Filed under: Ballistics, Gardening, General Musings, Guns, Health, Patagonia, Predictions, Publishing, Richard Matheson, Science Fiction, Sleep, Travel, Writing stuff
You may have noticed that some of my posts have gotten a little longer over time, at least in the last couple of months. I haven’t been doing word counts or anything, but that is my sense of it, looking back over the archives. This is because I am emerging from the exhaustion of caring for Martha Sr, slowly but surely.
And as this progresses, it is interesting to see how certain aspects of my life are starting to come back to me. My wife and I have started to resume something that can be called a social life, getting together with friends for lunch or dinner, having people over. I finally got that book review of the Matheson Companion done – that had been hanging over my head for a while. I’m putting together the stuff for the ballistics testing, and figure that we’ll have the website for that up next month some time. I got my garden in, and am harvesting strawberries. This is good.
And I’m starting to get a creative itch again. No, not the low-level sort of creativity that goes with this blog and my conservation work. I’m thinking about the next novel. I’ll probably toss out what I have written of St. Cybi’s Well, and just start fresh – those first couple of chapters were so long ago that I barely remember what I intended to do with them. It takes (me, anyway) a lot of mental energy to juggle all the various threads in a decent novel, and I’m not ready just yet to tackle that. But I am thinking about it, and that is a very good sign.
And I have another idea for something completely and totally unrelated, which would also be a lot of fun. But I have to wait to get a new computer system for that – this old thing just doesn’t have the capabilities which would be required. I would also need to learn some new software programs. From these facts you can guess that this idea would have something to do with the ‘net, and you would be right, but that’s all I’ll say for now.
Oh, yeah, and I need to learn survival Spanish sometime before going to Patagonia in October.
It’s nice to feel this way again.
Jim Downey
Well, as I mentioned in this post, after we did the schedule of ballistic tests using the custom Thompson/Center Encore pistol and had all the “ideal” data relating to barrel length versus bullet speed for a wide variety of ammo and calibers, we still wanted to use the same ammo in a number of “real world” guns – actual handguns from our various collections. That would give us some head-to-head comparisons to see how they would compare to the “ideal” performance.
Well, yesterday Steve and I had a chance to get out and do this additional testing. Here’s a message I sent to our third partner in the previous tests:
Thought I would drop you a note, let you know that Steve and I (with another friend tagging along) went out and shot all the “real world” pistols today, using the full run of ammo available. Lots of good data points on those. About 6 hours, plus a bit for cleaning up. I will get copies of the data sheets sent off to you in a day or two.
Mostly, it went smoothly. The little Berettas in .25 and .32 were a right pain to shoot, and problematic in getting data (we did, but we really had to work for it). The .380 Walther was OK, the .327 Ruger rough, the big .45 Colt and .44 Mag more pleasant than either of us expected. We also supplemented with Steyrs in .357 Sig and in .40 S&W, along with the .357 Python, big .357 S&W, .38 Diamondback, .38 S&W 642, and Para Ord .45. We shot the .357 revolvers with both .38 special and .357 magnums, to have those data points.
Vanes were hit, bullets bounced off the armour plate in front. Sunburns were earned. But we got all the data, done done done. I’ll probably write something up for my blog in the morning, as documentation. I also took pix today, to go along with the pix from the previous tests.
I heard back from Jim, who said that he knew a number of people were eagerly waiting for the data, and that one fellow in particular who has done a lot of ballistics testing of his own using ballistic gelatin was really looking forward to the comparisons between the “ideal” data and the “real-world” data. John, he said, expected some real differences but was curious just how much there would be. My response:
Well, tell him that his expectations will need to be changed. Here’s some quick head-to-head comparisons:
- .45 ACP (5″) – almost no difference, advantage to the Para Ord!
- .40 S&W (4″) – marginal difference (less than 50 fps), advantage to the Thompson over Steyr M40
- .357 mag (6″) – Significant difference, advantage to the Thompson over .357 S&W (by about 200 fps), more over Python (another 100 fps)
- .38 sp (6″) – A little difference, advantage to the Thompson over .357 S&W, more over Python (about 100 fps across the board!)
- .38 sp (4″) – Almost no difference, advantage Thompson over Diamondback.
- .38 sp (2″) – Significant difference, advantage to S&W 642 – between 100 and 200 fps!
- .357 Sig (4″) – almost no difference, advantage to the Thompson over Steyr M357.
