Want to catch a bullet..

[dtknowles]

I want to examine a cast WW bullet that has been shot, but have not been able to stop one. I tried a fairly dense pile of cloth, but my .25-20 87 gr went right through and through a 2x6 I had behind the cloth.

I tried shooting into a sand pile, but all I could find was flakes of lead. The bullet seemed to have disintegrated.

How can I stop a bullet without destroying it?

What are you wanting to see? I have recovered many bullets. Are you opposed to loading it down to a low velocity so it will be damaged less?
Water, newspaper, sand, wet or dry. I have used many bullet catchers, not really to save the bullets for examination but just to stop them. I do catch enough to return much lead to the casting pot.
Tim

[pworley1]

I use about 2 feet of packed rubber mulch to catch my pistol bullets for reuse. It even stops 480 Ruger.

[Texas by God]

This soda bottles bottom is thicker than a milk jug. The .218 Bee’s 55gr bullet at around 1500 fps expanded nicely.
The 90 gr XTP from a .380 got a little nose deformation.
Just set the jug in the sun for a few hours and the bullet will be in the jug.
I’ll use a milk jug tomorrow.


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[sloughfoot]

24 inches of wet denim will stop a 308 cast

[Mr Peabody]

Load the bullet over 3 to 5 grains pistol powder, bullseye or 7 grains unique and then shoot into newspapers bundled flat and tied.

That works great

[GregLaROCHE]

I’ve always thought the best way would be to shoot into a large swimming pool.

[farmbif]

back in the days of newspapers and telephone books wetting them down and shooting into them was pretty standard fare,

[waksupi]

I’ve always thought the best way would be to shoot into a large swimming pool.

I did that, and the neighbors didn't like it.

[dondiego]

I did that, and the neighbors didn't like it.

You have to get the kids out first!

[huntinlever]

Very expensive and perishable if not refrigerated. Good at stopping expanding handgun bullets in under two feet, but non-expanding solids, not so much. I had the opportunity to test the Lyman 358430 (195gr RN) in it during one of my early efforts at replicating the .38/200 load. At a mere 570 FPS, 18" of it was insufficient to the task.

Great info. Thanks. I imagine my new-found, OT'ed and quenched 94-3-3 at 1500 fps will, um, make a tunnel.

[WRideout]

If you're trying to catch it without nose damage. . .

We have a forensic trap at work that consists of a steel tube, closed on one end, and capped with a segmented "screen" on the other which holds a cardboard disc through which you shoot.

The "official" catch medium is shredded Kevlar fluff. Basically, the exact same fibers you'd make body armor out of but no longer in woven sheets, and it's packed in to the consistency of a really firm pillow. The material balls up around the projectile, cushioning and braking it with an ever-increasing diameter. Duty caliber pistol rounds typically and predictably stop after about 18-20 inches of the stuff. The tube has several hatches on the side which you can open for easy access to extract your bullets or replace your cardboard. Finding the hard lump with anything .380 or bigger at the middle of it is pretty easy, but the .22's and .25's take a little more serious effort of pinching your way through smaller handfulls.

My guess is that Dacron would be a cheap and effective substitute.

Pro tip: until we learned how deep the rounds tended to penetrate, we added several additional cardboard baffles at intervals spaced through the fluff. If you have a hole in Baffle 3 but not Baffle 4, you have a lot less fluff to dig through to find your bullet.

Water filled milk jugs work pretty well if your bullet is designed to expand, but I've found that hard alloy solids tend to take A LOT of them to bring to a halt. The fluff has the advantage of being reusable and non-destructive to the slug.

The firearms examiner at the crime lab where I used to work used a cotton box pretty much like the one describe above. Anything fibrous will tend to wrap around the boolit, and gain size and weight as it travels. A box 8" square by about 2' long will catch most anything. It's good enough to use for matching bullets taken as evidence.

Wayne

[MT Gianni]

Felix Robbins, one of the founding members of this board talked about putting a hole in a swimming pool. Obviously don't use max loads.

[William Yanda]

I’ve always thought the best way would be to shoot into a large swimming pool.

I believe that was Richard Lee's method. As I recall, he had his son retrieve them.

[Willbird]

I have used a 4 foot long steel tube packed full of polyfill, the pillow stuffing stuff. Got the idea by shooting through some old couch cushions and seeing that the fiber fill in them would ball up around a 22lr bullet. I caught the Lee 12 gauge airgun pellet looking slug this way, fired at full sped. . Also caught 158 grain bullet from 357 maximum 10" barrel too, full speed there too, remington factory ammo. I set a 1/2" steel plate on the back end of the tube because I was messing around inside a building inside city limits.

The ball of polyfill had wadded up about 3" dia by the time it thumped the steel plate. The 357 maximum bullet was too hot to hold after firing.

[charlie b]

I'd like to know if anyone has stopped a cast rifle bullet at over 2000fps without distorting the nose? (except for snow, I don't have that option ).

[a danl]

I think the best back stop is snow. Hard too find right now. In the winter I push up a huge pile of snow too use as a back stop, and can recover my bullets for study. I saw a U-Tube video where a man made a bullet catcher out of a PVC pipe, and filled it with some kind of material, like Dacron or pillow stuffing.

yes, snow works great, even with 45/70 only thing you'll nee a medal detector

[Willbird]

I'd like to know if anyone has stopped a cast rifle bullet at over 2000fps without distorting the nose? (except for snow, I don't have that option ).

I think the polyfill would do fine. My steel tube was 8" or so in diameter. It was just something I had on hand, it has 3/8" or so wall thickness.

[charlie b]

I've shot into 6ft of dacron stuffing and the bullets go out the back end. If I pack the stuff in tighter so I can recover the bullet, the nose is deformed.

PS this is for cast bullets.

[Alferd Packer]

I use a five gal bucket of sand.
Put a folded rag on top and shoot straight down into the bucket.
Dry sand will stop any load up to and including 30-06 .
Need. Rag to contain muzzle blast into sand.
Use dry sand, less mess.

[Cap'n Morgan]

Two methods for catching an unblemished boolit:

1) Stand in the middle of a swimming pool. Fire the gun at exactly an angle of (mumble, mumble) towards the earth's rotation and wait for the boolit to return.

2) Fire it into oil-soaked sawdust.