Deal wood is a big deal
Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2013 8:30 am
I bought a Weihrauch HW 35 in the UK in 1984 and used to do some indoor plinking in bad weather in winter. Soon after I acquired a scope I wanted to try and shoot the head off a matchstick which I set up, and used a 1/2 inch plywood board as backstop. This had always been sufficient for the old and useless mystery brand underlever I had left behind in India. Unsurprisingly my first shot missed the match-head but I was surprised to see that the pellet had gone through the 1/2 inch plywood and had done some minor damage (a depression) to the wall of the room. That made me more conscious of what types of backstop would be effective.
So I was fascinated to read about the deal wood test in which a 12 inch square and 1 inch thick deal wood board is shot at twenty times from a distance of five feet and an air rifle deemed to have passed the test if none of the pellets pass through.
A week ago I decided to subject my own air rifles to the deal wood test. That was when the fun started
Deal wood is a type of pine wood that is light, strong and easy to saw wood that grows in Europe and "north Asia". It is seen most commonly in India as part of packaging for crates. I suspect most deal wood is imported. I was unable to discover if deal wood grows anywhere in India. When I was a boy all packaging material - be it for refrigerators or books or fruit, was made of deal wood. But nowadays deal wood boxes are rarely seen - at least by me. Packaging is almost invariably cardboard with thermocole and other modern, lighter and cheaper material. I see deal wood most often in the market where some fruit are still shipped in deal wood boxes made of strips of deal wood that are 5 mm or 1 cm thick (0.2 to 0.4 inches)
I contacted several wood dealers asking for deal wood. None of them had any.I Googled for dealers who made packaging boxes from wood and found a few but had no success in locating one who had deal wood to sell. In frustration I fell back to the last resort - that is using boxes that were used to package fruit. I managed to get hold of one and documented a few points in photographs which I would like to highlight before I post some comments on the issue.
This is an image of deal wood from a box. As you can see the wood has areas of knots and parts where seams and splits run along the grain.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JNY4I ... sp=sharing
I was only able to get 5 mm and 10 mm boards and I used duct tape to firmly bind 2 x 10mm and 1 x 5 mm strip to get 25 mm (about 1 inch).
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JNY4I ... sp=sharing
Both my Orion and IHP 35 "passed" this test by failing to penetrate more than halfway through this collection of boards - and I shot the board from just 1 foot (and not 5 feet as stipulated) But I was unable to shoot more than 2 shots from each rifle since the board was not big enough.
Finally I simply strapped together two boards to make a thickness of about 3/4 inch and got the following result (see photo)
1. The IHP pellet caused a split on the other side but did not penetrate
2. The Orion pellet caused a sliver of wood to be sheared off, but the pellet itself remained embedded (see photo) - so the pellet did not go through
Image: view of 3/4 inch deal wood board from the side opposite the face that was shot. Each pellet has cracked or split the wood over a greater distance than its actual depth of penetration and another pellet in the same spot can cause penetration.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JNY4I ... sp=sharing
These experiences have brought up a lot of questions in my mind
1. Deal wood itself is not freely available and most of it is probably imported. After shooting 20 test shots it has to be discarded.
2. Wood can be of variable quality with knots and seams. There is no scientifically acceptable "standard"
3. The law does not stipulate how far apart each pellet penetration should take place. One pellet could cause a crack/split or weakness in the wood resulting in the next pellet that lands nearby to penetrate the wood causing an unfair fail of deal wood test.
4. In this day and age a chronometer or even a smartphone can be used to calculate pellet energy as long as pellet weight is known. Muzzle velocity is not the issue. It is pellet energy that matters.
I believe the deal wood test as defined in the 1962 law is archaic. In my view the way to define the law precisely is to calculate the pellet energy required to penetrate a 1 inch thick board of deal wood using standard defined pellets of specific weight and shape and by repeating the test 1000 times and taking the average to correct for error, That will require a lot of deal wood boards initially but once defined properly deal wood will not be required any more. Once the pellet energy (of a standard pellet) required to consistently penetrate deal wood of 1 inch thickness is defined, the legal limit can be defined as pellet energy lower than that limit.
So I was fascinated to read about the deal wood test in which a 12 inch square and 1 inch thick deal wood board is shot at twenty times from a distance of five feet and an air rifle deemed to have passed the test if none of the pellets pass through.
A week ago I decided to subject my own air rifles to the deal wood test. That was when the fun started
Deal wood is a type of pine wood that is light, strong and easy to saw wood that grows in Europe and "north Asia". It is seen most commonly in India as part of packaging for crates. I suspect most deal wood is imported. I was unable to discover if deal wood grows anywhere in India. When I was a boy all packaging material - be it for refrigerators or books or fruit, was made of deal wood. But nowadays deal wood boxes are rarely seen - at least by me. Packaging is almost invariably cardboard with thermocole and other modern, lighter and cheaper material. I see deal wood most often in the market where some fruit are still shipped in deal wood boxes made of strips of deal wood that are 5 mm or 1 cm thick (0.2 to 0.4 inches)
I contacted several wood dealers asking for deal wood. None of them had any.I Googled for dealers who made packaging boxes from wood and found a few but had no success in locating one who had deal wood to sell. In frustration I fell back to the last resort - that is using boxes that were used to package fruit. I managed to get hold of one and documented a few points in photographs which I would like to highlight before I post some comments on the issue.
This is an image of deal wood from a box. As you can see the wood has areas of knots and parts where seams and splits run along the grain.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JNY4I ... sp=sharing
I was only able to get 5 mm and 10 mm boards and I used duct tape to firmly bind 2 x 10mm and 1 x 5 mm strip to get 25 mm (about 1 inch).
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JNY4I ... sp=sharing
Both my Orion and IHP 35 "passed" this test by failing to penetrate more than halfway through this collection of boards - and I shot the board from just 1 foot (and not 5 feet as stipulated) But I was unable to shoot more than 2 shots from each rifle since the board was not big enough.
Finally I simply strapped together two boards to make a thickness of about 3/4 inch and got the following result (see photo)
1. The IHP pellet caused a split on the other side but did not penetrate
2. The Orion pellet caused a sliver of wood to be sheared off, but the pellet itself remained embedded (see photo) - so the pellet did not go through
Image: view of 3/4 inch deal wood board from the side opposite the face that was shot. Each pellet has cracked or split the wood over a greater distance than its actual depth of penetration and another pellet in the same spot can cause penetration.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JNY4I ... sp=sharing
These experiences have brought up a lot of questions in my mind
1. Deal wood itself is not freely available and most of it is probably imported. After shooting 20 test shots it has to be discarded.
2. Wood can be of variable quality with knots and seams. There is no scientifically acceptable "standard"
3. The law does not stipulate how far apart each pellet penetration should take place. One pellet could cause a crack/split or weakness in the wood resulting in the next pellet that lands nearby to penetrate the wood causing an unfair fail of deal wood test.
4. In this day and age a chronometer or even a smartphone can be used to calculate pellet energy as long as pellet weight is known. Muzzle velocity is not the issue. It is pellet energy that matters.
I believe the deal wood test as defined in the 1962 law is archaic. In my view the way to define the law precisely is to calculate the pellet energy required to penetrate a 1 inch thick board of deal wood using standard defined pellets of specific weight and shape and by repeating the test 1000 times and taking the average to correct for error, That will require a lot of deal wood boards initially but once defined properly deal wood will not be required any more. Once the pellet energy (of a standard pellet) required to consistently penetrate deal wood of 1 inch thickness is defined, the legal limit can be defined as pellet energy lower than that limit.