Thread: Richochet!!

Originally Posted by timattalon

Speed in the quoted post is 900 Metres per second unless he made a typo. That is 2900fps or thereabouts....

No typo. I had (but currently cannot find ....??) a very detailed report from trials done in the USA on AR500 plate damage done with various caliber and projectile design.
The conclusion was that the caliber and bullet design had little to do with the level of plate damage, it was all about speed. They discovered that a .223 with a 50gr PSP projectile traveling at over 3,200fps was more damaging to the surface of the target than the likes of a 140gr .308 doing 2,700fps. The most damage from what they tested on the day was a .22-250 with 50gr doing 3,700's fps.
Only exception to this was larger caliber, heavy round nose projectiles that dented the plate rather than cratered it as the high speed projectiles did.

So, rule of thumb, don't let anyone shoot at your AR500 plate with anything with a MV above 3,000fps (900m/s round figures).

When shooting pure lead projectiles at 1000 + FPS , nobody uses metres? Suppose dressmakers among us would use CMs?
Splatter of the projectiles sometimes sees small fragments of lead slowly coming back, you can watch them. They usually do not get back 50 metres unles in a high convolute. Heavy plates do not swing and are hard to see the hit on for old broken buggers like use, they don't seem to ring like with jacketed projectiles.

Originally Posted by zimmer

Now this has appeared Fish and Game manager defends report saying shot can ricochet off ducks | Stuff.co.nz

So it wasn't me missing all those ducks then, it was the shot ricocheting.
I knew I wasn't that bad of a shot.