Welcome!

As noted there to the right, this blog is intended to be a discussion forum primarily concerned with the ‘nuts & bolts’ of how we did our testing and the results we obtained, not a general gun discussion forum.  As such, you’ll find a number of posts already created pertaining to each of the different calibers, as well as some general topics – just go to the appropriate entry and pose a question or comment, then you can follow the discussion either by visiting the blog or subscribing to the RSS feed.  If a discussion thread gets too long, or takes a turn which warrants further attention on its own, we’ll create a new post and shift things over to it.

We reserve the right to moderate comments – to keep them on-topic, and to keep things ‘family friendly’ – but will take a fairly light hand insofar as possible.  Your cooperation on this is appreciated.

If you need to contact any of us directly, you can do so via this email address:

Jim Downey: jimd@ballisticsbytheinch.com

So, welcome – and jump in!

Been a busy month.

Hey everyone,

So, the BBTI relaunch just keeps plugging along. As mentioned previously, it’s hard to do a direct comparison in terms of hits and whatnot, but it is clear that on all fronts the numbers are up. Thanks, everyone!

I’d also like to thank those who have made donations to help defray our costs. Unfortunately, said donations do not help enough, and as a result sometime soon we’ll be adding in some Google Ads. We’re going to try and keep it minimal, and if donations continue to come in . . . well, we’ll see.

I’ve been keeping very busy with a number of different projects. I continue to do a lot of writing for Guns.com, both feature articles and reviews. Check it out!

And I’m about to ‘launch’ the publication of my novel, Communion of Dreams. The Kindle version is now available, and the paperback will be available in a couple of days. When we ‘go live’ with the paperback edition, there will be three days when anyone will be able to download the Kindle version for free. That’s coming Friday, 1/27 through Sunday, 1/29 – watch for it!

Jim Downey

By any measure . . .

Good morning, and welcome to 2012!

The beginning of January I usually do a look-back over the last year, to assess how things with the BBTI site and the blog have done. That’s a little more complicated because of the massive overhaul of the site on Dec. 1, 2011, but I think we can still draw some conclusions.

A year ago I wrote the following:

My, how things have grown in the last year. Sometimes I feel like we’ve created a monster.

Yeah, same feeling this year. Even though comparing numbers head-to-head between the site before the redesign and after is difficult, let’s see what we can do. January – November of 2010 we had a total of 2,437,348 hits. January – November of 2011 we had a total of 3,493,374 hits. That’s an increase in over one million hits for the two time periods where all the metrics are the same.

Now, because of the way the site loads, trying to compare the hits it receives under the old design versus the new design is very much a case of comparing apples to shoes. So, when I say that in December 2010 we had 457,007 total hits and in December of 2011 we had 387,164, it looks like the redesign didn’t lead to any increase in traffic.

This was something pointed out to me a long time ago, but since I had started keeping track of hits, I was kinda stuck with continuing to do that since the data available only goes back for 18 months. As it turns out, I should have been keeping track of ‘visitors’ all along. If we compare the number of actual visitors for December 2010 (17,643) to visitors for December 2011 (22,498) you can see that there was actually a substantial jump in traffic.

One thing which doesn’t need any explanation is which sites were our biggest referrers in 2011 (excluding search engines and this blog):

1. en.wikipedia.org
2. thefiringline.com
3. www.stumbleupon.com
4. www.mouseguns.com
5. www.thefirearmblog.com
6. www.thehighroad.org
7. www.guns.com
8. www.defensivecarry.com
9. www.ar15.com
10. www.reddit.com

Interesting to see how things have shuffled around a bit from previous years. I am glad to see my new writing gig – Guns.com – make the list.

So, there you have it. By any measure, BBTI continues to be a very big success. Thanks to all of you who have cited us in discussions, or posted data from our site in analysis of different firearms, or just told your friends about us. It has been very much appreciated!

Here’s to a great new year to come for all!

Jim Downey

.22 article is now up.

As most know, one of my sidelines is as a feature writer and reviewer over at Guns.com. I don’t cross-promote all my articles or reviews here, but if you’re interested you can find them under my profile there.