I don’t know the barrel length for the rest of your guns, so can’t really say. Interesting, but not too surprising, that the semi-autos seem to be closer to the Thompson “ideal” than do the revolvers, except with the 642. Really odd, that. Oh, wait . . . that could be the difference between the measurement including the chamber and not. We’ll have to be very careful to note that in the data display, with information about the comparisons. Hmm. That would make the revolvers look even worse, since you would effectively be comparing them to a ‘longer’ barrel in the Thompson . . . say between a 3″ and 4″. OK, checking that, the data makes more sense, The 642 falls right there between those, so is fairly comparable, or a little on the underside. Clear advantage to the semi-autos for power, head-to-head barrel length, then, though with a revolver you get “extra” barrel.
Interesting!
And of course, there are variations between ammos, with some up and some down more than noted. Once the data is plotted, be interesting to see what the curve comparisons look like.
So, yeah, very interesting! I do look forward to getting everything entered into the spreadsheet programs and plotted, so that the relationships between one and another are easier to visualize. But now the testing itself really is done!
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Guns, Health, Hospice, Sleep
Sorry I haven’t posted much the last couple of days. Honestly, I am in a funk – the sort of deep-seated inertia which comes after completing a protracted project. On one level, it is just the downturn from the ballistics testing. But more, it is the still lingering exhaustion from care-giving.
Which is not surprising. You can’t expect to recover from years of poor sleep and intensely caring for someone else 24 hours a day in just a few weeks. Particularly not when we’re still very much dealing with resolution of the estate (strangers are here right now going through things, giving us estimates on the value of some items) and trying to play catch up on professional and personal obligations. We collapsed immediately following the memorial service for Martha Sr, but then tried to pretend that we were recovered, to get on with the life which had been put on hold for so long.
But now it feels like it is catching up with me again. Like how a battery can get a ‘surface charge’ quickly, but also wears out again quickly. I need a prolonged period of recovery and recuperation. That, however, is not likely to happen. There are books to repair, bills to pay, years worth of things to catch up on.
So, forgive the slight break. I’m not burned out – I still have a lot to say, to do, to write about here. I’m just tired.
Jim Downey
One of the major things we still need to do for our ballistics project is to come up with a name for the website/url where all the information and data will be hosted. It is something we (me, Jim K and Steve) really should have discussed over the course of the long weekend just past, but honestly we were always just too worn out at the end of a long day of testing to be very creative. And trying to think about it myself right now is problematic, because I am trying to fight a migraine at the same time and only have enough focus for one thing or the other (and sorry, but getting rid of the migraine takes precedence).
So I thought I would throw out the idea here, see if any of my occasional readers would have any thoughts to contribute. Ideally, the site name/url will be short, easy to remember/type, convey exactly what the project is all about, and available to reserve as a domain.
Here is a list of some of the names we have kicked around previously, to give you some idea where we’re going with this:
- ammobytheinch.com (et cetera = .etc)
- ballisticsbytheinch.etc
- handgunballistics.etc
- pistolballistics.etc
- handgunammovsbarreldata.etc
- pistolammovsbarreldata.etc
- pistoldata-barrelandammoeffects.etc
- pistol-barrelvsammodata.etc
- muzzlemeasure.etc
- muzzlevelocity.etc
- muzzledata.etc
- barrelvelocity.etc
We’d probably prefer to do a .org for the primary domain, if one is available in the name we want, but also buy up the .com and other common variants and have them redirect. So, that is a consideration. Of the ones listed above, I like the simpler and shorter ones.
Thoughts?
Jim Downey
The ballistics testing is finished. Well, sort of. As I mentioned yesterday, the primary goal was to get through the barrel-chopping tests, get all the data from that, and to worry about the ‘real world’ guns sometime later. And we accomplished that. Early on, as we were cruising along, it looked like we might wrap up really early, perhaps mid-day.
Of course, it couldn’t possibly work out that way.
Just as we were down into the 3″ barrel lengths, disaster struck: the mounting rail for the laser busted loose. And not just a little bit – the mounting screws stripped out, and there was no way to fix it short of machining in new threads on the receiver. That’s not the sort of thing you can do out in the field.
Remember I said this, yesterday:
We have four more ‘flights’ of ammo to test today (we did six yesterday), going from barrel lengths of 5″ down to 2″. When we get to the point where the length of the barrel is less the the housing of the receiver (the pistol), things get tricky, but the aiming laser will help a lot.
Um, oops.
And of course, the thing didn’t fail all at once. We got to go through that wonderful process of noticing the impending disaster and trying to cope with it, using this or that strategy, each attempt sorta working for a little while before failing. That took about two hours. And just when we thought we had it secured, a shot with one of the powerful calibers (I think it was a .45 Colt) sent the thing flying in recoil.
