Wet sand or dry sand for catching bullets?

[GBExpat]

Plan is to put sand in the bigger bucket and fire from above . Should I wet the sand or just keep it dry ?

Leave it dry. Put a top on the bucket and shoot thru the top to keep the sand from blasting out.

I have a couple of 5gal bucket w/dry sand & tops at the house for "safety" aiming points whenever I have to load the chamber on one of my bottom feeders.

 

[CDW4ME]

Not that it will be applicable for you most likely, I worked in a food manufacturing facility for many years and the primary product was pasta, the dough would come out on an extruder belt about a foot wide and ¼" thick onto a roller (think about a roll of toilet paper except very heavy, dense dough) and alot of times entire 30lb+ rolls would be destined to be discarded and sometimes I would take them home and do some non scientific testing with JHP's. It was easy to recover the projectiles because all I'd have to do is unravel a few layers of dough and I could shoot it many times before it became unusable.

It was alot of fun actually.

View attachment 1163420
L to R: Winchester White Box 147gr JHP, Winchester PDX1 147gr, Federal Hydra-Shok 147gr, Federal HST 124gr, Hornady Critical Duty 135gr +P. All 9mm above.

I liked the HST's and Critical Duty the best, the Critical Duty never failed to expand and was the most consistent, all expanded CD's looked identical and penetrated further than all the others. I had many more pictures I can't locate, but I tested Gold Dots, Golden Sabers, 9BPLE +P+, Hornady Tap, Hornady XTP, Winchester Ranger T's and a few others.... I also did some .38spl and .380acp JHP's in short barreled guns and that test inspired me to discontinued the use of all JHP's in those guns. Very very poor penetration and expansion.......

Given the prevalence of obesity in the USA, dough testing might have merit.

 

[tark]

IIRC from the US Army fortifications manual wet sand is more efficient stopping bullets. That's most likely due to the fact its denser.

Dry sand is better. One does not fill sandbags with wet sand. I have experimented with both. A bag filled with dry sand stopped a hardball round from my AK. (7.62X39 ) zipped right through a bag of wet sand.

 

[GRIZ22]

Dry sand is better. One does not fill sandbags with wet sand. I have experimented with both. A bag filled with dry sand stopped a hardball round from my AK. (7.62X39 ) zipped right through a bag of wet sand.

I know you don't usually fill sandbags with wet sand. Sandbags in the open do get rained on.

 

[dekibg]

OP here, just came back from the range using “dry sand in the bucket method”.
Note: all bullets were fired from the same handgun - 6.5 inch barrel revolver that also has second cylinder in 9mm
Seems that only cartridges that reliably expanded were 2 of 357 magnums.
My biggest disappointment is that 38 special Plus hollow point ( Federal) and one 9mm hollow point that clearly did not open at all.
I shot those two last month into lined up water jugs as well, and they did not expand back then either. So it is not just that sand is not the right medium for expanding fired bullets. They should have enough velocity after leaving 6.5 inch barrel.
Out of 38’s , I would probably go with that hard cast one all the way on the left. That is the reload I bought at gun show.
Btw, why they always smoke a lot ?!?! That is the second lead hard cast batch ( different vendor) that produces a LOT of smoke

 

[Hooda Thunkit]

The smoke is from the lube, usually. Some from the powder, but mostly the lube.

As regards the bullets that didn't expand: most 38 revolver will not get the velocity needed to open hollow points, especially "hard cast" (whatever that means to the caster).
I would recommend using penetration and a flat nose to get the results you want

I don't load 9mm cast fast enough to expand. I'm usually shooting holes in paper, sometimes whacking steel. Neither if those take much to kill.

If you want expansion, choose some soft lead wadcutters in your 38, running maybe 750fps. They will expand.

 

[CDW4ME]

So it is not just that sand is not the right medium for expanding fired bullets.
Out of 38’s , I would probably go with that hard cast one all the way on the left. That is the reload I bought at gun show.

Performance in sand does not correlate to performance in gel or tissue.

4 layer denim in front of water would likely yield a expansion result similar to what would be obtained in gel and have some relevance to expansion in tissue.
Most HP bullets I shot into denim covered jugs that expanded were recovered in the 3rd jug; Golden Sabers if they shed the jacket did so in the 3rd jug, I found that informative.
Here are 9mm and 45 HST bullets I shot through denim into water filled jugs:


If by "go with" you mean carry non-expanding gun show reloads, I offer the following for your consideration; there are 38 loads that are likely to expand (don't know what they do in sand):
https://www.luckygunner.com/labs/revolver-ballistics-test/

 

[J-Bar]

Not trying to hijack the topic, but the question seems to have been answered. So while all you folks are still hanging around... I once heard it said that undamaged bullets could be recovered from a block of ice. The explanation was that the pressure of the bullet converted the surrounding ice to water so it was like shooting into a water tank. It sounded far fetched to me and I never had any reason to test it...seemed to be like shooting at a rock. But if any of you have shot at ice, what happened?

 

[Jim Watson]

I shot into ice ONCE. The bullets were not deformed, but they were VERY hard cast.

I once read a proposal that military weapons, up through 30mm A10, be shot into a bin of ice chips instead of the sand normally used. The rationale was that the ice would melt and the water could be filtered to remove lead and DU, unlike sand which generated hazardous dry waste. It wasn't adopted that I know of.

 

[luzyfuerza]

I once heard it said that undamaged bullets could be recovered from a block of ice. The explanation was that the pressure of the bullet converted the surrounding ice to water so it was like shooting into a water tank. It sounded far fetched to me and I never had any reason to test it...seemed to be like shooting at a rock. But if any of you have shot at ice, what happened?

My kids' first targets were plastic milk jugs filled with water and frozen. They loved recovering multiple .22 lr bullets from the (mostly intact) ice. Some bullets were slightly deformed, many were not.

Same for pistol bullets of various calibers and bullet types. The only correlation I could see was that higher velocity rounds tended to break up the ice more. We pulled a lot of pistol bullets out of frozen milk jugs.

Big game hunting rounds from .308 winchester and up zip right through frozen milk jugs leaving just a pile of shattered ice. I can't remember ever recovering one of these bullets.

I never tried a .223/5.56 on ice. But maybe I should. My guess is that a high velocity, lightweight bullet will fragment and will not exit the ice intact. But it will probably only take one shot to break up a gallon of ice into lots of small pieces.

 

[luzyfuerza]

Back to the OP's original question, since yellow pages are no more, I'd suggest using books and magazines your local library is getting rid of, rather than sand.

 

[lysanderxiii]

What is a "phone book"?