Anyway, there’s a new article up there about our .22 tests and the resultant data. Check it out:

To .22 or not to .22, that is the Question: BBTI’s Killer .22 ‘Defense Rounds’ Test Findings

Jim Downey

The Rimfire Podcast interview.

Just thought I would pass along that I had a nice interview with Ken Kowalski, who does The Rimfire Podcast. If you’re interested, it can be downloaded or listened to streaming here: Episode #11 Ballistics By The Inch Interview with Jim Downey. If you’re on Facebook, pop by and “like” his page.

We had a good discussion, mostly about our .22 tests/data, but also talking about the whole project and firearms in general.

Jim Downey

A little chat.

Here’s something for the .460 Rowland fans and those curious: Dear Santa: I want a .460 Rowland AR Upper

Had a bit of fun with that. Though admittedly, I have an offbeat sense of humor…

Jim Downey

Naming names.

I mentioned the other day that we are offering brass from the recent Cylinder Gap tests as a ‘premium’ thank-you for donations received.

Well, that info, as well as recognizing those who have made a donation to BBTI, are now listed on a new page for donations on the site. Of course, only those who wish to have their name listed do – others who prefer to remain anonymous can (and have) done so.

So far I’ve sent out 1,000 cases of .357 brass. I still have something like 1,100 of that cartridge remaining. And about 500 cases each of .38 Short, .38 Long Colt, and over 2,000 cases of .38 Special. I’d love to find homes for all of it.

Jim Downey

Bullets of light. And the other sort.

Wow: a milimeter-long pulse of laser light caught with a camera taking images at a trillion frames per second.

Description from the site:

Volumetric Propagation: The pulse of light is less than a milimeter long. Between each frame, the pulse travels less than half a milimeter. Light travels a foot in a nanosecond and the duration of travel through a one foot long bottle is barely one nanosecond (one billiongth of a second).

There’s complete description of how they do this, along with other videos and images of this effect, there at the MIT site. To see a bunch of great high speed video of actual bullets, check out the work done by Brass Fetcher.

Jim Downey

Via MeFi. Cross posted to my personal blog.

Got brass in pocket?*

OK, as everyone knows, we’ve just put up a whole bunch of new data, most of which was generated during the early part of this past summer.

The bulk of that was generated during the Cylinder Gap tests, shooting .38 Shorts, .38 Longs, .38 Specials, and .357 Magnum rounds. And as a result we had two five-gallon buckets filled with spent brass.

Over the weekend I started doing some re-arranging of my reloading stuff, and it was time to tackle all that brass. I sorted it all. Then started cleaning it. So far I’ve run about 3000 .38 Special cases through the tumbler. And there’s a whole bunch (like 1600) .357 Magnum cases up next. Then the .38 Shorts and the Long Colt cases. This is more brass than I’d use in a couple of lifetimes (and I already have a couple thousand cases from previous tests and my general shooting).

So, here’s the deal: make a donation to BBTI, get some cleaned brass. Yup. For each $10.00, you get 100 cases of your choice (so long as supplies last, postage-paid in the US). This is all premium, brand-name brass, fired once. You can reload it. Or trade it. Or just keep it as proof of your support of our project. Frame it, for all I care.

So, help me out – take some of this brass off my hands.

Jim Downey

*with apologies to Chrissie Hynde.

Excellent initial analysis & discussion.

Check out the post on The Firearm Blog titled: Fascinating Phenomenon in Cylinder Gap Data.

As I noted on our Facebook page, this is exactly the sort of discussion & analysis we hoped to engender by collecting all the data. As I have noted in the past, none of us on the BBTI team are statistics geeks, and all of us have busy lives to demand our attention elsewhere. I am perfectly happy to just do the grunt work, then turn the data loose in the world for others to play with.

Jim Downey

OK, thanks.

I had a bit of a temper tantrum the other day. I won’t apologize, because it was how I really felt. But I will say that a couple of things have happened which have helped me get past my grumpiness.

And those couple of things have been donations. Both of them were decided votes of confidence that our work on BBTI is valued, all our time and effort appreciated.

