears much easier and the temp cavity will be wider and longer in gel. It is useful for comparing things like how deep a bullet may penetrate or deform but you can’t “measure” a wound cavity, at least with the intent of saying it will give you the same damage in flesh. Nor can you show how “wide” it is by superimposing colored pictures of gel with die as the tearing and whatnot in gel will show the whole (exagerrated) temp cavity not what is actually damaged.
Lou
Agree! But you can measure some other things. Like the bullet. That did change while doing work and figure out the relationship to the work it did and for how long it did it. Why we still focus on the outcome of the work after 50 some years is baffling.
No. Hopefully there will be something usable by fall season.
Why on earth would that preferable to the actual, correlated wounding of bullets? Why are you guys so stuck on a math equation instead of just measuring the actual wound?
Part A, that explains a lot. Sure hope the viewers looking at this also start considering measuring the bullet for a change. And that it's not just one guys interpretation of what's important in actually moving this whole thing forward.
Bullet A, bullet B, goes 16" inches with a 3.5" x 8" wound cone...in gel. We go shoot animals and already know this.
We are not stuck on a math equation. We don't even have enough numbers to start doing math lol. We are stuck on objectifying terminal ballistics and that is the future because we've done nothing new all this time trying to measure shades of death by the wound itself when the bullet tells us so much more and everyone seems to have their blinders on that this possibility exists.
What does the work? The bullet. And we try to measure the work while ignoring the bullet. We can't compare rates of bullet change at varying impact velocities to anything against known performance on certain game classes, across bullet family types etc. There's no calculator. Yet there's plenty of numbers there to be able to do math and Bill James the whole thing and create a calculator, and expand it etc., if we actually capture all the information to make comparable in useful way.
It's ad nauseam and beating the horse to keep doing the same thing we have always done.
I do this for living, look at the numbers and make useful for my team, for the goals of my team. And I got lucky to get a job that works for my mind like that. Make it easy, make it fast, create calculators and useful way to see and use the data.
This (terminal ballistics as part of hunting/shooting), is a hobby and I could see that IF THIS WAS MY WORK I'd see we are missing info in order to then study the info and THEN make it usable and useful for my team, and THEN improve on it, upgrade it, add functionality to it.
That is all I'm pointing out. I don't have the gel or bullets or the other resources needed, or the time in a week to start this work and pay check to go with it, so can only talk about it a bit between ice fishing weekends lol (another 40 fish last weekend btw and a new PB walleye). And hope that those who do have all this resource and people on payroll (cough hornady) etc. will see the benefits of what this work would do to assist the team (hunters).
There's no way to make useful and usable tools (for comparing and running all scenarios one wants to imagine for goals intended) or views for hunters based on the info we have been looking at and doing the same thing for as long as I've been shooting. Running an 800 yard comparison between bullets, running a 1600 fps comparison between bullets, and seeing expected rates of change and work transfer etc. We look at basic info at one impact velocity and I mean basic. Like mid 20th century basic.
So I know this gets wordy but in my mind I'd be looking to get the delta's of data from the bullet work/change info between say every couple hundred fps impacts, then use those delta's to fill in the blanks every 25 fps to start, run v-look up tables in background of calculator. The inputs would be the new ones we're missing of course that I've been talking about. Heck at some point the terminal ballistics calculator could merge with the ballistics calculator so you input all your inflight atmospheric and bullet parameters then your terminal bullet parameters (Bill James style boiled down rates) and now you would see at every fps impact velocity the expected terminal performance in numbers of work transfer over expected distance. No different than drop and wind drift columns etc. But we are so far off getting to this level. Just where my mind takes it right now and it's not fart in the wind stuff, I've demonstrated this is possible. We know the bullet will drop less work over greater inches as the yardage increases as it's rate of change slows, but currently in inflight ballistic calculators we get enough data to see what the bullet lands with for energy and it's starting sd and that's it, you get to imagine the rate of change and transfer load and penetration distance from there. It wouldn't take that much to fill in the blanks with a few more numbers to make usable and comparable for all bullets we hunt with and get it to fill in the blanks every fps marker along the flight range to target and then show what to expect over the next 13-36" etc. You want the most work transfer over 14" at 800 yards? Run the calculator, run the bullet library, get your answers and top 5 choices....etc.