The Firing Line Forums

Go Back   The Firing Line Forums > The Hide > The Art of the Rifle: General

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old December 11, 2002, 12:04 AM   #1
Gewehr98
Senior Member
 
Join Date: June 30, 2000
Location: Token Creek, WI
Posts: 4,067
Rifle Ballistics and Computers (Well, sort of...)

Marshall, Sanow, and Fackler need not bother. These ballistic results were generated on a computer - or rather, on part of a computer.

Over the last couple of years I've had my share of Western Digital hard drives crash in horrible fashion. If they didn't get replaced by Western Digital, I saved them for something one day in the future. That day was last weekend, at the 100 yard target line.

First, an image of all three drives lined up, with their respective test cartridges in front of them:



The middle drive got centerpunched by a Remington 700PSS, firing a 150gr FMJ handloaded round at just over 2700fps. I didn't expect much devastation with the FMJ, and the results bore that out. Here are the front and back views. Note the background, one of my favorite gun rags, and just about the only one I'll subscribe to these days:



Nice, neat hole, here's the back view:



All it did was push out the center screw, not a very big exit hole.

Next up, another crashed Western Digital hard drive, facing my 6.5-06 Interdiction Rifle. The load was a 120gr Nosler Ballistic Tip, Moly-coated, clocking a hair over 3200fps. I figured the Ballistic Tip would explode on impact, perhaps causing a good bit more damage due to the bullet construction and velocity. Here's the front side:



Nice, neat 6.5mm hole in the front. Here's the back side:



A-ha! Now we're getting somewhere, the Ballistic Tip opened up inside the drive, with a better exit hole, and copper fragments were left for a good distance behind the drive on the ground.

So, the last drive was standing there at 100 yards, rather defiant. It had good reason to be defiant. I had made another batch of 405gr Beartooth extremely hard cast gas check handloads, on top of a stout load of Reloder 7. These .45-70 loads whistle through the chronograph at 2050fps from my Ruger #1S rifle. Problem is, after about 10 of these rounds, I'm done for the day. I sighted in the Ruger on paper just before I went for the last hard drive. It shows, I started with the crosshairs on the center of the drive. My flinch pulled the round to the right. It still connected:



Nice big .45 caliber hole, albeit right of center. Here's the back side:



Ya, baby! If the hard drive didn't have a problem keeping the bytes and bits from leaking out before this, it sure did now! From a different angle:



Note that the warranty sticker hadn't been disturbed. Hello, Western Digital?

What does this prove? Not a damn thing. I've got several more hard drives, guess it's time to play my poodleshooter AR-15's .223 against my M14NM's .308, and my Garand's .30-06 next time. I understand that if you just nick the hard drive's case on the corner with the .223, the hydrostatic shock will cause the entire hard drive to catastrophically blow up. Even more so if it's a short-barreled M4gery. I hope at least the pictures were entertaining!
__________________
"Bother", said Pooh, as he chambered another round...

Neural Misfires
Gewehr98 is offline  
Old December 11, 2002, 01:09 AM   #2
Borf
Senior Member
 
Join Date: February 24, 2001
Location: Middle Tennessee
Posts: 424
Very nice I admit to having caused the demise of fried monitors before. I picked up the debris of course. Soft jack o'lanterns are much fun!

Is the 700PSS .308?? Checked over twice and don't think you said.
__________________
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- Wiliam James

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom;
and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it
will lose that, too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
Borf is offline  
Old December 11, 2002, 01:18 AM   #3
germanguns
Member
 
Join Date: November 23, 2002
Posts: 96
That 6.5mm made an amazingly clean hole! Never seen a hole that good before.
germanguns is offline  
Old December 11, 2002, 02:40 AM   #4
cratz2
Senior Member
 
Join Date: March 17, 2002
Location: Indy, IN
Posts: 340
Quote:
That 6.5mm made an amazingly clean hole!
It's the moly coating...

Nice thread... never really thought of combining the worlds of computers and firearms quite this way before...

I have a bunch of old DOA CPUs...
__________________
PhotoAlbum
cratz2 is offline  
Old December 11, 2002, 10:48 AM   #5
M700
Senior Member
 
Join Date: January 16, 2000
Location: Setauket, NY
Posts: 578
Great pics! Now I know what to do with that box of dead drives I have in the corner.

__________________
Molon Labe!
M700 is offline  
Old December 11, 2002, 06:33 PM   #6
hipwr40
Senior Member
 
Join Date: September 19, 2000
Posts: 149
I've got a couple dead HP Deskjets......hmmmm.
hipwr40 is offline  
Old December 11, 2002, 11:35 PM   #7
Gewehr98
Senior Member
 
Join Date: June 30, 2000
Location: Token Creek, WI
Posts: 4,067
Borf, it's a .308 PSS.

My bad.

Shoulder still hurts from the super .45-70 loads. But it's a good kind of hurt!

Found three more dead hard drives, and several Pentium 75-133 CPU chips for my next trip to the range.
__________________
"Bother", said Pooh, as he chambered another round...

Neural Misfires
Gewehr98 is offline  
Old December 12, 2002, 01:53 AM   #8
_YoYo_
Senior Member
 
Join Date: November 25, 2000
Posts: 181
i reckon you wont be finding anything but pieces of those processors.. i blasted a drive with a one ounce slug before it was pretty brutal..
_YoYo_ is offline  
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 05:29 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
This site and contents, including all posts, Copyright © 1998-2021 S.W.A.T. Magazine
Copyright Complaints: Please direct DMCA Takedown Notices to the registered agent: thefiringline.com
Page generated in 0.06414 seconds with 7 queries