Holy Thread Revival.
Seems there have been a few threads about steel lately, and it seems most of them are dominated by anecdotal and unscientific explanations and there still seems to be an uncertainty with how to safely mitigate the ricochet potential of shooting steel.
I feel like responding to such an old thread is like arguing with a ghost, but these questions still come up. I humbly offer a little bit of simple science...
So as many people know the rules in Canada have stated steel must be at 10m minimum for pistol. Well no longer! After today's demo with our range inspector we are good to go for 7yds with reactive steel. So ringer plates, poppers, knockdown plates, can now be at 7yds . static plates are still 10m. The only caveat is hay bales or similar barriers need to be placed to ensure ground ricochet are contained on the close plates. Unsure how this is going to be rolled out, if it's just going to be western Canada,, BC or what but will keep you updated as I get more info.
Massive thanks to the BC CFO for the prompt response to my queries and for coming over and investigating this with us.
SO flash forward to 2017, and it seems the CFOs of BC and Ontario have gotten together, compared notes, and mostly standardized their policies for this. Conspicuously, Ontario CFO says you need minimum -10 degree angle, and BC CFO says -20...
I'm wondering what sort of velocity and range a ricochet from a flat impact on a steel target would have? I'm guessing, but I would think 90 percent of the energy would be lost after striking a steel plate flat on, and that it would only carry a hundred yards further, like it was flung from a slingshot.
Velocity, Range and Energy are three very different things, and there are at least a dozen variables that can have significant effects on them. Further, contrary to popular belief velocity and available energy do not strictly correlate with the ability to cause damage to the human body. A grain of sand at 1000 fps per second will not break skin. A transport truck with 1.5 million foot lbs of energy travelling 0.3 FPS won't either. You need the right combination of those and other factors in order for there to be real danger.
Ricochet could be anywhere from completely harmless to almost as lethal as the fired bullet, with everything in between. When you take the average across all bullet types and velocities/energies of fired projectiles against a quality undamaged target, ricochets, regardless of angle, are mostly harmless. The danger tends to lie in the extreme margins, low velocity low energy shots and higher velocity/high energy/heavy shots.
The amount of energy lost in primary impact could be as little as a few percent of total available energy. Drop a marble on a drum or a bowling ball on a trampoline and it comes back up almost as high as its drop height. Fire that same marble or bowling ball at a much higher velocity and it will penetrate right through. Under the right conditions (typically on the low energy side, where there is not enough energy in the collision system to exceed the modulus and/or elastic limit of the projectile or target) a fired shot can bounce right off a target like a trampoline. It could either come right back to the shooter with almost full energy, or it could hit the ground or other objects first and loose a lot more energy. You would expect any such ricochet will be at least a little deformed with a significantly reduced BC, will be tumbling and likely no longer benefiting from rotational stability, so even if you were hit by one it would not penetrate or do nearly as much damage as a direct impact.
How the energy is organized within the flying object makes a huge difference on its ability to penetrate soft tissue.
In ballistic testing conducted in a lab I had the pleasure of shooting a .55 gr .223 bullet with a slingshot over a chronograph into a 1/8" thick plate of aluminum. Bullet had a 10 shot average of about 125 FPS IIRC and dented, but did not penetrate the aluminum. We then loaded up some low power rounds with the same bullet for use in a universal receiver and 24" proof testing barrel. When we got the speed dialed in to 145 FPS (fastest shot) at the chronograph went back to shooting the aluminum, which the rounds easily penetrated. Rounds were still penetrating the aluminum at less than 100 FPS. Same bullet, same speed, same energy. The tumbling non rotating bullet was harmless. The rifled bullet was still very dangerous, and that's with only 4% of the typical velocity of a .223 round.
While we are on the subject... what are the current rules in Ontario with regards to lead birdshot and steel targets? Most places I have seen them not shrouded, but poking around on the net, some ranges have rules that any hard target must be shrouded, regardless of what you shoot at it.
