Yesterday morning I spent three hours talking with someone who retired after 26 years with the U.S. Navy as a diver and Explosives Ordnance Disposal expert.
We talked about guns and what guns we were carrying (I was carrying my STI Eagle and they had a Ruger LPC in .380) and Boomershoot a little bit. But mostly I listened to story after story of diving, finding, and disposing of unexploded bombs, shells, water heaters, and mines. Detonating 50,000 pounds of explosives in 80 feet of water apparently makes for a nice water column and lots of dead fish for the local natives to harvest. Another story involved a simulated (with conventional explosives) nuclear blast which left a good sized crater as well as making a decent sized wave in the ocean.
After we said good-bye and I was driving away I had this nagging feeling of something that was a little odd. I described the meeting to a friend as “remarkably unremarkable”.
After a half hour or so of thinking about it… Ahhhh ha! I knew what it was.
The stories were told in such a extremely calm, cool voice. There were some smiles, and some facial expressions which indicated they knew the story was interesting but there was barely any change in the pitch or the tempo of the voice. This person was not easily excited and was not particularly emotional.
That is probably a good personality trait to have in your friendly neighborhood EOD specialist.
A couple weeks ago when some of the Boomershoot staff put on a small private party it turned out, without prior planning or even a word spoken about carrying in any form, that four out of five people present were open carrying:
Me, Maggie (the weirdo not carrying), Barron, Jacob, and Kim.
Jacob was also open carrying a moderately large fixed blade knife.
I get crème brulee because it is the only thing you can order in a polite restaurant that is assembled with a blowtorch.
Ry Jones
August 10, 2012
[This QOTD was first posted as a Tweet.
Yesterday after work we had dinner at 13 Coins and Ry told me this as he was about to order dessert.
That Ry owns a flame thrower and makes the fireballs for Boomershoot should provide additional context.—Joe]
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”.
Every choice is a trade-off. “You want armor to be light,
effective, and cheap. Pick any two.” So, sometimes you have to figure out what
are the most critical limiting factors, and go from there.
An ideal gun is light weight, accurate, shoots flat, hits
hard, has little recoil and comfortable ergonomics, has long barrel life, is reliable,
is low maintenance, has inexpensive and light weight ammo, and is easy to
operate… Yaahhh…. Riiiight…..
Back to reality.
The bullet does the work – everything else is just delivery
system. So, to stop a person or other living target (or set off a boomer), the bullet needs enough energy when it hits to do the job. Launching
the bullet imparts the energy into the bullet, and that causes recoil, requires
a gun, etc. Generally speaking, the greater the muzzle energy, the more the
recoil, the more wear on the gun, the greater the cartridge weight required, the
higher the chamber pressure, the more difficulty there is in noise suppression,
etc. So, an ideal cartridge would have some maximum tolerable muzzle energy,
and a minimum retained energy out to some desirable range.
What should those three numbers be? It depends on the
application. For the moment, I’ll consider military rifle cartridges (and perhaps Boomershoot guns). Maybe a
future essay will consider other applications.
If you generate much more than about 2000 ft·lb
of ME, a lot of smaller or less experiences shooters may have a problem flinching
or bruising from significant use, unless well trained and given sufficient
practice. Also, at closer range most bullets with more than 2000 ft·lb
will just waste an increasing percentage of their energy beyond the target,
after full penetration, on the backstop. (For comparison, 2000 ft·lb
is a typical muzzle energy for a .243 Winchester). Much less than about 400 ft·lb
is getting into a very marginal area for stopping power, cover or body armor penetration,
etc. (around 400 ft·lb is a typical 9 mm or 45 ACP round ME). For most
shooters, anything beyond a thousand yards is problematic for all sorts of
reasons, but out to that range an argument can be made, especially in places
like Afghanistan or Iraq, or in farm country with large fields, where distances
are long.
Challenge Summary: Muzzle energy less than 2000 ft·lb, greatest possible retained energy at
1000 yards, preferably at least 400 ft·lb.
It’s easy to find cartridges with less than 2000 ft·lb
muzzle energy. The problem is that most of them in larger calibers (30 cal and
up) are relatively fat, light, low BC bullets, or slow heavy ones that have a
trajectory like a rainbow and a time-of-flight measured in cups of coffee. The
smaller calibers (like .223), bullets are too light to carry much energy for
the distance, and start having severe wind problems at significant ranges. (For
comparison, a 5.56 NATO 77 gr bullet has a bit less than 1400 ft·lb
ME, and a 7.62 NATO 175 gr bullet has about 2600 ft·lb ME.)
