‘Front Indoor Wall’

Why a Front Indoor Wall?

We wanted to shoot it for a series of tests to look at the Stopping Power of walls in an average American home.  If you look at the Indoor Wall videos you will see that we shot first through a front indoor wall and saw if it went through the back indoor wall and it was set up in a standard room configuration.

We set it up in the shape of a standard room because we were curious if the rounds would have any fragmentation effects of the first wall which would cause the rounds to lose power upon impact with the second wall.

Admittedly we primarily used solid point ammunition, we explicitly didn’t shoot hollow points or fragable rounds which may have lost mass or pre-expanded upon impact with the first wall.

These are the results of the Front Indoor Walls

Front Indoor Walls Videos

• .22 vs Front Indoor Wall
• .357 Magnum vs Front Indoor Wall
• .40 vs Front Indoor Wall
• .45 vs Front Indoor Wall
• 12 gauge 00 buckshot vs Front Indoor Wall
• 12 gauge 7.5 shot vs Front Indoor Wall
• 12 gauge slug vs Front Indoor Wall

We were really interested in the performance of various rounds fired in a “standard” home setting. Frequently you hear or read about the debate about how far a round would fly around through a house (assuming it doesn’t impact with a person, furniture, etc). You have to worry about the penetration of various rounds when you have family and neighbors to worry about. Of course, here at stoppingpower.info this suggest that we had to build some walls and shoot them and display their performance.

Here’s the animation of the setup:

Walls Setup

Given that it gets expensive to build a setup to test, we built several small tests setups to use during this experiment.
* The front “wall” was framed with standard 2×4 studs, and then faced with 1/2″ drywall on both sides. The front wall was a 2′x2′ panel (we figured that all strikes would hit within this and save some money on our end).
* The back “wall” was framed with 2×4s with a stud in the center of the panel. 1/2″ drywall was applied to the front, while 3/4″ OSB (a chipboard used for exterior wall facing) was applied to the back wall. The back wall was a 4′x4′ panel, because we were concerned about getting all of the pattern, especially on the shotgun strikes.

Basically, think of it as shooting from inside, passing through one interior wall, and then hitting a wall that’s on the outside of the house.

Shooter position

We placed the shooter approximately seven yards away from the front wall of our room. I’d argue that this is a decent range to think about inside a house. If you want to talk about closer ranges, I’d suggest our results will be on par with what you are expecting. If you want to talk about farther distances, then you just have a bigger house than I do.

[[Image:stoppingpower-drywall-front.png]]

Room setup

To approximate a room, we used a room that was 12 ft wide (it doesn’t really matter) by 10 ft deep (this does matter). Again, there’s all types of room dimensions you’ll run across, but at least in the houses I’ve been in, this would be about average.

[[Image:stoppingpower-drywall-front2.png]]

Overhead room setup

This view shows the overall setup, and the camera positioning for each of the shots.

[[Image:stoppingpower-drywall-topdown-view.png]]

Actual Setup

Finally, we have a picture of the actual setup at the range.

[[Image:IndoorWalls-Actual-Setup.jpg]]

Disassembly of a Front Wall

Firearm: Baikal 12 gauge SxS 28″ barrel

Round: Winchester Super-X 1 oz.  hollow point slug 2 3/4″

Distance: 7 yds.

See the 12 gauge shotgun page.

Firearm: Baikal 12 gauge SxS 28″ barrel IZH-43

Round: Winchester SuperSpeed Xtra 7.5 shot 2 3/4″ shell

Distance: 21 ft. and 31 ft. respectively (7 yds. from shooter to front wall plus 10′ to back wall)

Notes:   As you can see in the video, the bird shot had a devastating effect on the front wall. While the back wall did suffer damage to the drywall, no bird shot penetrated the next layer of OSB plywood. The lack of a penetration on the rear wall is visible in the video, in that you see the wall shake, but no exit holes appear in the rear wall. As a matter of fact, many of the the pellets were lodged in the first sheet of drywall.

Setup

We used a new 2′x2′ piece of front wall for each of the shotgun tests. We assumed (correctly it turns out) that each shotgun blast would effectively destroy the front wall and be unusable for further testing. Take a look at Indoor Walls for further setup information.