Bullet recovery

A friend uses a 55 gallon drum full of water and shoots straight down into the drum and handgun bullets stop before they hit the bottom. IMO it's safer than shooting into a pool.

"...could shoot at an angle..." Re-think that idea. Water can cause riccochets. Won't necessarily cause expansion either.
Those two idiots on Mythbusters used a pool. You'd get arrested. Use ArchAngelCD's drum.

Something I've played with is soaked newspaper. Take a cardboard box the size of a folded newspaper and 18" long, line with a trash bag, insert a solid 18" of paper, and fill. You'll need to let it soak overnight, refilling a few times, to make sure the paper's actually soaked; dry newspaper is very tough. Once it's soaked, shoot into the end of it. I've made a couple beautiful Hornady 45 XTP ornaments this way.

All the usual precautions apply, including cognizance of the fact that bullets don't necessarily travel straight. . .

Regarding the pool, ask your neighbor what the liner costs and then decide if you want to buy him a new one.

I have used a drum of water. A smaller one, like a half barrel. It worked very well, except I got a little wet. Bullets expand to their full potential in just a foot or two of water. Probably not the most realistic test for real world results, but it is still very interesting.

I even tried the denim test with two layers floating on top. One of my bullets managed to plug and it did exit the bottom of the drum. A little duct tape got me through the rest of my experiments though.

I see a lot of people line up four or five milk jugs on YouTube. The expanded bullet is usually captured in one of them. But they do seem to out the side sometimes too.


XTP left, pdx1 right:

If you shoot someone's pool...make sure you are not using a cast bullet, or you will be replacing a liner.

As cz9shooter stated, shooting bullets into water probably isn't a very accurate/reliable indicator of expansion in a bony fleshy target but is a pretty good way to see what your bullets are capable of. I personally wouldn't risk shooting into a pool unless it was 7+ feet deep. rubbermaid tubs and 5 gallon buckets with lids can typically be found free if you keep an eye on your neighbors trash.

Pictured is a 230gr xtp .45 acp with 5.2gr HP-38 and a 645gr .500 mag cast hollow point with 24.5gr W296. The 500 mag made it's way through 24" of water(large rubbermaid tub) and about 12" into the compacted dirt berm behind it. Both bullets had 99.5% weight retention!

A 22lr solid will ding the bottom of a full 55 gallon drum, probably 36 inches of water or so. A hard cast 357 will about quarter empty the drum, leave a big welt in the steel bottom, and pretty well soak the guy on the shed roof shooting down (that would be me...). As someone else mentioned, it may well damage the pool at 4 feet.

bullseye308 said:

... If not I was also thinking of a capped piece of 4-5" pvc pipe. ...

Click to expand...

That would almost certainly result in a shattered pipe and you trying to figure out where the heck that @$#&% bullet went.

sugarmaker said:

A hard cast 357 will about quarter empty the drum, leave a big welt in the steel bottom, and pretty well soak the guy on the shed roof shooting down (that would be me...). As someone else mentioned, it may well damage the pool at 4 feet.

Click to expand...

That's great. I had a similar experience as a 14 yo. I wanted to capture a 22 WMR bullet. . .

That little pill ejected 10-ish gallons of water at me, collapsed the top of the thin-wall pipe (inward!), and made a neat 0.22" hole out the bottom of the pipe under 3' of water. Dad laughed his head off. . .

I have fired bullets into my pool, they don't look a lot different than they did except for the ride down the bore.



News paper and telephone books has made for some pretty impressive expansion in the past.

Years ago I used to shoot my 45acp into tires then dig out the bullets or a bowling pin.

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I've spent a few afternoons blasting a 55 gallon water barrel...



Sierra 220SP 2100~2200fps, 150TSX 1850fps-2150fps-2650fps, 110TSX 2400fps-2100fps


110TSX 2400 - 2100 - 1800


55gr FMJ



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Nosler 125BT - 2250fps






168 Matchking

I filled buckets with water saturated newspaper and the bullets all stopped less than half way through.

Pvc pipe explodes....dun it....if u wanna try, use galv and make your tube long or get soaked, cause that Waters comin back out.
Soft dirt works for.getting bullets back but not a good test medium.
Wet newspapers or phone books have been good qt stopping bullets also, no idea how they compare to tissue.
Water can cause.more.substantial expansion than tissue, or so ive read.

