Lead bullet hitting a steel plate????

[Willyp]

What happens to a cast bullet once it hits a steel plate? All you see is a gray cloud! Does the bullet melt or turn to powdered lead?
Have you ever wondered about this?

[garym1a2]

They flaten out, fragment and such. I see lots of them on the ground after a steel match. I am sure some turn to dust also.

[btroj]

Turns into little pieces of shrapnel. You usually find a small, flat disk on the ground that was the bullets base. It certainly doesn't melt or turn into powder.

Take a couple of 2 x 4 and set them a few feet from the steel plate so the plate is right between them. Shoot the plate a few times and look at all the bits of bullet that sticks into the boards. Tephra will tell you where the lead goes. It also tells me I don't ever want to be around a steel plate that gets shot!

[Adam10mm]

There's some slow motion video of various bullets striking steel. There are some cast bullets among them. Overall, it's a pretty neat video, with the European electronica music to boot!

About 6 minutes into it there's cast bullet splatter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfDoQwIAaXg

[RU shooter]

I think it would depend on how fast and what the alloy was as to how much it would fragment. I do know my 30 cal bullets that are fairly hard 4:1 WW /lino still shatter to powder at the 200 yd plate even at impact vel in the 1200fps range . All thats left is the splatter on the target and the gas check laying on the ground with some powder.

[XWrench3]

There's some slow motion video of various bullets striking steel. There are some cast bullets among them. Overall, it's a pretty neat video, with the European electronica music to boot!

About 6 minutes into it there's cast bullet splatter.

yes, it is awesome! i could watch that 100 times and not get bored. to bad i can not have that as a background on my computer screen!

[BulletFactory]

I was shooting at a steel plate this winter a lot, and noticed an unmistakable pattern of lead fragmentation holes in the snow around the target. It formed a 15 foot hemisphere of lead strikes. some going out to 25 feet. You dont want to be any where near a piece of steel that is taking fire.

Last year, a friend dug a piece of lead/copper out of his shin from an AK-47 round at about 60 feet. If that was his eye...

[HangFireW8]

There was an article a while back... forget where... pointing out that if the steel plate is springy and bounces the boolit backwards, the boolit could actually deliver more than 100% of its momentum to the plate... this is possible because the energy of proprelling (via steel springing action) the boolit back where it came from becomes its own action/reaction equation.

So, for knocking down difficult silhouettes, it is best to have a boolit that retains integrity instead of going up in a puff of lead alloy powder. Food for thought. It is also better for berm mining as well. :)

[BulletFactory]

yeah, frangible rounds suck

[fecmech]

While shooting silhouette with my K-38 and cast bullets last year a piece of lead from my 50yd pig came back and landed next to the RO who was about 20' to my right. I caught a fair amount of good natured flack about trying to shoot the RO.

[Ole]

I have a steel bullet trap that JiminPhx made. Last time I dumped it out, this is a sample of what the bounty looked like:

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh280/Ole1830/IMG_5599.jpg

Fastest thing I'll shoot it with is a .357 rifle. Around 1500-1600fps.

[williamwaco]

Freakshow,

thanks for sharing that.

It was amazing.

I hear lots of flack about rotational energy. Did anyone notice that those pistol bullets that peeled the jacket open like a banana stopped rotating the instant the jacket started peeling?

[MBTcustom]

The exact time is 6:19 on the video. I have watched that video many times before, I love it! Someday, If I get the shop off its knees, I want to get a high-speed camera. There are so many things I could learn with that tool.

[slide]

Those hollowpoints opening up in the gelatin was something to see!

[fredj338]

Depends on the alloy; some flatten (more pure lead), some fragment (hardcast, lino), all are dangerous in close w/ steel setup improperly.

[stubshaft]

Freakshow,



I hear lots of flack about rotational energy. Did anyone notice that those pistol bullets that peeled the jacket open like a banana stopped rotating the instant the jacket started peeling?


