Month: March 2019

RFI: A Different Testing Medium

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

My RFI is for someone in the north Texas / southern Oklahoma area who can weld heavy steel.  Anyone out there interested in doing a long-term project with me?

Here’s my line of thinking.  When a bullet strikes a soft target, you’ll get penetration to varying degrees (as we’ve been seeing here, for example).  That kind of measurement and analysis is made  possible with the use of ballistic gel.

I want to measure something a little different:  kinetic energy.  I know that ammo manufacturers usually supply this information in ft/lbs for their products (at least, most of the centerfire rifle stuff does);  but I want to try it for myself.

Here’s what I want to do.  We’re all familiar with the tractor-pull thing, where trucks compete to see who can shift a specific weight the furthest (with a shifting weight which increases drag over distance).  I want to apply that same principle, only using a weighted sled running on rails.

The methodology would be to have a stout piece of steel, e.g. a 1-ft x 1-ft x 2″ thick steel square — the target (solid, to avoid any thought of penetration) — welded to a  weight with four wheels (like below) attached.

Ideally, the whole weighted/wheeled target would weigh about 100lbs.

Then I’d want to get two lengths of steel I-beam laid on their side, upon which the wheels would run, set on level ground.  (I don’t know how long the beams would have to be;  10′? 15′?  We’d have to see.  Or if we needed shorter channels for ease of use, remove the wheels and replace with skids instead.)

  

The we could shoot the 1′-square steel target, and see how far the bullet(s) pushed the sled along the rails.

This all came about when I was talking to someone about the wisdom / folly of hunting a Cape buffalo with a .45-70 Govt vs. the Usual Suspects (.375 H&H, .458 Win Mag etc), and the guy (a seasoned hunter) said that it was all very well to use a round which penetrates a buffalo, but if it went all the way through, it was wasted energy;  he’d prefer to dump all the energy into the animal, to “knock it on its ass”, as it were.  A buffalo’s hide / body is tough, all right:  but the old “needle vs. bowling ball” argument always rears its head.

My goal in this is not to test rifle ammo, but to test self-defense pistol  cartridges.  I believe that if you were to combine ballistic gel-penetration numbers with the sled’s momentum / ft.lbs data, you’d be able to add yet another dimension, and judge a cartridge better than simply relying on the Lucky Gunner formula of muzzle velocity / bullet expansion / gel penetration.

If someone (e.g an engineer) has experience doing this kind of thing and wants to scope / design the project, please let me know.  Right now, I’m just blue-skying the thing out of ignorance.

Or has this, or something similar, been done elsewhere and I just missed the party?

Your thoughts in Comments.

“Dear Dr. Kim”

Advice, Pussification Parade

Dear Dr. Kim:
I’m having trouble figuring out what it is to be a man in today’s world, what with all the talk about “oppressive patriarchy”, “toxic masculinity” and so on.  I’ve tried reading a few self-help books, but none of them seemed to help much — in fact, the suggestions they make seem to be designed to make me… well, less of a man and more like a woman.  Do you have any ideas? — Browbeaten, London

Dear Beaten:
Let’s just start by addressing a few core principles.

First:  men don’t buy books to improve themselves;  they buy books to improve their stuff.  So manuals about fixing  small-block Chevy engines, cleaning a Colt 1911 pistol, photography techniques or improving one’s golf swing — all these are about the only acceptable “self-help” books one should find in a man’s bookcase (right next to the novels of Ernest Hemingway, Wilbur Smith and John Masters, as well as to history books written by John Keegan, Paul Johnson and Victor Davis Hanson).

Second:  most “self-help” books of the kind you speak are written by women bent on “improving” men or else by their camp followers, girlymen psychologists and so on, all with the same objective (as you seem to have discovered):  making you behave more like a woman.  They (and their writers) are to be avoided at all costs.  The only modern-day exception to the above is the brilliant Jordan Peterson, whose “12 Rules For Life” are probably all you’ll ever need on the topic of yourself.

Third:  most self-help books you’ll read will dispense bullshit nostrums like, “Don’t get angry” or “Maintain a pleasant attitude.”  Let me tell you right now:  there’s nothing at all wrong with rage, provided that you don’t take that rage out on anyone who didn’t cause it.  Many great inventions came about because a man said, “Oh, for fuck’s  sake!” and after destroying his laboratory, felt better and then kept on trying.  Omaha Beach was not taken by GIs who maintained a “pleasant attitude”, but by a bunch of pissed-off men who were sick of being used for target practice by Nazis.  (And if you think that today’s feminized society is not using you and other men for target practice, you’re fooling yourself.)

Finally, let’s look at the heart of the problem.  Unless you are a serial killer or -rapist, or someone who works in HR, or someone who votes Democrat (some overlap), there probably isn’t much wrong with you.  I suspect from the whining tone of your voice that you’re one of the Millennial generation, and therefore probably didn’t have a full-time father when you were growing up.

That’s not your fault, of course, but it means that you’ll have to rely on the support of other men — what we used to call “good friends” in my day, and not “my crew” or “bros” — and it’s an old adage that much wisdom can be found in the counsel of friends.  (Also a lot of bullshit, but at least their advice will be based upon knowing something about you, as opposed to self-help writers who don’t.)  Just be aware that the advice you receive from this source will likely be short at best, or even monosyllabic.  “Dude, you need to quit after six shots of tequila”, or “That chick is fucking up your life”, or “Have another beer.”  I know, that all sounds like crap advice, but it’s no worse than the bullshit you’ll read after dropping twelve bucks on something called “How To Be A Better Man In Today’s World”.

