Friday, September 28, 2012

20ga shotgun patterning

Via Oleg Volk

 20ga rifled slug fired into gelatin
20ga rifled slug fired into gelatin

 Conventional wisdom of defensive shotgunning says that larger projectiles penetrate more. So loading bird shot guarantees absence of over penetration, while slugs will sail through the foe and possibly hit bystanders. But shotguns are sometimes unpredictable, and this theory only holds "all other things being equal" which they seldom do.

 This particular 20ga shotgun was loaded with the assumption that minimum penetration would be ideal for home defense. Should bird shot prove inadequate, # 3 buck (the largest commonly available in 20ga) would come up, and then slugs. The gun was test fired earlier at 25 yards and penetration was found as expected: minimal for bird shot, moderate for buck and considerable for slug. This time, test firing was done at 7 yards picked as the more likely in-house distance and the results were quite surprising.

 Slug sailed right through the tabletop used as the test material: veneer-covered particle board doesn't stop much. The worry that slugs would also overpentrate on humans was laid to rest by firing them into gelatin: only about 7 inches of penetration were achieved, with massive fragmentation of the projectile. That shouldn't have come as a surprise, as the rifled slug is thimble-shaped and made of soft lead. For deeper penetration, either Brenneke hard cast lead, sabot copper or DDupleks steel slugs would be required. But slugs with deeper penetration are probably not the default home defense munition.

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