Howdy,

Does anyone have a good method for testing expansion and penetration of a bullet?

I would be interested im any methods you have used before.

I have heard of wet phone books, buckets of water, cow skulls, etc....

I have a 7mm round, 168 gr boattail hollow point @ 2950 fps that I would like to test. I have always used 175 gr softpoints, but like how the 168 bt hp shoots. I am worried about expansion and penetration.

BTW. I know this round goes clean through an elk head at 50 yards and make about a 2" exit wound, and goes clean through three 2x6 and railroad tie at 100yrds with little to no expansion.

Thanks Tim

In this month's "Handloader," Barsness talks about using two 12"x18" cardboard boxes filled with 3 grocery bags containing 6" of dry newspaper in each bag.

@50yds, he says normal bullets usually get wedged in the second bag and high end penetrators can go thru the whole box (reason for box #2). He says wet newsprint is too easy on the bullets and they all come out perfect mushrooms. The dry apparently takes apart weak bullets. You get 4-6 shots at each box.

Seems to be good for relative pen testing. I'm kinda surprised that the cup-and-core bullets only make it through the first bag -- 6" and partitions only 18". Let us know how it comes out if you try it.

Seyfried has previously recommended the wet newsprint, with a big chunk of bone near the front. Sounds like a pretty reasonable setup to me, and cheap enough. Plus you can move the bone around to find out what will happen on different shot angles.