All that said, you can take heart in this proven fact:  you are not alone.  After venting my own rage in an invective-drenched rant called The Pussification Of The Western Male, I was astonished by the number (literally thousands) of men who wrote to me and said, “I thought I was the only guy who thought like that.”  (Hundreds of others, whom I can only suspect were academics and similar such girlymen, were not  pleased by what I’d written, but even they were outnumbered by the women who wrote to me and, figuratively speaking, wanted to bear my children.)  Millions of men feel the same way that you do:  puzzled, bewildered, irritated, enraged and so on.  Seek them out, and find comfort in their company.

I know that by dispensing any advice on this topic I run the risk of sounding like someone who’s written a self-help book — I haven’t — but of course you may feel free to ignore anything I’ve said above.  Unless it enraged you, in which case… you’re welcome.

Killing Off Your Favorites

Business

This story got me thinking:

Ed Sheeran has got his neighbours choking on their chorizos – with plans to turn a much-loved Spanish restaurant into a music bar.
The star bought the Galicia tapas bar in London’s swish Portobello Road for £1.5million last year.
The 28-year-old, who lives nearby, reportedly wants to transform it into a live music venue with a ‘members’ club vibe’. But residents who described Galicia as ‘one of the last authentic Spanish restaurants in London’ spoke of their dismay yesterday at finding out its new owner is one of the world’s biggest pop stars.

There are all sorts of issues to be addressed here.

I think we’ve all asked the question, “What happened to that cool place where we used to go..?” (the typical answer being, of course, that if you’d gone there more often, the place wouldn’t have disappeared).  I have no idea whether the Galicia fell into this category, but I suspect it might have.  After all, Spanish food is pretty much an exotic cuisine in London, and people will not go there all that often (much as, say, Murkins don’t often visit Greek restaurants Over Here unless they’re of Greek origin or if they, like myself, love Greek food).  Clearly, the owners of the Galicia either wanted to sell the place for personal reasons or had to sell it because they weren’t making money off the place.

The second issue is that of course, if you buy a piece of property, you’re quite within your rights to change it (subject to the usual restraints, of course), and pop star Sheeran wants to create a private drinking club for himself and, probably, his buddies — which makes nonsense of this wail from a local:

‘If it turns into a members’ club where they charge £3,000-4,000 a month to join, nobody from around here will go.’

Hate to break it to you, you idiot, but you’re probably not welcome there anyway.  Sheeran doesn’t need the money from the subs:  it’s a means to keep the local riff-raff out, much as the restaurant in L.A. that used to sell $100 burgers and was frequented mostly by celebrities who welcomed the privacy those prices afforded them.

No, I can’t say I have too much sympathy for the complainers here.  If Galicia was indeed “one of the last authentic Spanish restaurants in London”, it doesn’t say much for the popularity of Spanish food there, does it?  (You only have to go to southern Spain, where Brits go to avoid the crappy London weather, to see the truth of this.  Almost all the restaurants and bars offer “Full English Breakfast!”, “Fish & Chips!” and “English Bitter Ale!” — Spanish food clearly doesn’t satisfy the visitors.)

The only thing that mystifies me about all this is how the reedy-voiced Sheeran managed to amass an £80-million fortune.

Excellent Ammo Test – 2

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Following on from my last post on the topic, let me turn to 9mm ammo, because I have little or no experience with the Europellet to speak of.

If I’m going to use lesser (than .45 ACP) ammo in my primary carry piece, I’m going to ask quite a lot of the ammo.  Specifically, I want substantial bullet expansion (to bring it up to .45 dimensions), and added velocity to punch the bullet home — therefore, using Lucky Gunner’s metrics, I want penetration greater than 16″, expansion greater than .5″, and velocity higher than 1,100 fps.

Casting my eye at LG’s 9x19mm test results, then, I see that two cartridges seem to be able to deliver said criteria:

1)

Man, this Federal stuff looks like just what I’m looking for:  deep penetration,  consistent expansion, and excellent velocity.

2)

The XTP lags just behind the Federal HST in terms of velocity, but it’s not bad at all, and almost as consistent in terms of expansion (albeit less than .5″).

For the record, here are the results for the load I’m currently carrying in the Browning High Power:

Not bad at all, although the greater expansion of the bullet on the extreme right is the one which dragged the penetration average down.  I like the ammo, though:  it’s wonderfully accurate in my elderly hands and still-more elderly gun.

However, there does seem to be a ringer in the 9mm ammo tested, and it’s this one:

Okay, the Speer looks outstanding — I’ve always been a fan of the Gold Dot, in other calibers — and the lighter boolet (115gr vs the others’  124gr) likely means less recoil.  The only negative to the lighter bullet weight is the penetration — barely breaking the 16″ criterion — but I’m adding it to the list nevertheless because as with the SIG load, one bullet over-expanded to bring the average penetration down.

Feel free to peruse the test results for your own conclusions.  Note, by the way, that several loads achieve much higher penetration than any of the above, but I think one can have too much  of that — think “innocent bystanders” and you’ll get my drift.

Have at it.  Are we having fun yet?