The first time I saw it, I thought about that myth being busted.:violin:

[429421Cowboy]

The .44 slugs i find under my steel plates from my HC 240's are ragged circles with a scrunched back lube groove around the dimpled base, they seem like some drop straight down, while others hit the dirt pretty hard. No GC, no jacketed at my plates in the pistol range, since i make them out of mild steel scrap our rifles go right through them on the rifle range.

[45-70 Chevroner]

There was an article a while back... forget where... pointing out that if the steel plate is springy and bounces the boolit backwards, the boolit could actually deliver more than 100% of its momentum to the plate... this is possible because the energy of proprelling (via steel springing action) the boolit back where it came from becomes its own action/reaction equation.

So, for knocking down difficult silhouettes, it is best to have a boolit that retains integrity instead of going up in a puff of lead alloy powder. Food for thought. It is also better for berm mining as well. :)

I have shot in a number of steel compitions and have yet to see any stationary steel targets. Rebounds would be a problem. The steel targets used in competion are either hanging or knockdown, this helps to prevent rebounds.

[BAGTIC]

There was an article a while back... forget where... pointing out that if the steel plate is springy and bounces the boolit backwards, the boolit could actually deliver more than 100% of its momentum to the plate... this is possible because the energy of proprelling (via steel springing action) the boolit back where it came from becomes its own action/reaction equation.

So, for knocking down difficult silhouettes, it is best to have a boolit that retains integrity instead of going up in a puff of lead alloy powder. Food for thought. It is also better for berm mining as well. :)

I really doubt that it could return more momentum than was in the bullet originally. If it did we would have a perpetual motion machine.

When the plate returns the projectile it must not only return 100% of the original momentum to the bullet with no loss it must also also add enough extra momentum to power the rebounding portion of the plate itself.

[casterofboolits]

I had a fragment of lead bounce off an IPSC Pepper Popper about 30 feet away and stick in my shin. Just enough to produce some blood. I was the RO, not the shooter.

[454PB]

I used to have a steel target......six 4" by 3/8" swinging round plates hanging down from a heavy angle iron frame. Over the years I fired thousands of cast boolits at this, and there was a trench several inches deep directly below it where the boolits hit. In all the years I used it, the only time I was hit by the schrapnel was when using jacketed bullets fire from my Desert Eagle .44 magnum. Something (I assume a piece of the jacket) came back and whizzed by my ear, barely touching it, but enough to draw blood. This target was 25 yards away from the shooting point.

[docthompson]

Howdy,
We CAS shooters shoot cast at steel all the time,250 rds. per match. I shoot only cast 200g rnfp, .45LC at 850fps. Only mid to low velocity, 400 to 900 fps no gc allowed.
Hard steel plates, minimum 400 steel, distance of 7 to 10 yards. The plates must have an angle on them when hung. This directs the splatter down into the ground. It seems that the harder bullets are more prone to retaining their mass.
Regards,
doc

[bbqncigars]

A few years ago I had a disk of lead flutter to my feet from a steel target fifty feet away, when shooting my .58 flintlock pistol. It was from a pure lead patched ball over a stout measure of 2fg. It's amazing what bullets can do sometimes.

[RoGrrr]

I have a trap, 45 degree plate over the flat steel base plate. No sand or anything else. I shoot 22, 9 and 45 25 feet from my cement porch. Sometimes the 22 slugs will frag and bounce back onto my cement porch. The frags are less than 10 grains weight. I've gotten hit a few times, drew blood a couple (I do wear glasses). The 22's mostly turn to dust, as evidenced by what I brush out and pour into my lead pot. The 45's roll up into a turd-shaped piece of lead about 1-1/4 inch long. Coming out of a 1911, the slug is spinning about 13000 RPM which is why they deform the way they do. The few that do only bounce a couple feet out of the trap. Not sure what the 9's do, as I haven't found anything recognizable when I shoot them, just bits of lead in the trap.
Next thing, I'll build a snail trap. From what I've seen of them, with a rough pipe as the snail, the 22's grind down to almost nothing. My pipe will be smooth to reduce any lead dust, since I'll have it in my basement for comfortable winter shooting. And the funnel will also be very smooth.

