Quick question.  I use telephone books as targets when I want to trap a hollowpoint bullet and check expansion.  I usually tie 3 or 4 together so the target is about 15" thick.  That should be enough to trap most slugs.  Is it better to use dry phonebooks or wet phonebooks?  I normally use wet ones and the bullet goes about 11-12" before it stops and is fully expanded.  Would results be different if I used dry ones?  By the way, my range rules say only paper targets so I can't get a fancy bullet trap or anything.  MJD

IIRC, "wet" more closely simulates actual performance, which seems to be what you are after.

You could also make another "block" of books to put behind the intial 15-18", sort of a fail safe.  Leave this set dry, so you can reuse them without the garage picking up that wet dog smell of rotting paper.  

Bump for more opinions.  MJD

Wet ones do simulate actual performance better than dry books.  Before I started shooting gelatin, I would soak the phone books overnight and tape them together before shooting.  Dry books just don't cause the more uniform expansion that wet ones will.  Sometimes the hollow points just plug up with dry paper and not expand at all.  Gelatin works best but wet phone books do a decent job.

Quoted: Wet ones do simulate actual performance better than dry books.  Before I started shooting gelatin, I would soak the phone books overnight and tape them together before shooting.  Dry books just don't cause the more uniform expansion that wet ones will.  Sometimes the hollow points just plug up with dry paper and not expand at all.  Gelatin works best but wet phone books do a decent job.

Interesting; how does expansion/penetration in Gelatin compare to wet phone books?  How wet did you make the phone books?

Thanks,
fiz

I've used wet phone books quite a bit as some research from several bullet companies said that wet phone books firmly kept together will simulate animal muscle tissue very closely. the bullet companies were Cast Perfomance,Sierra,Nosler and Hornady. I was doing a good bit of resaerch for several different handoads for rifle and handgun and decided to contact the bullet companies that I was using. They said that if you can't afford gel, the wet phone bool method was also really good.
So, I wet the phone books down until there is no more dry areas left. Usually this means leaving them soak over night in a bucket or medium sized garbage can. If you open them up first and then put them in the water, that works pretty good. another way is to open them up and place them on the bottom before you put the water in.
As far as keeping them together, I built a "bullet box" 28 inches deep with 1 1/2 inches of plywood on the end. It was about 16 " square with a target area of 12" in the center. I would put as many phone books in there as I could without cramming them in. If you want to simulate bone a 2x4 works pretty good. Good luck.