Depends on where you are. Your property, your rules. As of summer 2017, all steel targets being used on ranges approved by the ON CFO are SUPPOSED to be shrouded. LEAD birdshot can be fired on steel targets, and according to the CFO all shotguns, regardless of ammunition, should be treated as the same as rifles, meaning 100m minimum distance from the steel target. Ballistically, Lead shot of any size does not differ significantly from your average pistol round, and even Lead Slugs have more in common with high powered pistol shots than they do with rifles. I hang my plates at -20 degrees and have fired hundreds of rounds of number 7.5 and 8 shot, up to 5m, without any hint of material coming back at the firing line. Just make sure its lead. Steel shot will likely bounce with minimal deformation AND damage your plate. Neither are good. I have fired lead rifled slugs on a handful of occasions, closest being about 20, but usually much further. With a 20 degree angle you can usually see the plate get driven spectacularly out of the slug's way with the round striking the ground 3-5 feet behind the target. The lower you hit on the plate, the less the round is deflected and the further it strikes the ground behind the target. Rounds that hit the plate higher up towards the bolts deflect almost straight down.
Steel targets is not the safety concern as much as the ammo being used. I've never had any concerns about what a safe distance would be. The plate should absorb the energy of the bullet. Angling the plate has very little effect the bullet construction is the key. I find that noob worry warts have a hard time with steel targets and should find another sport rather than try to bring up moot safety concerns.
Just to be clear, the safety concern is ricochets and fragments hitting people and causing injury.
Ricochets are a product of a combination of factors that include impact velocity, impact energy, impact angle, target material properties, and ammunition material properties, including construction.
This safety hazard can SOMETIMES be mitigated by standoff (more distance). It can definitely be mitigated by changing the impact angle.
No plate will ever absorb the energy of the bullet, and in most cases this is actually undesirable.
Noob worry warts have a hard time with steel targets, in my opinion, because there is a lot of junk science and bogus explanations from uninformed people who would rather bully someone out of a sport than actually learn what they are talking about.
Happy to hear you have no concerns about something that you demonstrably don't understand. Its more than likely that you never will have a serious concern, cause shooting steel targets, even when done poorly, is mostly safe, and not much more dangerous than shooting at targets made of anything else. Short of deliberately trying to produce the worst possible set of conditions, your probability of injury on a typical range with with fewer than 500 shots fired from a reasonable distance (7m+) is still incredibly low.
Angle is very important if you don't want it to come right back at you. The internet is loaded with examples of ricochets coming back at the shooter. Frangible projectiles are best. Steel core the worst.
The only damage done my to AR500 3/8" steel gongs is from .223 frangible ammo fired from 50M. Targets at a 20 degree angle to the line of flight, hung with rubber straps to swing freely. 0 chance of a dangerous fragment with frangible, but it can still take a bite out of your plate...
Bullet construction is only one variable. Steel core COULD be completely safe for the shooter and target, or terrible for both. Its all in the set up. If you just need to shoot steel core on steel, increase your angle of the plate to at least 45 degrees and move up to a 1/2" thick plate. Going to AR 550 wouldn't be a bad idea either.
other than steel core ammo, bullet construction doesnt really make a difference at all. angle though tells you where the pieces go and if that is wrong then all bullets are bad
Any 'bullet' or significant piece of one, coming back at you is disconcerting, even if its not dangerous. The question is what combination of factors is most likely to result in a bullet coming back at you that has enough energy to be harmful. Bullet construction, more specifically the physical properties of the bullet material (elasticity) can play a significant role, even if its not steel. But bullet construction works together with energy to have an effect on the object being impacted.
Frangible projectiles will disintegrate into nothing at virtually any speed, but at high speeds, they still can contain enough energy to permanently deform a steel plate. There is a speed, probably north of 10,000 FPS, that you could still penetrate a steel plate completely with one.
You really need to think of the collision as a system of all of the pieces and factors working together to produced a result. IF you change one factor, there may or may not be a significant effect on the outcome. Start changing multiple factors and you could have a very different result.
Plates should be flat and facing shooter. All the bullet energy is used up on impact. If you angle a plate, some of the bullet energy will be deflected and even if it's going a safe direction, it's a bad idea.
Of course, as mentioned, steel is not to be shot at steel.
An exception is falling plate racks, but they are not angled to deflect the bullet as much as to allow the plate to stand up.
With respect to your alleged experience, bullet energy is not "used up" on impact. All of the energy that was present before the moment of impact is still present after the impact, less a little bit of entropy. The energy does not get consumed, it is simply redistributed. A little bit will get converted into heat, maybe even some turned into light, but the vast majority of kinetic energy brought into the collision by the fired bullet will remain kinetic energy afterwards. This is true regardless of plate angle.
Your explanation is overly simplistic, and does not account for the physical properties of the target or projectile, not does it account for the fact that energy transfer is not a single instantaneous event, but is an ongoing interaction between the objects in the system.