[DrB]

If the stagnation pressure of the bullet (1/2 rho *v^2) exceeds the ultimate strength of the steel target you'll start getting target cratering... the walls of the craters will tend to direct the flowing lead back toward the shooter... The spray is high velocity, but typically fine enough that it slows quickly.

[Sonnypie]

I have a steel bullet trap that JiminPhx made. Last time I dumped it out, this is a sample of what the bounty looked like:

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh280/Ole1830/IMG_5599.jpg

Fastest thing I'll shoot it with is a .357 rifle. Around 1500-1600fps.


So Ole....
Was that the arrows I see fragmented in the larder? :mrgreen:

Looks like it is pre-fluxed. :roll:

[Jammer Six]

I used to shoot in a plate league at an indoor range. We shot at about 40 feet.

It wasn't the round hitting the plates that were problematical, it was the rounds hitting the frame.

Because it's an indoor range, everyone was shooting jacketed rounds, and what we called "splash" was fairly common.

And it could hurt, particularly in the face.

[ihmsakiwi]

Turns into little pieces of shrapnel. You usually find a small, flat disk on the ground that was the bullets base. It certainly doesn't melt or turn into powder.

Take a couple of 2 x 4 and set them a few feet from the steel plate so the plate is right between them. Shoot the plate a few times and look at all the bits of bullet that sticks into the boards. Tephra will tell you where the lead goes. It also tells me I don't ever want to be around a steel plate that gets shot!

X2

We put new 4 x 4 swinger frames up at our silhouette range six months ago and the two facing sides to the swingers are no longer flat but shredded. Boolits disintergrate in a 360 degree arc as directly below the swingers there is also big impact damage. Having said that, I saw / heard a richochet from the 100 yard line last shoot after a top of the back hit on the pig. Peter.

[a.squibload]

I dug a chunk of lead out of the dirt right below where we hang steel targets
at the range, it was over 3" long weighed several ounces. Multiple fragments
impacted together. Need a target shaped to direct the fragments to a central
area (parabolic?). Assuming I can hit the target once in a while!

PS: a friend`s 44 jhp bounced off an iron pipe maybe 2 ft dia., heard it or part of it
fly over us. Guess he figured it would splatter.

[kir_kenix]

I got smacked in the face by a jacketed 45 ACP slug that bounced off of our hanging steel targets. It had a dent but was otherwise complete. Still have the slug. Made out of a round disc from a John Deer. It hurt, broke the skin and gave me a nasty bruise on my cheek. This was at 30ish yards. We had the 'curved' part of the disc facing us, suspended by a heavy chain. It did not have enough momentum do do any serious damage (was wearing eye pro by the way), but made us move our line back to 50 yards. One and only 'bounce back' that we experienced at our personal range.

[Shiloh]

It powders a and fragments.

Makes for easy pickin's for salvaged lead at the plate range.

Shiloh

[303Guy]

I saw some liquid from the nose in some of the impacts at least. Liquid will quickly go semi-solid and form dust as it breaks up. I also happened to see the vortex cannon on the side of the screen so I had a look. Awesome!

[lwknight]

I saw some liquid from the nose in some of the impacts at least. Liquid will quickly go semi-solid and form dust as it breaks up. I also happened to see the vortex cannon on the side of the screen so I had a look. Awesome!
You got it.
The lead does liquefy from heat generated upon impact . Splatter or spatter are accurate terms. You get blow back when you hit a pock caused from a high velocity round. Pocks in the target can be very dangerous.

Most of the splatter is a mist spray that oxidizes very quickly. The larger droplets will collect and even fuse to solid lead in a circle around the backstop. Lower velocity rounds of hard alloy can fragment but mostly we find solidified spray along the ground and anything else near the stop.