This may seem silly, because OF COURSE our site is appreciated. Except . . . well, I pretty regularly get emails or come across comments on forums which are complaints. Yup: complaints. That we didn’t test a particular ammo. Or that we’ve slighted some brand or model of firearm by not including it in our tests. Or that we haven’t put our data into this or that form of file so that people can just download it. Or that our data isn’t perfect – that we’ve made mistakes. Or that we haven’t conducted rifle cartridge tests. Et cetera.

It gets old. It gets a little demoralizing, to be honest. The sense of entitlement which some people have is pretty amazing – we’ve busted our asses, worked hard and incurred all the costs of conducting the tests as well as creating and hosting the data on our website, and people bitch because the data isn’t up to *their* standards or expectations. It is very much like we owe it to them to do exactly what they want, and right now.

I don’t mind the criticism. I don’t mind people pointing out where there are areas where we could improve our procedures or range of items tested. We fully recognize that there are more things we could do, ways we can make the data better. And we welcome suggestions on what particular improvements people would like to see – that helps us to make decisions about what is important enough to sink another big chunk of time, money and energy investigating. This isn’t a full-time job for us, after all.

So when I get a note from someone saying “thanks, and oh, have you thought about this…” I welcome it. When someone sends us a donation – of any size – that is a tangible statement that they think our efforts are worthy of supporting. And if someone does send a donation, along with this kind of message, it really means something:

I have used your website for the past two years as a reference tool, and I find the data available amazing. Thank you for putting all of that information together. I was able to donate $x.xx today and I hope the rest of your viewing public gets it and drops you a few dollars as well.

I am sure there is a tremendous personal expense involved in the guns and ammunition used, and I get that you use your personal guns.

Glocks are obviously absent from your data set. I get that you cannot test everything, however with the enormous amount of Glocks in the public, it would seem prudent to at least have one in each caliber and I am positive with your connections they could be provided to you for testing.

You can also just tell me to buzz off…

Thanks again for the awesome data.

Now, *that* is how you make a suggestion which will be remembered.

So, thanks to those who have sent thanks, as well as the donations. It really does mean a lot.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to my personal blog.)

Take a walk on the wild side.

I’m a blockhead.

No, really. Samuel Johnson’s quote establishes it beyond a doubt:

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

For years I listened to people go on and on about how beneficial my writing about being a care-giver was. All the praise, the sharing, the requests to write more, to collect my writings into a book. The final result has been for Her Final Year to sell a grand total of 32 copies, after years of work and months of flogging the book. What a staggering success.

Yup, a blockhead.

Also for years now I’ve listened to countless proclamations of how incredible and valuable Ballistics By The Inch is. How it is an amazing resource for anyone interested in hard data. This has been in discussions on different forums and blogs which I have stumbled upon. And it’s reflected in the hits & usage of the site, as well, with over 8 million hits total and something on the order of 500,000 unique visitors. There’ve been plenty of people who have written me, thanking me, telling me that we should accept donations to support our work. So, for the re-launch we have done just that – added a way for people to show how much they value the site with a small donation. And in the short time we’ve had the new site up we’ve had over 5,000 unique visitors, and gotten just one donation of $10. At that rate, we’d have gotten a stunning total of $1,000 in donations since the start – it wouldn’t even cover the cost of hosting the website.

Yup, a blockhead.

My novel has been downloaded over 35,000 times in the last 5 years. People have told me they love it, that it’s brilliant and just like the classic SF of the golden era. Sometime in the next few weeks we’ll offer a self-published version of the book in hardcopy and for the Kindle. And I’m not so much a blockhead that I expect to actually sell copies of the thing. But I bet – I just bet – that somehow I’ll manage to be disappointed, nonetheless. Probably when I start getting complaints that the book is no longer free.

Screw it. I swear, I am seriously tempted to just shut down all the websites. Yup, BBTI too. Just leave a brief description of the project up with an email address where people can contact me to buy access to the data. Like the song says:

Little Joe never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay
A hustle here and a hustle there
New York City’s the place where
They said hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
They said hey Joe, take a walk on the wild side

But being a blockhead, we’ll see what happens.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to my personal blog.)

And we’re off!