It’s also easy to find cartridges that retain at least 400
ft·lb
at 1000 yd: just GO BIG. Heavy bullet, big brass, lots of powder, good to go.
But that generates more recoil, higher pressures, needs heavier guns, has
heavier ammo, more recoil, shorter barrel life, and so-forth.
Retaining energy argues that only high ballistic coefficient
bullets will likely manage to meet this challenge. A 6.5mm mid-weight bullet
with a high BC, like a Lapua 123 gr Scenar (BC of .547) launched at moderate
velocities, can be loaded to have both a ME less than 2000 ft·lb,
and have more than 400 ft·lb
at 1000 yards. One of the few current cartridges that meet this challenge is
the 6.5mm Grendel. It still has 372 ft·lb at 1000 meters in a factory loading, shot from a mid-length barrel. For
comparison, at 1000 yards, a 5.56 NATO 77 gr bullet has less than 200 ft·lb
of energy (similar to a .32 Auto), and a 7.62 NATO 175 gr has retained a bit
under 600 ft·lb
energy (similar to a typical 40 S&W shot from a 5” barrel). Also note that for reliable boomer detonation, a velocity of at least 1500 fps is generally required, and a typical 6.5 Grendel round is still moving faster than that at 700 yards (unless you are using a fairly short barrel).
The 6.5 mm cartridges have an excellent reputation with
hunters, as well as target shooters, and smokeless powder 6.5mm cartridges have
been around for well over a century, so there are a wide range of bullets
available for loading your own for any particular application you might have.
Ponder, think, consider, contemplate….
Via email from antitango:
At Boomershoot we use Potassium Chlorate by the 200 pound drum. You can get it from the heads of matches or make it with bleach and electricity.
As you can tell from the video in larger quantities gummy bears could be dangerous. They could be used for everything from smoke bombs to incendiary devices.
Where is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gummy Bear Violence? They should be calling for the banning of gummy bears.
Boomershoot 2013 registration opens up for everyone Saturday July 7 at 12:00 noon Pacific time.
Entry is done all online on this web page: http://entry.boomershoot.org/.
You can see which positions are still available here: http://entry.boomershoot.org/available.aspx.
Boomershoot is nearly 70% full with just returning staff and Boomershoot 2012 participants. If you want to participate you should be ready to do it at 12:00 as it is likely to fill up fast.
Update 2030 PDT: There was a flurry of last minute entries from staff and Boomershoot 2012 participants and now Boomershoot 2013 is 72% full with only 21 positions still available.
With the 4th falling on a Wednesday this year I would have had to take two days of vacation to properly take advantage of it with a trip to Idaho and blow stuff up. My vacation is a little bit in short supply for all the other things I want to do this year so I let Barron serve as my proxy:
Instead I went sailing for the first time in 40 years. And last time it was on little boat that was maybe 15 feet long.
This was a 36 foot yacht:
And how many yachts do you know that have a switch panel like this:
Close up of the more “interesting” switch: 
Yes! This is my type of boat.
We didn’t actually use the front (or rear) torpedoes. Our entire cruise was within a few miles of U.S. naval and/or Coast Guard ships at all times and had there been torpedo activity in the water near them I suspect they would have noticed and their response would have been less than friendly.
But we did watch the fireworks display from the yacht that evening. It was very nice:
Boomershoot 2013 will soon be open for entry. The schedule for entry is as follows. All times are Pacific Daylight time.
Staff: 6/22/2012 6:00:00 PM.
2012 participants: 6/24/2012 12:00:00 PM.
Everyone: 7/7/2012 12:00:00 PM.
The link for entry is http://entry.boomershoot.org/
If something drastically wrong shows up in the software these times could change but I probably can manually recover without starting over or disrupting the schedule above.
There are some changes I would like to bring to your attention.
1) Clinic and Field Fire Registration is done on the web site as opposed to directly with Gene Econ as has been the case in the past.
2) There is a new Boomershoot event on Friday evening: Private fireballs. For $500 you may shoot a fireball of your own at (up to) “entertainingly close” range. We will supply the rifle, ammo, and a shooting table. This is an experience suitable for even novice shooters. There will be a 7″ square target at relatively close range with a red-dot optic on a .223 caliber rifle. This will be a low recoil, easy sighting, highly exothermic experience.
If you have any questions or experience bugs using the updated entry software please let me know (joeh@boomershoot.org).