Steve, who probably has the most experience as a shooter of any of us, figured that he might as well see if he could shoot the pistol, sans laser. And sans any other sort of sight. Even without the benefit of a barrel, since once we got to that point, the short little bits of barrel were *down inside* the housing of the Thompson/Center Encore pistol (look down to ‘Number 1842’ to get an idea of what just the housing looks like – it’s the part without a barrel or anything attached, off on the left side).
This, needless to say, was going to be a difficult accomplishment, for just a few shots. Doing it for a couple hundred data points (shots were only considered “good” if we got comparable readings from both chronographs), using always-changing types of ammo and different calibers, almost impossible.
But Steve did it. We decided that his secret ‘super power’ is the ability to shoot amazingly well in really dumb situations.
So, we got it done. Got all the data we considered critical for the project. Packed up the stuff we didn’t want stolen, and what needed to go back to Iowa with Jim K, came home. I’ll get the rest of the set up (tent, tables, et cetera) today. And Steve and I will go out sometime in the next week or so and do the ‘real world’ testing, using guns on the market with the same ammo as for the test, which will give us some benchmark comparisons to relate to the ‘ideal’ data.
Big project. The better part of $7,000 worth of ammo, and $5,000 for the custom barrels. Add in another three or four thousand for incidental stuff (lasers, chronographs, generator, chop saw, and so forth). Maybe 250 man-hours of labor for the actual testing component. And we’re still a long ways from being done. We still need to do all the data entry, design a website, write everything up so that all the information – warts, glitches, and errors – is available freely to anyone who is interested in seeing hard data about what the correlation is between barrel length and ammo performance. I’m guessing we still have several weeks before we can say that it is done.
But one hell of a big part of it is accomplished. And that feels really good.
Jim Downey
This is going to be fairly brief – I still have a lot to do this morning and only about an hour to do it.
You know how you feel when you first start a new job, with the uncertainty and intense learning curve? OK, keep that in mind. Now, you know how you feel after a good workout, doing exercise or a bunch of yardwork? Add that in. How about that great feeling of accomplishment, yet exhaustion that comes with finishing a big and difficult project? Add that, too. And lastly, if you are an intensely introverted person, used to being alone about 85% of the time, but switch around to being with people constantly for a week? (Extroverts, I think you’d get a similar feeling by being stranded on a desert island for a week, with no human contact to recharge you.) That’s how I feel. All of it together.
In other words: “Damn, I’m beat.”
The ballistics testing project continues to go very, very well. With a little luck we should wrap it up today. We’ve had a variety of minor glitches, each of which has required some good ol’ Yankee Ingenuity to resolve, but nothing major. The new ‘armour’ protecting the replacement chronographs works – yes, one of us managed to bounce a round right off the top of it (likely would have missed the chronos, but still . . .). The new chronos themselves are a great improvement over what we had been using. The laser has had some problems – good thing we ordered in overnight three additional ones on Thursday, as back-ups. And now that we’ve gotten down to the ‘good parts’ (barrel lengths typical for most defensive handguns), we’re both really excited and really getting pummeled by the effects of the blast of repeated discharges in close quarters.
But we’re coping. Using the box for the portable generator, combined with additional layers of cardboard, we’ve created a ‘blast shield’ to mitigate the worst of the shock wave. All the recording process has gotten smoothed out by experience. The chopping of the barrels continues to be simple. It’s going really, really well. We have four more ‘flights’ of ammo to test today (we did six yesterday), going from barrel lengths of 5″ down to 2″. When we get to the point where the length of the barrel is less the the housing of the receiver (the pistol), things get tricky, but the aiming laser will help a lot. Whether we get to doing tests of ‘real world’ guns with the same ammo today is not too critical, since we can do those on another day with a whole lot less equipment (no need for the chop saw, generator, et cetera). So we should finish the main part of the test today, follow up with the rest later.
Well, gotta run.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Guns, Humor, movies, RKBA, Science, tech, Weather
Ever see what happens to modern electronics when you shoot them with large caliber handguns?
Wait . . . I’m getting ahead of myself.
* * * * * * *
As noted previously, I’ve been busy the last few days getting things ready to start the next round of ballistics testing. Round one was about three weeks ago, and in addition to getting a lot of good data about three of the 13 calibers we’re doing the research on, we also learned a great deal about the testing platform and procedures. Because of that amount of learning, when the three of us got together this week before setting everything up on Wednesday, we decided that we would go ahead and push this weekend to do all the remaining testing.
