I Know It Works

[stickmaker]

How many have heard that a silk scarf or handkerchief will catch a bullet?

This isn't myth; there are multiple accounts, many of them well documented. In the Twenties and Thirties, thick, quilted silk vests were sold as protection against bullets. However, I've never seen it happen.

I bought some cheap silk handkerchiefs (around $1.75 each + S&H) and dedicated one to test this.

I tried multiple arrangements. Even the one most likely to succeed failed miserably. That was: Handkerchief folded into multiple layers as if to put in a pocket, stapled at the top to cardboard with nothing but a couple more layers of cardboard behind, being hit with a 250 grain lead flat point .45 Colt Cowboy Action Load. That was a big, slow, lead bullet with a flat nose.

Maybe, if the bullet had been a softer alloy, the results might have been different. I think the main failing was that this silk was low quality. (Which is why I was willing to shoot at it. :-)

Comments

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

I've read that silk has the strength of the same weight of steel (old Chinese drilling rigs used silk cables). So I believe that a properly made silk vest could stop some bullets, but most modern silk scarves I've seen I wouldn't trust to offer more protection than the same number of layers of window screening.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

There are two well-documented accounts by a doctor in the late Nineteenth Century of autopsies he performed on someone who was shot through the silk handkerchief in their shirt pocket. Both men (IIRC, they were professional gamblers) died, because even though the handkerchief caught the bullet, the silk stretched so much the bullet still penetrated deeply enough to be lethal.

In both cases he was able to extract the bullet by pulling on the handkerchief.

Didn't Mongol warriors wear silk vests? Not to stop arrows, but so the arrows could be extracted by pulling on the silk.

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

The wikipedia article on "Mongolian armour" says that is the case. So it looks like silk is strong enough that it isn't torn by the bullet or arrow if there is something behind the silk that will stop the projectile, and the silk is strong and undamaged enough to pull the the surrounded projectile out by. If you just had a square of the silk clamped down and open air behind it, the silk could get stressed to the breaking point before the projectile lost its velocity. I hadn't heard about this stuff before, and am finding it fascinating.

[kengr]

I suspect that the Colt 45 round was a bad choice. Remember, the .45 auto was introduced because the then current service revolver didn't have enough stopping power.

at the other end of the scale, I'm told that a heavy jacket will stop a Colt *.25* auto .

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

This was the old .45 Colt revolver round, not the .45 ACP. Though both use big, slow bullets.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I bet this would stop one...

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Both spider silk and silkworm silk are stronger for the weight than steel. The problem with silkworm silk is that it's too elastic. There are two types of spider silk, one of which is even more elastic, but the other is just about perfect for ballistic vests. In fact, researchers have been working for over a decade on methods to culture this protein to spin into fibers just for ballistic vests.