Well, initial coverage is off to a good start, with a couple of excellent pieces in The Firearm Blog and Guns.com. Guns.com should also be posting a piece by me about what I think you can conclude from the new .22 data sometime soon.

And I got the following private message from someone very well known and highly respected on one of the major forums:

Jim,

I’ve got to say that your site really impresses me. I’m sure that most shooters realize how much of an investment in terms of ammunition money is represented in the website, but as an analyst/engineer, I also understand how much time and effort is required to collect and collate data in such a way as to make it easily accessible and useful.

Great work!!

I’m sure in the coming days the news of the relaunch will propagate around the web, but it is always exciting to see it start.

Quick bookkeeping note: last month we had a total of 336,809 hits to the site, bringing the total as of Dec. 1 to 8,110,033. That translates to 12,900 unique visitors, or 45,443 page views. Compared to one year ago, we had 387,198 hit in November 2010, with 13,335 unique visitors and 51,094 page views. December 2010 still remains our high benchmark, with 459,020 hits, 15,622 visitors and 60,799 page hits. Be interesting to see if we can beat that this month! Help spread the word!

Jim Downey

It’s Up!

The new Ballistics By The Inch site is now up and running! Bigger, Faster, And with More DATA! Take a look, spread the word, let us know if there are any glitches or problems.

Jim Downey

8 million hits in the naked city.

Hey everyone -

Long time, no posts. Sorry about that. The summer and fall were filled with a lot of different high-intensity projects. But I have several things to share this morning…

One, we broke 8 million hits to the BBTI website about a week ago. That’s in just under 3 years time. Congrats to one an all, and thanks.

Two, barring unforeseen complications and general catastrophe, *tomorrow* we’ll launch the completely revamped BBTI. It will contain all the data that you know and love, but there will be a lot more. Like:

• Data on our .22 chop tests this summer – 10 different ammos, and also 20 ‘real world’ .22 guns.
• Data on our .460 Rowland chop tests last spring – an impressive cartridge!
• Data on our .223 chop tests this last spring – Yup, it is definitely a rifle cartridge.
• Data on our HUGE ‘Cylinder Gap’ tests this last spring, involving over 6,000 rounds fired. Some very interesting results.
• Revised means of navigating the site, to reflect the way people have been using it, in order to make it faster and easier.
• A comprehensive list of the 99 different ‘real world’ guns we’ve tested so far.
• A bunch of new graphs and charts and data sets for your inner ballistic geek.
• Some new links and other goodies.

So, get the champagne on ice, find your party hats – there’s gonna be a celebration tomorrow as we launch this new ship!

Jim Downey

Promises, promises.

It’s been . . . a long month. Well, no, not this one. The last one. And the one before that, to be honest.

So, while I know that a lot of folks have been eagerly awaiting the new data, let me say . . . just a little longer. Really. My Good Lady Wife, who takes care of the website, has had her hands full with a couple of other projects (including a big one of mine).

The good news is that she tells me that the new website tools she’s learned to use will help make BBTI better than ever. We’ve talked about the website redesign, and I think everyone will be pleased with the new look, the new functionality, and the new data (including .22 and .223 as well as the massive .38/.357 Gap Tests). So hang on – we’ll get it all up as soon as possible.

A quick report on site numbers, while we’re at it: August we had 290,998 hits, bringing us to a grand total of 7,155,801 hits.

For the quickest notification when the redesigned site goes ‘live’ with all the new data, subscribe to this blog, follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Jim Downey

Curious.

Interesting observation: last week I set up two Twitter accounts, one for “HFYJim” to support the care-giving book, the other for “BBTIJim” for my gun-nut stuff. Since then I’ve been learning the ropes about the Twitter culture, getting established, figuring out who to ‘follow’ and gaining a few followers myself. As of this morning, both accounts had about the same number of followers (about a score).

Now, in any sort of social media like this, you’re going to get some amount of SPAM. It’s always interesting to see where, and how it manifests. Just recently, the new Her Final Year blog has started to get some comments which seem OK though generic on the surface but which are actually links to this or that scam website. That tells me that the blog has now started to show up in search engines enough to be something of a target. No big deal, it goes with the territory.

