Bulletproof Vest Experiment Results
The Green, Green Grass of Home
Back to Procedures
First, I shot the panel with the .38 Special to "Proof" it. Since
the panel was over 20 years old, I
wanted to be sure it would stop a
common pistol round before I tried anything more powerful. It did.
The hollow point expanded and didn't even penetrate the first layer of
kevlar. In fact, it had the weave
of the padding pressed into the
lead of te hollow point. Consider the panel "Proofed."
There's an "urban legend" going around that a .22 bullet will go right through a bulletproof vest.
Myth busted. It didn't even penetrate the first layer of Kevlar.
Next, I shot it with the M1 Carbine. I'd heard that the .30
Carbine bullet could penetrate Kevlar, but
I'd thought it was just
talk. After all, the 7.62x33mm round has less power than a .357
magnum!
Shows what I know. Ouch! I could stick my middle finger down in the hole it made.
Like I said, the .30 Carbine made a big hole. I think these guns are really underrated.
Next, I tried Kel-Tec's .223/5.56 NATO pistol, the PLR-16. It
uses M16 rounds and magazines, and
has a barrel of just under 10
inches. I was hoping it would penetrate the vest.
And I was not disappointed. It made small holes, but the bullets
went right through the vest, both at 2
feet (PBR stands for "Point
Blank Range," not "Pabst Blue Ribbon") and at 5 yards.
Next up was my Granddaddy's old .30-30 rifle, a Savage 99. I
didn't know how the round-nosed
bullet would do against the vest, but I
figured that since the .30 Carbine went through, the much more
powerful
.30-30 would.
Oh, yeah. It went through. Remind me not to stand in front of one of those rifles. Yowza!
Another view of the carnage... this makes me glad I'm not a deer.
Next up, my compound bow. With a 70-pound pull, this thing is
worthy of Odysseus. Surely it would
penetrate the vest.
After all, sharp, pointy objects like icepicks go right through.
Or not. The field point literally bounced off the vest and nearly hit my unindicted co-conspirator!
Maybe a hunting point would be more effective? After all, those
razor-sharp (as my thumb can attest)
blades should cut right through
the Kevlar.
Or not. The sharp, heavy point did seem to go through, but the blades stopped it.
So I removed the blades and just had the sharp, hardened metal point of
the broadhead. This is as
close to a medieval bodkin point as I
could get, in case anyone's wondering how medieval archers
would fare
against modern armor.
Wow, it actually penetrated. Unfortunately for the archery
enthusiast, it penetrated by less than 1mm.
It might be enough if
you poisoned the arrow.
We stabbed it with a butterfly knife, a replica rapier, and a Gerber
lockblade. Unfortunately, the
camera's batteries died, and we
only got pictures of the butterfly knife.
That's about as far as any of them went. With a lunging icepick
grip, we managed to penetrate the
padding and carrier, but not the
actual Kevlar.
I lunged so hard the rapier bent up into a beautiful rainbow-shaped arc
(being a quality replica, it sprung
right back to form afterwards), but
it didn't even break through the padding.
I lunged so hard the Gerber lockblade fell apart in my hand (nothing
broke, and I reassembled it later
that day), but again, it didn't do
diddly.
For the record, I'm over 6'6" and weigh over 300 pounds. I don't
know HOW prisoners put shivs
through bulletproof vests during riots,
unless the shivs are needle-thin and the prisoners spend all day
pumping iron.
Conclusions:
The outdated, pre-1987 manufacture Kevlar panel stopped all of the edged weapons and pistol-caliber
ammunition we threw at it. It did what it was supposed to do, better than I had anticipated. The only
thing that got through that I thought would not was the M1 Carbine round. Even the outdated vest
stopped the threats it was designed to stop, and more.
I feel very secure with the (much newer and stronger) bulletproof vest I own . . . as long as I'm not
facing down a rifle.