I’m about to update the software on the Boomershoot entry web site and reset all the data so I captured the data from the statistics page before all the information is deleted.
| Total | Average per position taken | Average per total positions | |
| Positions Taken |
71 |
– |
0.93 |
| Participants |
152 |
2.14 |
2.00 |
| Shooters |
140 |
1.97 |
1.84 |
| Spotters |
12 |
0.17 |
0.16 |
| Friday High Intensity participants |
23 |
0.32 |
0.30 |
| Saturday High Intensity participants |
27 |
0.38 |
0.36 |
| Dinner participants |
112 |
1.58 |
1.47 |
| Media/Bloggers |
11 |
0.15 |
0.14 |
| ATF Approved |
15 |
0.21 |
0.20 |
| Staff |
26 |
0.37 |
0.34 |
The final numbers were probably a little different because of some last minute changes that didn’t get reflected on the web site but they are very close.
Video from Ry:
We are working on making the fireball for Boomershoot 2013 even better.
Saturday Barron, Ry and I did some testing for Boomershoot 2013.
While there is no particular need to hide the details I’m busy with getting the Boomershoot entry software ready to accept entries and will let Barron and Ry explain what we were trying to accomplish.
But for those of you who want to try and guess here is some of the video we took (edited by Barron):
Here are the critical still images of the tests I was most interested in:
Before.
After.
Before.
After.
Before.
After.
After.
That’s actually pretty devious. I like that.
Ry Jones
June 9, 2012
[Barron, Ry, and I were at the Boomershoot site doing some tests. Most of the tests were failures but one for a potential new target type was successful. It was the new target which prompted Ry’s comment.
For now, I’ll just say that the new target is 48” inches long, holds more Boomerite than any target we have deployed in recent years, and leave it at that.—Joe]
30 Cal Gal sent me an email this morning with a picture of the Western Shooting Journal cover for June (supposedly on newsstands now):
The article was written by Shelley (thank you Shelley!).
I showed it to Ry and his response was, “I’m glad I got it in one shot!”
Yeah. Had it taken four or five shots (it’s happened to me) the teaser line would have been a little embarrassing. Of course at near contact distance with the flame front misses are less likely and having your hair burned could be embarrassing too. Life is full of tradeoffs.
I feel so small.
Ry Jones
May 24, 2012
[This was after viewing some of these pictures of fireballs (click for very high resolution versions):
Ry gets and deserves a lot of praise for his fireballs at Boomershoot (2007, 2011, 2012). But apparently he is experiencing some performance anxiety.
Today is his birthday so I’m going to take him out to lunch and try to cheer him up as we plan our tests (scheduled for June 9, 2012) for Boomershoot Fireball 2013.—Joe]
One of the new things we are planning to offer for Boomershoot 2013 is an opportunity to shoot your own fireball from as “entertainingly close” as I feel comfortable with. Hint, this year Ry was pushing the envelope for my comfort zone.
There will be a very limited number of them, perhaps three to five, they will take place Friday evening, perhaps near dusk, and the price will be $500 each. And to a certain extent you will control the audience. There will always be range safety officers present but if you only want to allow your immediate family or have it be “all yours” you can do that. We will keep all other spectators at least a couple hundred yards away.
The question are: 1) Are there people interested in such an experience? 2) Is there some modification to the scenario such that it would be more attractive to you?
Guy1 (in a suit at a high end furniture store in Bellevue Washington): “So when is Bumbershoot this year?”
Guy2 (wearing a coat that says, “Boomershoot Event Director” on the back): “I don’t know. This is Boomershoot, not Bumbershoot. It’s something different.”
Guy1: “Oh! I’m sorry. What is Boomershoot?”
Guy2 (quickly finishing his transaction): “Boomershoot is a long range precision rifle event with high explosives as the targets.”
Guy1 (eyes get big during a long pause): “That is different.”
Guy2: “Yeah. We don’t hold the event in the city.”
I’ll bet there was only one person looking in this direction when the fireball went up.
I’m on the right with the bullhorn. Ry is on the left near the fireball.
Sarah takes Brady Campaign President to task about his irrational fear of guns:
Dan Gross, President of the nation’s largest gun control group, is afraid of guns. Will he ever overcome his irrational fears?
I’m optimistic. If Dan can conquer his fear of water, then he can conquer his fear of guns.
Then invites him to the gun range:
Dan Gross, Brady Campaign President: Consider this an open invitation to join me at the gun range. Afterwards, maybe we can hit the pool for a few laps.
I think I see a Boomershoot invite in Mr. Gross’s future.