It is extra difficult to recover a high percentage of back stop spatter because so much is oxidized. You will end up tossing a lot of could have been good lead unless you really work your tail off to reduce and salvage the oxides. Not to mention all the dirt and other junk mixed and impregnated with it.

And yes the vortex cannon is awesome. I want to build one that uses the pulse jet principal for rapid fire. BUHAHAAHH!!!

[Aunegl]

Something I'd like to watch:

http://youtu.be/QfDoQwIAaXg

[mongoosesnipe]

hard alloys will shatter soft alloys will flatten at low velocities

http://youtu.be/QfDoQwIAaXg

[DLCTEX]

I've had 45acp WDWW boolits bounce back to as much as 25 yds. with about 70% weight retention. This is off steel and once off rock, hit my son in the chest with enough force to scare the heck out him. I haven't had it happen with air cooled WW, but am a lot more conscious of preventing bounce back now.

[mongoosesnipe]

I've had 45acp WDWW boolits bounce back to as much as 25 yds. with about 70% weight retention. This is off steel and once off rock, hit my son in the chest with enough force to scare the heck out him. I haven't had it happen with air cooled WW, but am a lot more conscious of preventing bounce back now.

i like to shoot free hanging steel or steel that is angled such the bullets are directed into the ground to prevent bounce backs

[dtknowles]

When I was a kid, I was shooting my .22 at a scrap yard. I shot some sort of steel tank at about 25 ft. and the bullet rebounded and hit me in the cheek, just a small scratch but I learned that lesson right there! A friend tells a story about shooting steel core ammo at steel plates at 100 yards. At first he thought his gun blew up, but the gun was ok but he was bleeding. He went to the emergeny room and they removed a steel core from his arm, the core was shaped like a fishhook. He showed me the x-ray they took of the hook in his arm. When I shoot my 9mm and my 38 S&W at my hanging steel plates they make nice lead disks, the .357 just leaves shards.

Tim

[Wolfer]

My steel plate is at 200 yds. The boolits all splatter but none have made it back to me that I know of.

[beagle]

I was pling 100 yard round gongs at our club several years ago with a .223 and cast and having a big old time. A Mocking Bird lit on the square support frame about a foot above the gong and I figured I'd thrill him intending no real harm except maybe a streak of whitewash. Yeah, you guessed it. Killed him grave yard dead. That shrapnel is lethal on a line running parrallel with the hanging plate./beagle

[ddixie884]

Nice video....................

[303Guy]

There was a case a number of years back when a shooting instructor at a pistol range had the misfortune of being hit in the heart by a 22lr boolit entering a bent water pipe in the backstop bank which happened to be in a U shape with its exit point back at the firing line. He died. OK, that is not a ricochet, rather, the boolit followed the curvature of the pipe.

[Bullwolf]

I have a steel silhouette target hung up on my ranch. It was originally gifted to me from an old friend. I really have no idea what it's intended purpose was supposed to be. I'm pretty sure it was NOT meant to be used as target, but it works very well as one. The outline of the target sort of resembles the head and shoulders of a person.

6094960950

My silhouette is approximately 2 foot tall x 2 foot wide, and perhaps ¾ inch thickness of mild steel. You can't really see it from the pictures, but it has a square hollow tube mounted in the back part of the head portion. I have the silhouette suspended from an iron fence stake that's been driven horizontally into the hillside, from the tube in the back.

It is up to the impact from most handgun calibers, and will handle medium rifle velocity cast boolit loads just fine as well. However, a factory 30/30 round will put a nice dimple in the silhouette. Any larger rifle, with more energy just punches a hole clean through it. (I've had the distinct pleasure of welding up quite a few of those holes)

The silhouette hangs 50 yards away from my back porch, at a slight uphill angle.
(53 yards exactly according to the laser range finder) It also has a nice dirt backstop backing, and will ring like a gong when hit. It is my oldest favorite reactive target. After shooting at it, I touch up the target using a can of black spray paint. This helps me spot the next round of impacts, and also helps keep the silhouette from rusting. I have noticed over the years that delicate leaves, and other vegetation tends to get cut back for a few feet around the silhouette from boolit splatter.