Your explanation describes the bullet as being deflected or not, but seems to omit any consideration of what happens to the plate, as though it were a hypothetical "immovable object".
Further, your claim that "any bullet going in a safe direction is a bad idea" defies logic, as directing bullets in a safe direction is a fundamental principle of all range design, and catching such bullets safely is the primary purpose of all bullet traps/berms. Why is a bullet going down range in a safe direction towards an engineered bullet catcher
a bad idea?
Can you explain why you think steel should not be shot at steel,
except for falling plate racks? What makes plate racks safe to shoot at with steel ammo?
You claim that not only must targets be held at zero, AND steel is not to be shoot at steel, yet your exception is an example of a target design with an angle. Your own experience seems to be contradicting your claims.
Steel can be safely shot at steel, under certain circumstances, typically when there is sufficient angle present to allow the steel to deflect rather than bounce. Ammunition with a mild steel core is MOST dangerous on hardened steel targets when the angle is set at 0, or perpendicular. What you have proposed, a perfectly perpendicular target angle, is in fact the most dangerous solution for shooting steel on steel. That same bullet fired at the same target set at the very extreme 80 degree angle (almost parallel to the ground) will result in that projectile bouncing off of the target causing virtually no damage to the target and the bullet will carry on towards the bullet trap with slightly less energy than if it had penetrated a wooden target frame.
I suspect the engineers of the falling plate rack knew what they were doing when they built that angle in to the design, and could easily have held it at 0 if they wanted to. I doubt even though would have agreed that shooting steel on their targets is safe, at least because mild steel core bullets will quickly damage your steel targets.
Or we can just ask this guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWcJNfApCzU
Ken is right. In my experience, the worst for richochets are cast lead bullets at low velocities. FMJ bullets at hgh velocities tend to disintegrate and don't cause problems.
Ken is right about what? I don't see where he mentioned cast bullets at low velocities being a specific problem on their own.
Bullets at low velocities ARE more likely to produce ricochets, that is certainly true. Its more appropriate to call this a bounce than a ricochet. The bullets don't necessarily need to be cast lead, although in cowboy action shooting where the projectiles tend to be light and slow, its a coincidence that they tend to be cast. Further, in a lot of these cowboy action events, there is a popular myth that the lower energy means you can use a softer or thinner steel in the target, like a 10ga mild steel or 1/4" AR 200, and this is where you are SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to get a bounce.
Steel Challenge as targets flat to the shooter (although drawings do not show it) and no splash coming back to firing line.
Interesting that you mention drawings, but that the drawings don't show the angle as flat. What do they show?
More important then the angle or lack of angle is the grade of steel used and as Kanada Kidd brought up, surface condition. Using too mild a steel plate will not absorb all the energy and may send the round straight back. Rifle bullets are the worse, but even with a pistol round you can get ricochet. Steel targets made from quality hardened steel with no surface defects will eliminate most of the debris being sent back to the shooter.
Hardness (Don't say grade, grade means something else) of steel is important for several reasons. You are absolutely correct that Mild Steel can cause a round to go straight back towards the shooter, on account of a significantly high degree of elasticity in the steel which transfers energy back to the projectile after initial impact, much like a trampoline propelling a bowling ball into the sky after the ball was dropped on the trampoline. Hardness also relates to a higher Modulus, meaning it takes more energy to deform the metal, which typically translates in a longer lasting plate. Plate failure is one problem, but shooting at a plate AFTER it has failed is another.
Soft steel can fail on the first impact, without much posing a risk, especially if the angle is set so that any bounces do not come back to the shooter. Depending on how soft, and what the failure looks like, Shooting it again can be a total wildcard. Aluminum is a very soft metal. It will fail after every impact and never pose a risk. Mild steel is probably the most dangerous material to use when dealing with higher powered pistol and rifles. Damaged Surface condition that we all associate with a higher degree of ricochet is simply evidence of plate failure.
Either way, as already mentioned neither a soft or hard steel plate will absorb all the energy, but again, this is not required in order to guarantee shooter safety either.
Rifle rounds are hardest (most wear and tear) on the target, and more likely to penetrate it if it fails, and pistol rounds are far more likely to result in a dangerous ricochet.
Hardened steel targets will withstand repeated bullet impacts the best. The AR in AR 500 stands for Abrasion Resistant.