As a friend said in an email Wednesday night: “Whoa.”
Yeah, because that is 10 more calibers (eight barrels, since the .38 special and .357 magnum bullets use one barrel, and so does the .44 special and .44 magnum). And over 5,000 rounds of ammo.
We’re fortunate in that all three of us (me, Jim K and Steve) are all in situations where we can set aside our work demands for a time and devote our attention to doing this. And in looking at the remaining barrel/ammo combinations, it was clear that there would be some efficiency in doing things all at once – a number of the somewhat more unusual calibers have only two or three types of ammo, meaning that we’d be spending more time swapping out the barrels and chopping them than actually shooting and recording data. So there would be a benefit in getting all those calibers done, then move on to the several calibers where we had a lot of different ammo to test while the other barrels were chopped and prepped (de-burring and modest recrowning to get good consistent results).
And that’s what we did yesterday – dove in head first, in spite of very uncooperative weather (lots of rain and temps in the 40s). Our set-up keeps us out of the wet (we’re using a fair-sized cabin tent for our work area, with the chronographs outside under a protective tarp) but the damp chill still takes a lot of energy out of you. The changes we made to the shooting platform – the addition of an inexpensive target laser – meant that you essentially didn’t need to take the time to aim the thing (once we had it zeroed in), all you had to do was control it with the more powerful calibers.
And before we stopped early in the day, we had gotten to the same point with these remaining 10 calibers as we got on the first day of the previous round of testing with just three calibers.
Now, why did we stop early, if things were going so well?
Wasn’t due to the weather. Not unless you consider a .45 caliber bullet as rain.
What happened was this: one of us (who shall for now remain nameless, until I can spend more time to write up the saga appropriately) was in the middle of shooting the second most powerful of the calibers we’re testing, and didn’t manage to control the gun completely when he fired the round. And it went right through both chronographs. Perfectly.
We use two chronographs, lined up one in front of the other, to be sure we’re getting good data. He hit the first one right dead center, a little high from the middle. Like a perfect shot in a movie, hitting the bad guy right between the eyes. The large bullet punched through the display, destroyed the electronics, and shattered the back of the chrono – then entered the front sensor of the second chrono, exiting out the bottom rear sensor as well.
It was spectacular. A perfect shot. I have pix I’ll be posting later.
But it meant we were done for the day. No chronographs, no way to measure the velocity of the bullets.
But such things are available here, and we’ll pick up a couple more units this morning. And we’ll be getting the kind which have a remote readout – meaning that it’s just the sensors in the line of fire, the electronics on our shooting bench. Meaning that we can place some protective armor plates in front of the sensors to prevent this from happening again.
Meaning that we’ll just have to find a new and improved way of screwing up. 🙂
More when I get the chance.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Guns, Humor, NPR, Podcast, RKBA, Science Fiction, Society, Titan, Writing stuff
. . . in 2052 Darnell Sidwell finds the alien artifact on Titan.
Yup, the clues in the text are clear – the artifact is first discovered on April Fools Day, though that is never explicitly stated.
Why did I do this? For my own amusement, mostly. I appreciate a good April Fools joke – one that plays on someone’s expectations and gullibility, one like you’ll frequently catch on NPR that just might be possible. Given the way the discovery plays out in the story, I thought it a good place to start.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Couple of brief notes: downloads of the text of Communion of Dreams are now over 8,300, and almost 100 people have downloaded the first chapter of the mp3 files (with all the different sections of chapters in those files, and no comprehensive download file to track easily, I’m mostly going to keep tally on the first chapter for simplicity.)
We’ll be starting the next round of ballistics testing tomorrow, so my posting schedule might be kind of erratic through the weekend.
Watch out for April Fools!
Jim Downey
Well, in spite of my optimism in my last post, it took us three full days to get through the first set of ammo/caliber tests, about one-third of the total we’re doing for this extensive research project.
Why? Well, we kept running into a number of minor problems which would slow us down as we thought through how to resolve them. Most of these pertained to difficulties with the base platform on which the whole tests are being conducted: a Thompson/Center Encore pistol. Don’t get me wrong – the gun is great, and the custom gunsmithing we had done on it to make it more suitable for our testing was fine. For the most part. But with any new gun, it takes a little while to get used to it, to learn what quirks and special needs it has. And in this case, the interchangeable custom 18″ barrels also complicated things, once they started getting chopped short. (For a basic description of the project, check here.) There were two main problems which cropped up: difficulty in managing a gun in which the (very) short barrel is essentially hidden by a shroud; and aiming such a beast.
