An AK-47 burns worse than a toaster, a Saiga 12 goes boom, and other recent adventures

Keith (a college buddy of ours) just made it back from Iraq last month, and after relaxing back home, stopped by on his way back to Texas. Jon and I decided it was entirely worth a day of leave to take Keith out to the gun range and get some new pictures, but couldn't talk Old Ike into leaving WSMR for the day. I've heard that "a day at the gun range doesn't count against your days here on Earth," and I'd say it's a philosophy that Jon and I subscribe to pretty well. 'Course we're both from Kansas, whereas Ike is from Colorado, so maybe that has something to do with it...

So we packed up The Element (yes, I know) and headed out to the range bright and early on a nice Friday morning. The days are starting to actually cool down here, in sunny New Mexico, and being a Friday we were hoping to get a quiet range for our little group. While there were a couple of other's out there (I'm convinced Las Cruces is the place retirees choose if they want a nice public range nearby, and they don't want to be up in Raton), we did manage to grab a couple of benches to ourselves and setup shop.

Keith has been full time National Guard for a while and spent most of his time overseas (Bosnia and Iraq so far). While we all grew up shooting, I'd say that the shooting bug bit most of our crew recently; not so with Keith, who got an AK-47 and 2,000 rounds of ammunition for his 18th birthday from his dad (retired highway patrol and now gunsmith).

'course he's from Kansas too...

We had several new guns to test out that day:

• Remington 700 in 300 Win Mag
• Saiga 12
• AK-47

and I hope to get the movies from that day up on the sight soon. We tried to fill out the regular targets (cantaloupe, car door, etc) and we did some silhouette work as well. Look for a future post when I get the movies online.

- Frank

New Ruger GP 100 review

I've had my Ruger GP 100 revolver for about 6 months now, and finally felt like it was time to write up a review. See it the review over at stoppingpower.info. Let me know if you have any additional questions, and I'll try to get them answered.


Ruger GP 100 review

Jobs board added

I've added a new jobs board that may be of interesting to StoppingPower.Info readers. It's powered off of Simply Hired's Job-o-Matic application. Their application allows anyone (including me) to stick a job board up on their web site, link to it, and have the ability to accept new job postings for $X dollars for Y days.

Given all that, I threw up a job board that's filled with "hunting fishing gun" related search terms, so that StoppingPower.Info readers might find a new job if they're looking for one. Given the limited searches I've done on the job board, it sure does seem like Cabela's is really on a hiring binge.


StoppingPower.Info Jobs board

Added a news section to StoppingPower.Info

I installed pligg this weekend, and started a news section on the site. Take a look at it on:

http://stoppingpower.info/index.php/News

We'll keep track of news that is related to StoppingPower.Info's goal of becoming a shooting almanac site.

New Target - Pistol Training Cube

Like most shooters, eventually you run into a day where you’re lacking in pop cans, tired of paper, and have shot most of the other destroyable items in the household. One of our cohort decided this was the perfect time (combined with his new Mini-14) to try out one of Just Shoot Me Products, Inc. pistol training cubes.

The basic cube is only $50 (there’s a couple of targets that are cheaper, but most are more than $50). The cost didn’t really bother me assuming the company’s claims of holding up to “thousands of rounds” held up, especially given the additional safety margin these targets offer your standard metal plate.

Results:

The .45 ACP and Mini-14 videos are the longest. These were the first set of firearms we tried out on the cube, so we spent the most time capturing video on these shots. The cube took the worst beating of the day on the .223 rounds pushed out by the Mini-14. You can see severe gouges that the round inflicted in the “plastic”. However, it should be noted that this cube is rated for pistol rounds, and we were obviously way outside the envelope with the .223 round. I wonder if the rifle cubes are made from a different compound, or are just thicker and able to take more punishment...

The cube actually caught one of the .45 ACP rounds as you can see in the video. We actually couldn’t pry that round out of the cube it was in there so tight. However, subsequent shots caused that bullet to fall out, with no sign that it had been there (I guess the plastic is “self healing”).

I’d like to make a minor note on the .22 rounds. I’m sure some of you are thinking “it’d be a better video if you had hit it more,” but this was our “introduce a friend to shooting day” so those shots are by a complete beginner. Not bad really, given she’d been shooting for about 30 minutes, and it was the first time she’d been shooting – ever!

I’ll post again as we inflict more damage on the pistol cube and let you know how it holds up. If anyone else has some information on these cubes, let me know.

Meanwhile, you can also take a look a the review that Jon wrote up on StoppingPower.Info.

- Frank

New Target Writeup - Frying pan

The same day we did the Car door videos, we also went ahead with a frying pan. “Why a frying pan?” you might ask (much like my Dad did). Well, it’s a bit complicated.

I took the family back home to Kansas in June and did the whole “sweat in the humidity thing” for a week. Kansas is great, but if you’re from there, you know the summer humidity saps your spirit and calls for showers several times a day. While my son was down for a nap one afternoon, I took the opportunity to user my in-laws broadband (yeah, they have the Internet in Kansas, despite what you might hear on the coasts), and checked up on the site.

I firmly subscribe to the “measure what you value” school of thought, and consequently use a couple of analytics packages (Google Analytics and Clicky) to see web site stats and keep up with its “health”. On that particular day, the number of hits had gone up a fair bit, and as I dug into it, it became apparent that a number of them were coming in from Italy. Apparently, a group of guys were debating various pistol stopping powers, and had referenced the site in their conversation/debate.