While I have personally not had anything bounce back at me from that distance, one of my oldest shooting buddies once emptied a 45 caliber 1911 loaded with FMJ ball at the silhouette at aprox 15 yards at the silhouette. During this, he managed to catch a ricochet right in the groin. It only bruised his um... pride a little. Luckily no serious injuries were sustained. You can rest assured that he won't be doing that again any time soon. His somewhat humiliating lesson did help teach me caution when shooting at steel up close.

It's a blast to ring the silhouette with sub sonic 22 LR. Even aging ears can really hear the ricochets. The time delay between firing, and impacts is interesting as well.


- Bullwolf

[10x]

While shooting silhouette with my K-38 and cast bullets last year a piece of lead from my 50yd pig came back and landed next to the RO who was about 20' to my right. I caught a fair amount of good natured flack about trying to shoot the RO.

It is called a "Bank shot" and with a little more practice....

[Willbird]

There was an article a while back... forget where... pointing out that if the steel plate is springy and bounces the boolit backwards, the boolit could actually deliver more than 100% of its momentum to the plate... this is possible because the energy of proprelling (via steel springing action) the boolit back where it came from becomes its own action/reaction equation.

So, for knocking down difficult silhouettes, it is best to have a boolit that retains integrity instead of going up in a puff of lead alloy powder. Food for thought. It is also better for berm mining as well. :)

It is impossible for a moving object to transfer more energy than it contains. This is basic physics.

Bill

[KCSO]

Rotation, at no time does a bullets rotation exceed the twist of the barrel. If a bullet goes out of a 1-10 barrel it turns one rotation for every 10 inches. Now that may translate to thousands of RMP over a 100 yards but the bullet is still only going to turn 1 turn every 10 inches. So if a bullet stops in 10 inches of media the most it coould make is a full turn and there in no BUZZ SAW effect as was bandied about when the Talon's came out.

Now as to steel plates, I just had our range plates welded up and reground after some fool shoot them up with AP ammo. If you have a divot in the plate a bullet can hit the edge and come right back at you. So every bullet hole or divit in a flat plate ruins it for shooting.

[303Guy]

... but the bullet is still only going to turn 1 turn every 10 inches. So if a bullet stops in 10 inches of media the most it could make is a full turn ...That's not quite correct. The RPM does not slow down much in flight while the bullet does so the 'twist rate' increases as the bullet slows down. One can see the bullet rotating in the gelatin in the video. Buzz saw effect? Hardly! But those Talons are scary looking! But assuming there really was a buzz saw effect - what difference would it make to the wound channel anyway? It would probably reduce the wounding effect by using up all its energy fine shredding a small wound channel instead of opening up a large temporary cavity and fair sized permanent wound channel.

[snuffy]

Rotation, at no time does a bullets rotation exceed the twist of the barrel. If a bullet goes out of a 1-10 barrel it turns one rotation for every 10 inches. Now that may translate to thousands of RMP over a 100 yards but the bullet is still only going to turn 1 turn every 10 inches. So if a bullet stops in 10 inches of media the most it coould make is a full turn and there in no BUZZ SAW effect as was bandied about when the Talon's came out.



No, that bullet/boolit would only turn 360 revolutions on the way to a 100 yard target. 100 X 36 / 10 = 360. Does ANY bullet fired by any hand held gun ever stay in flight for a whole minute? Sure, some artillery pieces may have an in flight time of a minute, or more, but a rifle fired even at optimum angle would hit the ground in under a minute. So the RPM number is meaningless.

Anybody notice the lack of rotation in that you-tube video? The bullets were barely turning. Also notice how the bullets that disintegrated would peel back along the creases the rifling put in the jacket surface?

