New shooter Maggie had been to the range only once before. On Saturday daughter Kim, her boyfriend Jacob, Barron and I showed her how we make Boomerite and then let her shoot about 15 or 20 seven inch targets.
Her very first shot with a rifle was at a Boomerite target. It was a hit:
Try getting a smile like that at an “anti-gun range”.
Sounds reasonable.
Now I’ll have to post pictures and video of Maggie’s third target which sent a smoke ring almost straight up.
Then you can apply your hypothesis to that data and explain it us.
🙂
Very cool. Yeah’ at an anti-gun range, they’d go in angry and come out enraged.
Have we ever figured out exactly why that happens sometimes, for sure? I *think* I sort of understand it.
It requires a near-perfectly center hit on the boomerite in a target that is well balanced / evenly distributed. As the bullet goes through the stuff detonates in a tube shape, slightly front to back, from the middle out. But, there is more stuff outside, so as the ring of detonation expands, the outside stuff detonating pushes back in toward the middle, but there it rebounds off the stuff coming from the opposite side so it bounces back (or perhaps stabilizes is a better word) into a ring shape, squeezed between the outside pressure and the inside; then it has to go either toward the shooter or away, but because the backstop block and disrupts the one going away, we don’t see that. If it’s not a center hit on a balanced target, then the pressures are uneven, and it just blows up “normally.”
Sound reasonable, or anyone with a better explanation?
Good vid and pics. I’ve seen some good ones, but never got a really good pic myself.
I’ve always suspected that the upward-traveling smoke rings are from 4″ targets that fell/slipped, putting the 4″ face generally upwards.
Hmmm, straight up. Well, that would be the little bit of U235 fissioning and making a super-mini mushroom cloud…..
Nah, got nutt’n that explain that one. I’m just making a semi-educated SWAG on my explanation for those that go straight toward the shooter, but I’d have to get a super-WAG on the straight up ones, which I have seen a couple of, now that you mention it. Know anyone that might enlighten us’ns?
Rolf; Some random things happen to converge in just the right way?
There was a particular ship’s gun (I forget what bore and caliber) that was known for creating smoke rings.
I suppose if we understood this stuff fully it might lead to new capabilities.