Slug Expansion test

[cra627]

First post on AGN - glad I found you guys. I see that I’m way late to the slug discussion party (AirGunBill etc) but i thought I’d still put this out there...

I’ve just recently been playing with slugs in my 3 wk old 25 Crown - NSA 29 & 29.5, VK 32.8 and FX Hybrid. I decided to do an expansion test and (such as it is) using 2.5gal water jugs with about 11” depth front to back. Set at 65yds I fired each slug into a jug at following velocities: NSA 29 955, NSA 29.5 950, VK 32.8 915 and FX Hybrid 985. I was very surprised at the results - it took me two tries to recover an FX slug as they both passed through the 11” of water without expanding. I will attempt to attach a photo of the results and will be interested to here what you guys think of this simple but seemingly effective (?) test. I’m hoping a woodchuck thats been hanging around will be the next testing medium ;-)

 

[JungleShooter]

cra627 ,

welcome to AGN!!



THANKS for sharing your test results! And as a first post, wow, you started off well!

To be able to make sense of an expansion test a lot of info is necessary -- otherwise the data is just meaningless.

But you gave us:

● expanded size of the projectile

● type of ballistic medium and thickness

● impact velocity (with muzzle velocity and range to target (and BC) we can calculate that)

Excellent!!





As AirgunBill and others have confirmed, water as ballistic medium makes hollow points expand a lot more than a quarry's flesh. So, the amount of expansion the test found will likely be less in our quarry.

However, your test clearly shows how this first batch of FX .25cal slugs isn't expanding easily -- even under ideal conditions of using water as ballistic medium....  

Using the ChairGun ballistic calculator I come up with an impact velocity of the FX slug of 878fps. Not super fast, but still very respectable. It should expand....





Keep up the good work!

Matthias

 

[cra627]

Thanks Matthias appreciate your response. I was wondering if water was a reasonable media - so not so much, but perhaps a decent comparison slug to slug. My gun gets along really well with the NSA 29.5 so hopefully I can find out how it does in the woodchuck in the next few days. 

Ill check out Chairgun and be doing a lot more reading/learning on AGN!

Corey

 

[JungleShooter]

Corey,

sounds good.



As far as ChairGun goes: Hawke discontinued the support of the app and the PC program.

They have it for download still, and it works so far, and using legacy emulation programs it could be kept working for a good while.



For doing comparisons and calculations and stuff AT HOME — the ChairGun for PC (or Apple computer) is amazing with its functionality! 



However, FOR THE FIELD the ChairGun app (Android/ iPhone) is rather limited and not very practical if you have more than a couple of rifles and pellets/slugs in use.

A much better alternative I found in Strelok Pro (the Pro is worth the extra couple of $). Quick shooting solutions, unlimited rifles and projectiles, over 1000(?) reticles, like ChairGun it offers the GA drag curve, and also a custom drag curve and multiple BCs, bluetooth wind data, truing functions, the works.



Matthias