David Petzal used what he called "the Ballistic Buffalo" for approximating the terminal effects on big game. It's basically rubber, wet newspaper and plywood and you could make your own in short order.

Make your own ballistic buffalo!

I've used a 5 gallon bucket of sand and a magnet pretty decently, only once did we get a complete pass through....338 wm 180 gmx, 50 yds, but to be fair, my brother shot a bit higher than the sand line. (We'd been shooting for awhile and there were plenty of places the sand was draining out of at impact) we still recovered multiple 243s of various makes and several of the big gmxs and ssts

One of the most practical bullet recovery mediums I've tested is Bullet Test tube. It's is a waxy substance that very accurately reproduces bullet impact in flesh. And is much easier to transport and than ballistic gel. It can be set up at different ranges, which is important as bullets expand differently at different velocities. And can be remelted and reused, making it inexpensive to use.

I've used soaked newsprint and 1 gal jugs of water. But, IMO, the only thing this tells me is how my bullets perform in water filled jugs and wet newsprint. It is fun though and I can compare different bullets, but it really don't tell me much on how the bullets will act in flesh/bones...

For those who think shooting into a pool is going to cause damage, I'd say it's very unlikely. Even rifle rounds will be greatly slowed to a near stop in 4 ft.

I wouldn't hesitate to shoot into my pool if I lived in the country, but I live in the suburbs so that's a no go.

I use jugs of water lined up. It's helpful to measure penetration. And expansion for comparison purposes.

Check out this video of a rifle being fired in a pool pointed at a guy in the pool: https://youtu.be/jtD2vvgBBCI

Jes a quick thought; I remember reports of US D-Day where soldiers were getting hit and wounded 6 feet under the water...

Go look up web sites where they tell you how to make ballistic gel at home.

Stupid as it sounds, it works! You buy bulk Knox gelatin and make it thick.
We tried it, and it's a bit messy if weather is hot & humid, but it works!
Make a couple gallons of it and pour into any kind of rectangular mold
about the size of ballistic gel blocks you see on You Tube.

Bulk gelatin is found online but you pay for shipping. See if a
restaurant supply or one of those wholesale warehouses have it locally.

The Mythbusters really messed up the 'how far will a bullet travel in water' experiments by using only lead-cored modern bullets in the pool. Hitting water at an angle at point blank range will bend and break just about any cup and core bullet which is what caused them to declare that you are safe in 3' of water.

Wish they'd have tried some steel cored or AP bullets. They actually claimed to be using AP in the 50 BMG testing but were just Barrett FMJ's with a soft lead core. I've fired AP and regular steel cored 50's into a creek and was able to hit golf balls through about 12' of water hard enough to damage them....so at 3' you'd be in big trouble.

The Saving Private Ryan opening scene has gotten a lot of attention by the 'debunkers' saying that it's not possible for bullets to zip through the water like they showed. Funny thing...MANY vets who were THERE claimed this was what happened. What the 'debunkers' aren't thinkig about is the Germans were firing from quite a distance...couple hundred to several hundred yards and a declining angle with steel cored bullets. The velocity would have been decayed a bit by the time they impacted and for sure the bullets wouldn't come apart when they touched the water like the Mythbusters encountered.

Oh...and if you want to try to recover a Mini-ball from a Civil War rifle...don't try it in water. Those suckers will plow through a bunch with lots of poke still left by the time they hit the bottom or other side. Didn't the Mythbusters hole their test tank with one early on in the tests? Or was it a shotgun slug? Can't remember ...but someone did that very thing where modern rifle rounds never got close to hitting the bottom. Interesting stuff!

Years ago a good friend of mine told me he went to Salvation Army and used book stores, and bought thick, 2 1/2" plus books cheap. hen he'd take them home and shoot at them from a standard CCW distance. On a range that he verified was safe for it of course. I tried it and it showed good expansion and penetrated about halfway +or- through. My books were old computer c+ books, about 2 1/2 to 3" thick. Don't have any pics any more.
I don't know how well it compared to tissue, but it worked pretty well for penetration and expansion.