300 BLK VOR-TX vs Car Door- Barnes Barrier-Blind Bullet Test (Part 1)

[Quiet Riot]

I've been planning a series of tests for the Barnes VOR-TX load for a long time and finally got around to starting on them. This test turned out much better than I thought it would. Three shots through a steel car door produced three perfect examples of what can happen to an expanding bullet when it meets a barrier.

I'm very impressed with this round so far. Wait until you see its performance against IIIA body armor...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adaEF5NJ_iI

[din]

great video.

[BullittBoy]

While I have followed the .300 Blackout the last couple years, I have shot similar testing with .40 S&W rounds in windshield glass and car doors from OLD 70's cars with real steel.
The Gold Dot, Golden Sabre, Ranger, and HST's all penetrated a car door with better consistancy than the .300 BO, I really am not overly impressed.
I will stick with my 6.8 for rifle duties

[markm]

While I have followed the .300 Blackout the last couple years, I have shot similar testing with .40 S&W rounds in windshield glass and car doors from OLD 70's cars with real steel.
The Gold Dot, Golden Sabre, Ranger, and HST's all penetrated a car door with better consistancy than the .300 BO, I really am not overly impressed.
I will stick with my 6.8 for rifle duties

BINGO!

[Quiet Riot]

I'm getting the sense from a lot of the comments I'm seeing that people think one layer of sheet metal stopped that bullet. Underneath that bulge was a metal bracket consisting of two layers of steel. Three layers of steel were wrapped around that bullet, which had already penetrated the outer sheet and a wire harness. I just couldn't get my camera in there to show it. I need to annotate the video because in a very short time of this video being up, this keeps coming up.

There is no way a 40S&W would've penetrated the area that the 300 BLK did not. Full power 7.62x51mm (non-AP) might not have penetrated. It was just one of the worst parts of the door for a bullet to hit, and that is real life for you.

[Shorts]

Thanks for the vid. I saw another one of your vids before, didn't know that was you.

The car door vid is nice illustration on the real world variables. A car is more complicated than a single piece of stamped 18-20ga sheet. Like you said, it has brackets, rods, springs, hinges - generally parts that go inside a door for the locking mechs and window actuation. Then there is the superficial layers like panels, handles, speakers, wires, switches. Any of those things cause a bullet to do strange things. Just like bones in a body. The 3rd bullet catching the edge of a panel cut out was such a chance occurrence, yet had a great effect on the bullet's behavior and performance.

Question, what year/make/model was the door from? A consideration in a test like this is not all doors are created equal. Sheetmetal gauge ranges by make/model and year. Older vehicles tend to have thicker sheet. Late models have trended towards lightweight. Consider even the difference between pw/pl and manual models. Manual models will have added levers and bracketry inside the doors which add to the chances of bullet deflection. Yet another variable, not so much on the bullet through the door result, but of hitting a person inside, is it a car or truck? Does a person sit directly behind the door? Lower to the floorboards? Higher up?

Well, I'm rambling. But there are a lot of factors. Even some based on chance and once in a lifetime long shot. Guess in the matter of caliber, know what you're shooting at and what bullets may or may not do to it.

[Corse]

While I have followed the .300 Blackout the last couple years, I have shot similar testing with .40 S&W rounds in windshield glass and car doors from OLD 70's cars with real steel.
The Gold Dot, Golden Sabre, Ranger, and HST's all penetrated a car door with better consistancy than the .300 BO, I really am not overly impressed.
I will stick with my 6.8 for rifle duties

How did the 300 compare to 5.56?

[jonconsiglio]

With the barrel length he's using in that video, had it been 6.8 with the exact same shot placement, the results would likely have been the same.

Comparing an 8" or 9" barrel and 110gr TSX, not much is differenct except the Black Tip usually gets slightly deeper penetration.

A 16" 6.8 certainly has some velocity advantages over 300BLK, but that's just not really the case for short rifles. There's still an advantage, but it's small with the short barrels.

Just to be clear, I've owned both calibers in these barrel lengths. I have far more experience with 6.8, but I'm seeing big advantages with a short blackout over my 8" 6.8.

If I'm buying a 16" gun in one of these calibers (which I wouldn't do again), I'd go 6.8. Well, really I'd go with a 14.5" or 16" 308 if. Had to go long. For short rifles, both are great but I am preferring blackout for my needs. Now that there's a dedicated lower and PMAGs, even though I don't much care for LWRC, I might pick up the UCIW next year some time.

For work, I'll stick to a shorter 5.56 gun for now. But, I wouldn't hesitate to have either a short 6.8 or 300 for defensive use.

[Corse]

I have a 16" 6.8 now and both a 16 and 10" blackout, it would seem that the short barrel 6.8 would have a large increase in muzzle blast over the 300 with no gain in velocity.

[Stickman]

The reason why there is a standard testing for this is because things need to be on a level playing field. Shooting through a 1970s T-bird is different than shooting through a modern commuter car, but either one of those vehicles will still skew results depending on what is hit inside the door.

Without the FBI testing protocol or similar testing in place, you end up with comment from people about how their .40 cal does just as good. The fault isn't with those people, they simply don't know what they don't know.