My first thought was “Italy?”




But given a bit to think about it, it’s really not very surprising. Beretta, Rossi, and Benelli are common enough names in the firearms world. Realistically a lot of their arms are made all over the world (of the various components). Naturally, I was interested, but I don’t speak Italian. Google Translate only goes so far, but I ran the page through it, and finally got down to the important question they seemed to have of “I wish they’d shoot something harder.” Of course, we aim to please, so I posted my reply (via Google Translate again) asking what targets they’d like to see. And we finally get to the punch line, because they requested:

A frying pan

(Of course they also requested an iron, but I wasn’t too sure I wanted to shoot one of those, as there’s a fair bit of metal in them. Comment on this if you want). Anyway, we returned to sunny New Mexico, and my wife hit up the local Goodwill and got a couple of frying pans. The first (and the only one we’ve shot so far) was a standard, garden variety frying pan. Not terribly thick, but a good representative of the kind you’d get at Wal-Mart. The other was a cast-iron pan, and we haven’t taken a crack at that one yet, because we’re still debating the necessary safety issues involved in that one.

Results:

While stout, the frying pan didn’t hold up all that well to most of the pistol rounds. The diminutive.22 LR round caused a dent, but didn’t penetrate as most of us expected. The .38 Special also didn’t penetrate when shot out of the Ruger GP100 (pistol). If you watch fairly closely, you can in fact see the bullet break up on impact. The same round out of a Winchester 1894 penetrated with no problem however. A number of factors could have led to the different outcomes.

1. It could be that the shots were in different enough spots on the frying pan, that it isn’t really an apple to apple comparison.
2. There’s much less velocity for the round coming out of the 6” pistol barrel vs the 16” rifle barrel.
3. Other?

The other two pistol rounds we tested (.40 and .45 ACP) didn’t have a problem with it either. And in the theory of completeness, we tested the .223 from a Mini-14, and got the expected nice little puncture hole expected from a rifle round.

Let me know if you have any questions.

- Frank

New Target -- Door results

Two weekends ago, we finally took a truck door out to the range to test out. It was the same ’79 Ford truck door as described earlier. All of the shots took place at 25 yards or more. We placed the truck door with a slight forward cant, so that in theory the ricochets would be less likely to end up coming back at us.

Results:

.22 LR from a Ruger Mark I

We started off with the .22 pistol, as it seemed like that would be the least likely to penetrate, and therefore the most likely to ricochet. Given that it was an entirely metal door, and not a plastic door like you find in most cars these days, we were rather surprised at the penetration of even the little .22 LR round.

The “little round that could” entirely penetrated the front door skin, and made a hefty dent on the back skin. Recall that this is from a Ruger Mark I with 6” barrel from 25 yards. We didn’t have one at the time, but it would be interesting to see the difference once you pushed that same round out of a rifle.

Sledgehammer

I managed to talk my brother-in-law into smacking one of those “two hits for a dollar” cars when we went to an Arts & Crafts show back in Williamsburg, KS. While not a firearms-related event, most people have a passing acquaintance with the force of a sledgehammer, and it’s a lot easier to compare outcomes when you use an item that everyone actually understands. Of course you’re getting a much blunter strike, and it’s fairly easy to see in the video the shockwave that spreads out from each impact. I found it interesting that we didn’t even get a tear in the outer skin from the hammer. I’d guess that this is actually the type of trauma that car manufacturers actually plan for; this seems much closer to a side impact than any of the shooting tests we actually perform.

9mm, 38 Special, .40, .45 ACP, and .357 Magnum

All of these standard pistol rounds penetrated with no problem. As the videos show, each generally has a nice little whole in the front, and various size exit holes in the back. The most definitive seems to be the .357 Magnum, but given it’s the most powerful (in terms of pounds of force at that range), it wasn’t really a surprise.

See the various pistol videos

12 gauge shotgun with buckshot and slug

While the 12 gauge has been an undisputed champ in our tests so far, this was the first metal object we’ve really tested. The slug again performed as expected and left no question about penetration. The entry hole was actually bigger in diameter than a 12 gauge shell, and we could easily still wiggle it around.

The buckshot on the other hand was rather interesting. Generally, we got a good amount of penetration on the front skin, with a rather wide pattern. Remember, we’re still shooting from 25 yards, and from what I’ve read (see my review of The Tactical Shotgun), buckshot has an effective range out to 20 yards. So we’re getting a lot of spread (as you can see the entire door took strikes but there isn’t any area that’s easy to see as the focus). The back skin was heavily dented, but suffered only one or two penetrations. As stated in many a place, the effective use of the shotgun is heavily dependent on the round choice matching the situation.

.223 and .308

While widely different in size and power, for our purposes we’ll group the .223 Remington and .308 Winchester for this write-up. Again, both were fired from 25 yards. Neither round really slowed down on hitting the first skin. From the exit video on the .223, it’s apparent that the round started to tumble after hitting the first skin. That’s fairly interesting, in that none of the other rounds we shot that day exhibited that same behavior.

The .308 didn’t slow down on hitting the back skin and the shot is pretty much what you’d expect from that round at that range.

I’d say the tests proved worthwhile. Some things went as expected (.308) while others we’re a bit more interesting (.22 and buckshot). Of course, the complete set of videos is located over on www.stoppingpower.info.