The original design had no sights whatsoever on it – well, when you are aiming an 18″ barrel down the range and only need to be able to hit a dinner-plate sized target 15′ away, it should be simple, right? It was. But as the sight radius dropped lower, it became increasingly difficult to aim the thing. Particularly since the way the individual barrels mounted into the gun uses a large knurled nut – which would randomly obscure your vision. Add in the fact that while our cut-off saw was quick and effective for chopping the barrels one inch at a time, it was not a gunsmith-quality tool. We would ‘dress’ the chopped barrels, to remove slight burrs and whatnot, but even a slight angle on the chop can throw off a bullet. Basically, after each cut, we would have to learn all over how to point the thing, and hope for the best.
Which led to some hilarious results. All three of us – with over a century of combined experience in shooting all manner of weapons under a wide variety of conditions – actually managed to clip the vanes of the two chronographs (the bits that stick up like old television antennas). I got two vanes within about four shots – one on each side!
Our first effort to get around this aiming problem was to install a Weaver rail on the top of the pistol barrel housing (into which the individual barrels mount). This 4″ long U-shaped mount protruded past the front of the barrel, and in theory would give us something to sight down. In theory. But just when we would learn how using it related to where the bullets went, the thing would loosen up and shift a bit – and we didn’t have the appropriate loc-tite stuff needed to secure it.
We did finish up testing three full calibers, though: .380 ACP, 9mm Luger, and .40 S&W. Altogether, we recorded data for almost 2,000 rounds, including a number of ‘benchmark’ rounds to test the chronographs, as well as a data for several ‘real world’ pistols we own. And each round had data from two chronographs, specs from the ammo (bullet weight, lot #, manufacturer, brand), ambient temperature, and any additional notes we felt were needed. A lot of work, not always under the best weather conditions (yesterday it rained all day, and temps were in the mid 30s with a stiff wind).
But we got through it, and already this data would be a priceless contribution to the gun-using world. And it was a load of fun to do, working with two other people who are more knowledgeable than I am about guns (and I’m no neophyte) and share my joy at coming up with solutions to practical problems. As my buddy Steve said, there were enough difficulties come up to keep it from ever getting in the least way boring.
Combine the hard work and concentration of conducting the tests for 8-9 hours a day with evenings of good companionship, and I am one tired puppy. I’m glad that we won’t be conducting the next round of tests until the beginning of April.
But wow – when this is all done, documented, graphed, and put on a website for free access to anyone interested in the result – people are going to go nuts.
Or so I hope.
Jim Downey
From a note I sent a friend last night:
Yes, it rained. And rained. And then rained harder. Surely you can guess how the progression goes?
But we managed quite well. Thanks to a little advance planning, we had all the materials necessary to cope with the rain (in terms of keeping the wet off of the chronographs, which have to be out between the gun and the target).
And the rest went really well, also. Today was the steep part of the learning curve, but by the end we were really cranking along. We should finish up the first three calibers tomorrow (about 1/3 of the total ammo to be tested). And then get a start on the next batch. Which we should finish up this weekend. With a little luck, that’ll be about 2/3 of the data we want to collect. If so, just one more session in April will be needed to wrap it up, and then the hard work of compiling and constructing the website, all the writing and editing and stuff.But still, it went *really* well today, and all three of us are happy but tired from the effort.
Did I mention it went well?
It did indeed. Given that we have something on the order of 7,000 rounds of ammo for testing, if we can wrap it all up with just two testing sessions, that will be remarkable. Granted, it’s a lot of work, but it is a lot more doable than I had feared. By the end of the testing yesterday, we were cranking along at about 10 seconds per shot, complete with recording the data, popping out the spent cartridge (the test platform is just one shot, for simplicity and control of mechanical factors), reloading and preparing the next shot. After each three-shot group of a given type of ammo, we would then run a Bore Snake through the barrel to start with a fresh barrel for the next batch. Chopping the 1″ thick barrels with the abrasive cut-off saw went fine, with only minor glitches, and the process of dressing the end of the barrel was as a result very simple and quick. We got good data from the chronos, and were already starting to see some interesting results from the testing. This information is going to be hugely beneficial to the gun community, once we have everything done, sorted, and published online.
Today the weather is supposed to be nice – about sixty and partly sunny. Tonight storms roll through again, temps drop, and we may have snow mixed with the rain tomorrow morning. Charming.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 