We used to have lots of steel targets at our club. I could entertain myself for hours ringing gongs. In that assortment was some human shaped sillywets that were pock-marked by lots of hits that failed to penetrate. Some jamoke was shooting a 45acp at them too close, caught a bonce back in the cheek. He went to the emergency room!!!

Of course the cops got a call, now it's a documented firearms incident. The club LAWYER was consulted, said if it ever happened again, we could be sued. Down came ALL the steel! Damn bottom feeding lawyers!

[mdi]

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2010/09/another-amazing-video-from-kurzzeit-com/

[HangFireW8]

I really doubt that it could return more momentum than was in the bullet originally. If it did we would have a perpetual motion machine.

When the plate returns the projectile it must not only return 100% of the original momentum to the bullet with no loss it must also also add enough extra momentum to power the rebounding portion of the plate itself.

I'm not sure if your second sentence is a description of a perpetual motion machine or a rebuttal. Of course we both know there is no 100% transfer of momentum in the real word, as there are no ideally elastic or ridgid objects. So the article goes beyond College Physics 101 into some more realistic physics modeling.

IIRC (and I may not) the argument goes like this- when sihlouette stops the projectile, it absorbs a large percentage of momentum in the form of movement, a large in the form of elastic deformation, and a small amount is lost (heat, splatter). Total transfer at that point is less than 100% (due to the lost componenent). Then as the springy target unflexes, to propels the projectile backwards, and Newton's third law is invoked. If the steel target is very springy and the projectile retains most of its mass, and, the rebound happens while the target is already in motion, the resulting motion is supposed to be greater than a perfect catch of the projectile.

Anyway I didn't write the article and was just hoping someone could dig it up for me. It may have been in Precision Shooting, which I had a subscription to a while ago, or elsewhere.

HF

[HangFireW8]

It is impossible for a moving object to transfer more energy than it contains. This is basic physics.

Bill

As far as your statement goes, I agree with you 100%.

HF

[lwknight]

While I have personally not had anything bounce back at me from that distance, one of my oldest shooting buddies once emptied a 45 caliber 1911 loaded with FMJ ball at the silhouette at aprox 15 yards at the silhouette. During this, he managed to catch a ricochet right in the groin. It only bruised his um... pride a little. Luckily no serious injuries were sustained. You can rest assured that he won't be doing that again any time soon. His somewhat humiliating lesson did help teach me caution when shooting at steel up close.




You did not get a ricochet!! You hit one of the 30-30 dimples/pocks!!!
No such thing as a flat clean steel plate throwing bullets back 180 degrees with enough velocity to exceed 25 yards.

I'm tellin you guys, those bullet pocks in the steel plate are DANGERORUS!!!!

At a local range in Parker Co. , a guy was shooting the falling plates with a handgun. Earlier some jerk had shot the plates with a high velocity rifle and pitted the plates. The handgun shooter had a fragment of copper come back to him fast enough to penetrate his belly skin. He had a little cut that bled only slightly.
He finished with his session and a friend talked him into getting checked out. It turns out that the copper shard was embedded in his skin but was no big deal.

This was actually turned out to be the luckiest day of his life because the X-ray showed that his spleen was about to burst and would have killed him if it were not discovered when it was.

[prs]

even when flight duration is mere milliseconds, rotation is recorded as rpm

if velocity is 1000fps, a 1:10 twist and perfect transfer of that twist would yield 100 revolutions per second or 6,000 rpm.

prs

[lwknight]

even when flight duration is mere milliseconds, rotation is recorded as rpm

if velocity is 1000fps, a 1:10 twist and perfect transfer of that twist would yield 100 revolutions per second or 6,000 rpm.

prs One more zero and you get closer.
Its 72,000 rpm

a 1 in 12 twist @ 1000fps would be 60,000
1 fps=720 inches per minute
1000pfs=720,000 inches per minute.
divide 720,000 by the twist ( 10 ) and you get 72,000 rpm