On a different thread an interesting topic came up, so I'd like to discuss it here. Long ago, in a bygone time, we few with the grey hair and the wisdom of olden days had some pretty full-proof methods of testing the performance of our cast bullet loads on the cheap. Back in the day it was common knowledge that a water soaked stack of newspapers would exactly duplicate the wound cavities of deer, elk, bear, and all other game animals on Earth (even though it didn't). We knew this because every shooting & hunting magazine on the shelf said so. A big selling point was that because this target was a stack of layers, you could remove a layer at a time to expose the bullets path and the resulting "wound channel". The recovered slug would tell you if your bullet alloy was too soft or too hard. You could even see if that fancy hollowpoint bullet mushroomed like it's supposed to, or came apart like a cheap happy meal toy the moment it hit pay dirt. Those were good days.
There were basically two ways to procure the vitals for this type of experiment: Either saunter downtown to the building where the telephone company was, and ask for a pile of the old phone books that they would invariably keep in dusty boxes stacked into a basement store room like gold bricks at Fort Knox. Generally they were happy for you to haul off their trash, so it could make room for them to store even more old and useless phone books forever and ever.
The second way was to be a devious little turd, and go down to the bus depot/train station downtown where all the newspaper stands were. You took a gander at those newspaper vending machines and noted which one was the fullest. It didn't really matter what the published information was; it could be real estate flyers, auto parts sales, or just an actual newspapper: we didn't care. Sunday editions were best because they were generally twice as thick. You look around and make sure that there are no Karens present, then put a pair of quarters in the machine, open the lid, and abscond with all of the papers! You need ninja like stealth to pull this off - don't be a duffuss and just dump those papers into the bed of your pickup, or they won't still be there when you get home! The guilt that you might have been feeling for pulling off this Oceans 11 type of heist is soon displaced by the reckoning that these otherwise temporary tales of printed international intrigue, local dilemmas, and that weekend sale at the Montgomery Wards, are being shuttled off for a higher purpose.
Now that we'd acquired the goods it was time to soak them in a bucket, barrel, or tub of water. My personal preference was a wheelbarrow, because it could be easily dumped out once the saturation was complete. You didn't want the papers to soak so long that they turned to mush, but long enough for them to get wet through and through. Once accomplished, the papers were stacked and bound together to form a bail about 16" to 20" thick (give or take). You could use tape, bailing wire, even rope or cord to bind the pile. You were now ready to proceed with testing at your own personal ballistics laboratory.
At whatever range was appropriate for the load you were testing, you could let loose and plug that pile to see what results would ensue. By use of the expert marksmanship that we all possess, you could generally get 3 or 4 shots into the bale. That first and 3rd shot that went into the dirt didn't count because of (wind, sights were off, I was distracted, I meant to do that, "flyer") <pick one. Afterwards we could disassemble the bale and see how our handloads stacked up. If that fancy looking hollowpoint broke up in the first three inches or that swc didn't hardly expand, it meant that the alloy was too hard. If a slug mushroomed out like a fifty cent piece, but failed to penetrate to far and lost more than half it's weight, that meant that the alloy was too soft. Also, you could examine the "wound channel". It was easy to see if a bullet had penciled all the way through, expanded and worked well, or exploded like an atom bomb.
Well it looks like those days are over. Newspapers have gone the way of the Dodo bird and the lead clip on wheel weight. Everybody gets their news from their phone and computer nowadays. Though it would be devilishly satisfying to shoot a stack of cell phones, it just wouldn't give you the ballistic information that we'd be looking for. There are alternatives to these old methods; like ballistic gel, or even a lump of clay, but those cost money. I'm looking for people's input on what they've found to use at the El Cheapo discount. Let's hear it: a stack of carpet samples, Pumpkins stuffed with mud, boxes full of 40 year old government reports, that annoying tree that only grows one crab-apple a year - what do you use for low budget testing of your cast bullets?
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Originally Posted by dverna