Its important to note that angle of the plate also affects wear and tear. Plates hung at 0 degrees (perpendicular to line of fire) will wear out far faster than the same plate being hung at a 10 or 20 degree offset. Most plate manufactures rate their plates for several thousand shots. The same plate hung at a 60 or 70 degree angle will likely last millions.
We all agree that once a plate has started to show signs of failure from pitting, denting, cracking or other deformations, it poses an unacceptable risk and should be retired.
Ken is correct - from a mathematical point of view.
When the bullet flight path is perfectly "perpendicular" to the steel plate, that is the condition for maximum energy or momentum transfer (with the steel being exactly perpendicular to the flight path, momentum and energy transfers will be the same) to the steel.
Any deviation from perpendicular will produce some amount of bullet energy re-directed into a new vector based on the angle of the steel relative to the flight path of the bullet.
While we may argue about "safe vs. unsafe" directions for the bullets fragment to travel after striking the plate, that is not the point of this discussion.
Bob is arguing that some angle (other than completely flush) offers up a better plane for impact and energy absorption/momentum transfer. I would submit that: if Ken is wrong, what angle of plate placement should be used?
To support the discussion, I've attached high-speed video of bullets striking steel (and other stuff...).
[youtube]QfDoQwIAaXg[/youtube]
Compare the strikes at 1:30 to the ones at 6:30. The bullet strike at 6:30 shows a near complete transfer of energy to the plate.
Also, near the 9 minute mark there are impacts on silhouette targets. Some are more "perpendicular" than others, but most of the bullet fragments are observed to leave in a radial pattern that is perpendicular to the flight path.
First off, Ken is not considering all of the relevant factors in play, and as such his math is at best, incomplete.
The claim that a bullet path perfectly perpendicular to the plate is the best condition for energy transfer is ignorant of a few important variables, as I have already discussed.
If Ken was right, when you drop the marble it would hit the drum, and stop completely with no further motion, as the energy is "absorbed", or more accurately transferred completely to the drum, which then does not move. Ken is obviously wrong.
Drop a small glass marble on solid concrete and it will bounce. throw that marble as hard as you can and it might shatter. A larger marble might shatter just from being dropped.
Drop any of those marble on cardboard and the card will yield and the marble might not bounce at all.
Here's the point. Ideally, we don't want that marble to shatter, because those fragments are now something else that we to need control for. Ranges already have designated safe directions and bullet traps designed for catching whole bullets. Contrary to what Ken has suggested, the best possible outcome is a safe deflection where the bullet ends up in the bullet trap or berm.
Under most circumstances, the shards of copper jacket or any lead fragments produced by a bullet strike will be harmless, but a 0 degree angle gives the highest likelihood of the fragments bouncing back towards the shooter.
To believe Ken you would have to assume that all ceiling baffles and bullet traps should be built with flat angles to the shooters, and every single person who has designed and built a shooting range is wrong.
Another reason why Ken is wrong is because nothing about his theory explains why the same bullet at the same speed hitting the same plate will have significantly different effects based on where you hit the plate, or how the plate is hung.
Looking at the video specifically, One thing to consider is that all of those plates being impacted are large. They appear to be thick, and are of considerable size, meaning the plate has a significant amount of mass. Those plates hardly move at all when struck by the projectiles. Typical steel plate targets are much smaller and move a lot more, even if it fixed. The amount of mass in the steel plays a huge role in how much energy that plate can resist. Remember that all energy takes the path of least resistance. The more solid the plate, the more the bullet material will look for other ways to dissipate energy, typically by way of fragmentation.
When I shoot a .22 at a 10" square plate, the plate hardly moves and fragments can rarely be observed, probably because the round is obliterated. When I shoot the same .22 from the same distance at a plate of same hardness at same angle, but is a 4" square, the plate moves noticeably, and you can often observe a ground strike below the target comparable to the dirt splash of a direct .22 lr impact.
At the 6:30 time stamp there are several impacts that show most of the bullet material fragment outwards in a circle, and there is a certain mass, maybe less than 10%, that comes to a rest on the plate, which gravity will then pull to the ground. IF there was enough elasticity in the steel plate, that remaining core would be bounced back at an angle inverse to its impact angle. 0 degree impact gets you a 180 degree bounce, back towards the shooter, assuming the plate isn't moving and changing angle as a result of the impact.
Compare that to the impacts at 6:52 and 6:55 where there is a slight angle on the impact. That core mass starts to slide down the plate in the same rough direction of travel as the impact. A much safer result in my opinion.