But in the world of Twitter, spam seems to manifest as bogus followers. Not sure why this would be beneficial, but that could just be because I have my computer set up to filter out all the advertising, flash, and pop-up crap from websites. Anyway, of the two accounts I set up at the same time on Twitter, guess which one had attracted a handful of bogus followers who were ostensibly attractive young women with links to ‘pictures’ in their profiles?

It wasn’t the gun-nut one.

Nope. It was the care-giving one. The one tied to AARP, a variety of different Alzheimer’s and hospice organizations, and which I selected to use to follow different news outlets and science bloggers, many of which have significant left-wing political overtones. Not the one tied to a number of firearms-related sites and bloggers, some of which also have a decidedly right-wing political stance.

Curious, that. Now, this is just a snapshot, and it may be that I’ll see the same thing happen with my BBTIJim profile as time goes on. But I thought it was interesting.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to the my personal blog.)

Lookit the purty colors!

Nice graph and discussion about muzzle energy comparisons over barrel length using our data over on The Firing Line:

Full thread here: Light rounds in short barrels.

Jim Downey

Wait, where did the last two months go?

So, as my last couple of posts have indicated, almost my entire focus has been on . . . well, a lot of things, to be honest. The first part of May was the marathon BBTI testing, then there was another weekend of that in June. And a major push to get the garden in and secure from the deer and other critters. Weekly articles for Guns.com. Even a bit of conservation work here and there. But yeah, the vast majority of time and energy has gone into working on Her Final Year, the care-giving memoir.

So, almost all of my attention has been turned inwards. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it does show up in how things have been going for the two projects I tend to track: downloads of Communion of Dreams, and hits to the BBTI site.

I must admit, part of what’s happened with Communion of Dreams has been due to frustration with the publisher who had been wanting to publish the book. After all the work I put into multiple revisions, he went silent on me in the middle of sorting out the minor contract issues. Not a “we’ve reconsidered” or anything, in fact the last thing I had heard was a confirmation that they were committed to doing the book. But for six months now I haven’t had a response to my emails. I’ve pretty much just given up on it, poured my attention into the other projects. And that has been reflected in declining downloads – just 231 in May and 181 in June.

BBTI is a different matter, since my excitement over that hasn’t changed. We did get a bunch of excellent data during the last two test sequences, and plenty of people are eagerly waiting to see that – and we’re eager to provide it. But I haven’t done any real ‘support’ of the site, and so monthly hits have dropped off there to 279,656 in May and 256,179 in June.

But soon, soon I’ll turn my attention back to these things. First a revamp of the BBTI site to include the new data sets and freshen it up a bit. Then with CoD, we’ll see what happens – if Her Final Year launches successfully, it may mean that I’m able to attract a different publisher. Or, having gone the route of self-publishing once, I may just decide to do the same with the novel. Like I said, we’ll see.

As noted last week, we *are* closing in on being done with Her Final Year. I think it will be a very polished & professional product, much more so than most self-published books. Certainly, the amount of work which has gone into it has been massive. We’ll probably have the book(s) ready here in a couple of days, and then may have the supporting website ready for a test drive this next week – I’ll keep you posted.

Cheers to one and all . . .

Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the my personal blog.)

Happy Father’s Day.

I think they did a good job with the photos they chose to go with my text:

One of my earliest memories is of shooting with my dad. I was about five or six. We were out at a relative’s place in the country. Plinkin’ cans with .22s. Then my dad let me shoot his service revolver for the first time, helping me hold up the Smith & Wesson Model 10 he had been issued by his department. Yeah, he was a cop.

Happy Father’s Day, everyone.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to the my personal blog.)

Coming Attractions.

Just a quick note – crunching the data from the most recent tests is about done, and we’ll also be doing some revamping of the BBTI website.

But more important than that, this weekend we’ll finally be doing the .22 caliber BBTI chop tests that people have been asking about for years. We’re testing ten different .22 ammos (from .22 short on up) as well as benchmarking almost a score of ‘real world’ guns with the same ammo. Should be a fun weekend!

Things to look forward to!

Jim Downey