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Thread: Cover in the Home?

  1. #41
    Murder Machine, Harmless Fuzzball TCinVA's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dov View Post
    I don't recall ever hearing about hanging clothes stopping bullets, any idea on parameters of that? Like hundreds of garments? Packed tight like the books on a bookshelf?
    Like a normal sized closet with hanging clothes in it fired longways into the center of the hanging clothes. (Often built into rooms where that would be the direct line of fire from a hallway) The clothes themselves tend to move when impacted, running into other clothes that also move and all of them start to pile up making the bullet have to work pretty hard. It tends to work great for low velocity projectiles at least.

    I've never seen a situation where somebody launched a .30-06 into a closet, but I have seen a number of handgun rounds stopped by the free hanging clothes in a closet. Bullet goes through those thin sheet metal folding doors like a knife through warm butter and then gets stopped by a few shirts and a sportcoat.
    3/15/2016

  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by TCinVA View Post
    Like a normal sized closet with hanging clothes in it fired longways into the center of the hanging clothes. (Often built into rooms where that would be the direct line of fire from a hallway) The clothes themselves tend to move when impacted, running into other clothes that also move and all of them start to pile up making the bullet have to work pretty hard. It tends to work great for low velocity projectiles at least.

    I've never seen a situation where somebody launched a .30-06 into a closet, but I have seen a number of handgun rounds stopped by the free hanging clothes in a closet. Bullet goes through those thin sheet metal folding doors like a knife through warm butter and then gets stopped by a few shirts and a sportcoat.
    Hmm, if I ever get a chance might do some testing on that, gf has a part time Craft business we could certainly collect enough scraps from her craft making to set something up without having to spend much extra money on materials.

    And she got a new machine she needs to do a bunch of test projects with just to learn how to use it fully anyway. She'd probably welcome a contribution from the ammo budget for more cloth

  3. #43
    Murder Machine, Harmless Fuzzball TCinVA's Avatar
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    If she's in that business she probably has access to some cheap racks you can hang clothes on and give it a run just to see what happens.

    If you look at how most houses are built, you will see rooms adjacent to one another sharing a closet space. In other words, the wall that "separates" the two rooms is in fact 1/2 a closet on one side and on the other. Often what I call these "closet walls" are butted up against a hallway meaning if you fire a shot down the hallway, that ends up being your backstop. It usually works pretty good at keeping rounds inside the house.
    3/15/2016

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by TCinVA View Post
    If she's in that business she probably has access to some cheap racks you can hang clothes on and give it a run just to see what happens.

    If you look at how most houses are built, you will see rooms adjacent to one another sharing a closet space. In other words, the wall that "separates" the two rooms is in fact 1/2 a closet on one side and on the other. Often what I call these "closet walls" are butted up against a hallway meaning if you fire a shot down the hallway, that ends up being your backstop. It usually works pretty good at keeping rounds inside the house.
    Well she does have racks for displaying products on at the shows, but don't think she'd be willing to donate any of the ones she uses to place downrange

    Though does have one that just broke and was replaced, think we still have broken rack around and could probably use zipties or something to make it work for a range test.

    She also enjoys shooting, grew up on a farm, and has her own Glocks, Shotgun, and rifle and would be all for conducting such a test.

  5. #45
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    If a round goes through my wife's clothes, and I survive - I will get in the SUV and drive away, never to be seen again. On the issue, I can't see any practical way I end up behind the clothes in the walk in closets. Sure, weird things happen.

  6. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by Glenn E. Meyer View Post
    If a round goes through my wife's clothes, and I survive - I will get in the SUV and drive away, never to be seen again. On the issue, I can't see any practical way I end up behind the clothes in the walk in closets. Sure, weird things happen.
    The tactical garment rack is the answer!
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  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by JclInAtx View Post
    The tactical garment rack is the answer!
    Name:  61ob2bZKuxL._AC_SX679_.jpg
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    The Handyman's BodyBunker!

    It could only improved with the Handyman's secret weapon

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPbubMAYN7g

  8. #48
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    You know I'd never have guessed the clothes closet thing but in a way it's not as surprising once you think about it.

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    You think about the way nets are set up to catch people moving at terminal velocity or whatever...if you strung that net tight, the guy would go right through. Similarly, if you take a thin piece of sheet metal that's ten feet square and only support the edges, you could probably hit it dead centre with a hammer and barely leave a mark, but if you support it so that the metal is held rigidly in place with very little unsupported area, you could punch through it with the same hammer. This comes up in boat design: you have to make decisions when framing the hull about the spacing of the bulkheads and stringers etc, and the amount of unsupported area you have between framing members. If you have huge areas between frame members, it gets floppy, which is a problem you have to address by thickening the hull; if you really tightly space the framing you can have a super thin hull, but it gets increasingly vulnerable to penetrative damage.

    I bet the clothing hung from hangers is loose enough that it flops backward a bit like the net is doing in the picture above, and each layer does that a little more and slows the bullet a little more and that's why that works.

    Really interesting observation.
    This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff

  9. #49
    Yeah when you think about it make sense, there are the archery target/backstops that us many layers of Mesh I used to have one of those.

    And that's somewhat how Kevlar works using multiple layers.

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Dov View Post
    I know drywall is useless for stopping bullets.

    But was wondering about 2 specific common elements in houses and apartments that should provide at least some actual ability to stop bullets.

    One was the length of a wall (ie the studs in the interior wall) like if using edge of interior wall to cover a window or door how many studs does it take to make a difference vs 9mm/40? Or vs Shotgun or rifle? I've never worked construction, and haven't done house wiring since high school so don't recall for certain the typical stud spacing for interior walls.

    Other was Hot water heater, hadn't considered them as good cover because I've only seen empty ones shot in farm junk piles. But Water heater in a home is going to be filled with water, which is very good at stopping bullets. And with essentially endless water being supplied, it would actually take several holes before leakage overwhelmed flow rate filling the water heater.

    Also had epiphany the other day when thinking about improving dryfire setup, realized not only would a 12x20" AR500 target https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082WRGK2N...ing=UTF8&psc=1 make a very safe target/backstop for dryfire, it would also be superb cover in a home invasion.
    A guard dog would be more handy.
    #RESIST

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