See the impacts at 7:50 and 8:09 where the bullet jacket is also being added to that material that stays roughly at the point of impact? Those pieces would be relatively harmless due to low mass, but with a very heavy object it could be a different story. The famous video of the guy shooting a 50 BMG provides an interesting example. I SUSPECT that he was shooting at a thick, oversized and HEAVY steel plate, at a 0 degree angle where the back end of the round, would have stayed in the middle of the plate long enough for the plate to trampoline that piece back towards the firing line.
But we actually have no idea what he was shooting under what circumstances, so your guess is as good as mine, but not matter what to have the ear muffs taken off your head like that is probably a 1 in a billion shot.
Check out this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W57EjnIJu7Q
At 3:07 he inspects a round imbedded in a rail road tie that he used as a target. If that rail round tie was just a little further away and that round had just a little less energy, it would have bounced right off. But thats an AP round with a hardened ~600 BHN penetrator. Lead core probably wouldn't have done anything but make a slight dent. Also, he hit it on the spine of the rail tie meaning there was significantly more material than if he was an inch either way.
At 3:37 he fires another shot and you can actually hear the ricochet, but we have no idea which direction it went in. It was a complete penetration of the target so fortunately for him it would have been going down range. At 6:18 he fires another AP round. You can hear the ricochet and at 6:21 you can even see a piece of material travelling back uprange and thankfully upwards. I love that he captions "nice ricochet sound". We have no idea where that went.
So as I said at the beginning, here you have a guy shooting a very high powered rifle at a target with 0 or near zero impact angles, a rigid target with no swing that is actually supported to prevent movement, at a relatively close distance for that firearm, with no idea of what the target is made of or how it will react, and the result is mostly harmless.
Going back to the video of the guy who took one in the glasses, no doubt glasses saved his eye ball, but I would be surprised if round would have caused more than flesh wound had it struck him anywhere else. Close range, steel on steel, high power bullet with light weight target, 0 degree angle. Just about everything you can do wrong. Mostly harmless.
Or this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGgooonLsGc. Mostly harmless.
Or this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bScQMzK2n2E "whoah, you get a ricochet? This reminds me of that scene with the guy with the 50 cal" "oh $hit i don't like that sound" ...but don't worry, we aren't going to do anything differently, just keep shooting...
Kanada Kidd has more experience than probably all of us combined shooting steel, that experience is certainly relevant to this discussion and maybe he should be considered a Subject Matter Expert in this area.
With respect, the term subject matter expert is a term that gets thrown around a lot, and I find it is all too often overly extended to areas outside the expertise of the person being discussed. Shooting a million rounds of ammo on steel targets makes you an exert, in my opinion, on shooting steel. Only in depth knowledge and experience in the design and TESTING/EVALUATION on those designs would make you an expert in target design/configuration. SO far, from his posts, Ken demonstrates a decided lack of knowledge in the physics associated with bullets striking steel objects. Not having met the man, I will concede maybe he is simply not conveying that knowledge well through this medium.
I have participated in such designs and robust ballistic testing of various materials, and have a decent grasp of physics. I have not shot nearly as many rounds as Ken claims to have, nor am I going to win any shooting competitions any time soon. Considered against some of the other folks in the industry, I would not in anyway consider myself a SME.
Nothing about driving a million kilometers makes you an automotive engineer, and designing a couple of cars and doing a few laps around the test track does not make you a SME either.
Question, is there a max cal for shooting steel? My buddy has a dessert eagle in 50.
No, there is no "max calibre" for shooting steel in general, but higher calibres might require thicker/heavier steel plates in order to safely handle the round. 50 AE is probably less of a danger than .44 magnum, so as long as your plate is rated by the manufacturer as being suitable for all pistol, or better still rifle calibres, and is used in accordance with manufacturers instructions, 50 AE is fine.
If you said 50 BMG then you would want to go up to a 1/2" thick plate, maybe AR 550, and consider a plate angle of 30-45 degrees.
Simple question, is there a ricochet issue with 1/5 scale silhouette chicken/Javelinas/turkey/ram at 40/60/77 and 100m when using .22 lr
There is always a ricochet issue, but in general as long as your silhouettes are made of a sufficient hardness of steel, and are angled appropriately, that issue can be mitigated. How you hang those small silhouettes can matter as much as the target material itself. .22lr falls in the small light and slow category of projectiles, and you are just as likely to get a bounce as you are to get a fragmentation, so ensure your plates are angled so that the rounds don't bounce back towards the shooter. Wear your glasses.
