Over the years, many folks have tested projectile performance through a variety of barriers. While some influencers have done so for entertainment, penetration, and barrier testing, have become an industry standard practice for many cartridges. FBI barrier testing, ballistic gelatin, and any other number of mediums and methods help evaluate how a projectile performs. While it’s fun and educational to read about or watch this testing, it’s something else to do it yourself. Furthermore, it’s fun to see how a particular projectile performs. After coming into possession of some scrap drywall, I decided to perform some kind of scientific testing of my own with the leftovers.
I’m not the first to address this topic, nor will I even come close to being the last. Drywall is a popular medium for bullet penetration testing due to its prolific use in commercial and residential structures. Virtually every modern structure uses drywall for interior walls. When it comes to defensive firearms use, it’s important to understand how bullets perform after encountering a barrier. When does the bullet stop? Does the bullet expand? Does it tumble or break apart? With these questions in mind, I went about setting up a rough test with a few different calibers and bullet designs to determine how they perform against drywall.
Testing Drywall
I’m not a rich man by any means, and building supplies are expensive. Luckily, a neighbor happened to have just finished drywalling their home and had a few scraps lying around. While they weren’t cut perfectly, they were enough to set up a mock drywall platform for evaluating bullet performance through several sheets.
With a little ingenuity, I set up a platform that held 15 sheets of drywall. While not as fancy as some of the testing I’ve encountered in the past, it seemed an adequate setup for a rough approximation. I spaced the drywall sheets randomly between one and two inches apart. Testing was performed from approximately four feet away from the first sheet of drywall. Since this was a “let’s see if this works” kind of test, the calibers were kept simple: .22LR, 9mm Luger, and .223.
Guns and Ammo Tested
For this test, I used four different firearms and five types of ammunition. For .22LR, I tested 36-grain Federal Champion, and 36-grain Winchester Silvertip segmented hollow points out of a suppressed Ruger 22/45. A suppressed Uzi with a 10-inch barrel and Glock 17 with a 4.5-inch barrel fired Hornady Critical Duty 135-grain +P. Finally, a suppressed AR-15 with a 16-inch barrel fired 55-grain Hornady V-Max and 62-grain Federal Tactical Bonded.
By testing these different calibers and cartridges, I hoped to gain some insight into a range of bullet performance across different projectile calibers and designs. The 9mm was fired from two different barrel lengths to gauge how the barrel length affected projectile velocity and subsequent penetration. For .223, the two different projectiles — ballistic tip and bonded — were evaluated for expansion and penetration when encountering a barrier.
Shooting Drywall
With the test set up, it was time to start shooting drywall. One of the first cartridges fired was the 9mm Critical Duty through a 10-inch barrel. The round passed through all 15 sheets of drywall with ease. The bullet design of the Critical Duty played in its favor as the round showed some expansion. Surprisingly, the 9mm from the pistol showed similar performance through the drywall sheets by passing through all of them. Both of the 9mm Luger rounds eventually showed some tumbling as the round’s profile struck each piece of drywall.
The .22LR cartridges penetrated underwhelmingly, with Federal Champion stopping at nine drywall sheets and the Winchester Silvertip stopping at eight drywall sheets. Winchester Silvertip utilizes a segmented hollow point. With this projectile design, the bullet fragments and loses mass upon terminal impact. Regardless, it penetrated impressively compared to the non-expanding Federal .22LR bullet.
The Federal Tactical Bonded .223 ammunition passed through all 15 sheets of drywall. Meanwhile, the V-Max ballistic tip stopped at the fourteenth sheet of drywall. The recovered projectile only weighed 17.4 grains or less than 32% of its original mass. The ballistic tip design caused rapid projectile expansion and subsequent fragmentation as the round’s jacket was stripped from the lead core.
While the Federal Champion .22LR retained most of its mass, the projectile tumbled upon entering the drywall. 9mm was far from immune as it also showed evidence of keyholing through the drywall. Surprisingly, .223 didn’t produce any evidence of keyholing but showed some jacket separation. These respective projectile behaviors provide some interesting insight into how bullets perform after striking a barrier or non-hydraulic medium (i.e., wood, drywall, metal, etc.) versus a hydraulic medium (i.e., organs, tissue, and/or fluids).
Final Observations of Projectile Performance in Drywall
The slower velocities from the 9mm and .22LR didn’t generate the same explosive performance observed from the .223. While I didn’t chronograph any of the cartridges fired, the higher-velocity cartridges tended to produce more explosive penetration into the drywall. The .223 cartridges were slightly heavier than the .22LR, but the projectile diameter was roughly the same. The primary differences in these cartridges were bullet construction and initial muzzle velocity.
The .223 ballistic tip performed explosively as it progressed through the drywall. Initially, I attributed this observation to the polymer tip causing rapid cartridge expansion. However, the Federal Tactical Bonded produced similar results. Overall, an expanding cartridge coupled with higher velocities tended to exhibit more energetic expansion. Meanwhile, the slower-moving cartridges showed some expansion but primarily tumbled as they progressed through the drywall.
Ballistics, whether external or terminal, remain a hot point of discussion amongst the shooting community. Over the years, I’ve heard the saying, “The only consistent feature of bullets is they’re inconsistent.” This saying oversimplifies the unpredictability of projectile performance but remains largely true. The bullet’s construction, velocity, mass, and diameter-to-length ratio affect how a bullet performs upon impacting a target or barrier. Slight changes in each of these factors can dramatically change a bullet’s terminal performance and penetration.
Ultimately, though, these projectiles passed through at least eight sheets of drywall or the equivalent of four residential walls. If we’re to identify any educational points from this testing, it’s to know your background and the potential risk for passing through. If anything, that’s a predictable point we can prepare for.
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