Katana cuts .50 cal. bullets in half - video clip

[Eric_425]

This is what's called a culture barrier. I'm quite frankly surprised that they put this whole thing together, since I'm pretty sure they knew the blade would be destroyed with the .50 BMG.

You're a white kid who's never been to japan, or any other asian countries, have you? Except maybe as a tour group? But you like anime and video games and bushido and eastern martial arts and all that?

No offense, but we're not some mystical people with super reverence following ancient ceremonies and going on and on about our sacred elders and self-sacrifice and incredible codes of honor and all that crap. Most of that stuff died a long time ago. Hell, go down to a major airport or tourist spot and you'll almost always find a couple wierdos looking for ugly american girls, so they can seduce and marry them to get american citizenship. There's kids who tell their "elders" to STFU. In our pop culture, we've become largely westernized. Martial arts are seen as somewhat of an oddity, a little ridiculous, like it is in the states. The world is drawing together, and we're part of that. It's not surprising at all that they'll destroy a katana. Anything for a buck.

 

[Gollnick]

7 rounds to snap the blade in half seems really impressive.

Not really. That SOG, according to the text, has taken 17 rounds of .45 and it shows no signs of even a single chip.

Granted, yes, there is a significant difference (significantly more than the .05 numeric difference would suggest) between a .45 pistol and a .50 machine gun. But, even so, I was personally surprised at how poorly the sword did.

 

[Gollnick]

And yes, there is a cultural difference.

The sword gets cleaned before the "fight" and the Browning Machine Gun gets cleaned (probably with equal reverence) AFTER the fight.

 

[yuzuha]

How do we know that the bullets were travelling at mil-spec speed?
They could have been downloaded to a level that was just high enough to cycle the action.

I rather doubt it considering that even fragments were blasting through the concrete blocks and the last bullet seems to have even bent the tang. Probably standard M2 ball ammo since it is the most commonly available, and I doubt they used the tungsten core AP rounds or they would have mentioned it.

These bullets are not lead like regular bullets, they are made of steel with a bit of lead inside the nose, for added weight, and a full brass jacket, so this was basically steel bullets on a steel blade (perhaps the sword maker didn't realize this)

Chewed the crap out of that sword, delaminating it in places and even put a vertical crack in the back. The bullets did chip the edge out and you can see that it did split some of them. Watching the slow motion, you can see that there was a slight vertical spread and only 3 bullets hit the same place.

Of the 3 that hit the exact same spot on the blade. Of these 3 the 1st one chipped it (and appeared to have been split in the process), second delaminated it and spread it out a bit so the 3rd one hit smack on the soft steel back between the spread outer steel lamination. That last one hit a broad enough area that it delivered most of its energy to the target, shattered the back and even appeared to bend the tang in the holder.

 

[yuzuha]

Not really. That SOG, according to the text, has taken 17 rounds of .45 and it shows no signs of even a single chip.

Granted, yes, there is a significant difference (significantly more than the .05 numeric difference would suggest) between a .45 pistol and a .50 machine gun. But, even so, I was personally surprised at how poorly the sword did.

Yes but that is a lead pistol bullet with a muzzle energy of 356 foot pounds, not a steel bullet with a muzzle energy of 12,221 foot pounds (34 times the energy of a 45). Makes a big difference.

As for wiping the blade. Well, if I'd put as much work into making anything that requires as much as making and polishing a traditional katana, I'd treat it with reverence too. That was about a month's work up in smoke.

 

[WadeF]

That was a pretty funny video. I think if they put the old SOG Tiger Shark up there it would last just as long if not longer. Doesn't conclude much to blast a sword up if you don't shot up some other blades as well.

It looks like after the first few shots the chip in the sword got deeper and the final shot was able to make contact with a wider area of metal (the sharp edge was gone) and the bullet was able to deliver more force.

 

[Gollnick]

If the bullet is steel, what that changes is those cohesive forces. Steel also has a much better crystal structure than lead even if it's not hardened.

But, the bullet is probably not hardened steel which the blade is. But, even so, it's just a matter of physics. Is the force generated by the deceleration of only a very small part of the bullet going to exceed the cohesive forces that hold the atoms together? The answer is probably yes.

If the bullet is steel, then the amount of energy dissipated as heat in the colision is significantly greater. That makes me wonder again about the possiblity of localized hardening of the blade.

On the other hand, there is the possibility of localize detempering. I don't know what the final heat-treatment temperature on a Japanesses sword is.

 

[Gollnick]

It looks like after the first few shots the chip in the sword got deeper and the final shot was able to make contact with a wider area of metal (the sharp edge was gone) and the bullet was able to deliver more force.

Exactly.

It's a bit like the old parlor trick of tearing a phonebook in half. The trick is not to try and tear all the pages at a time. This is why knives are thin. The surface area of the cutting edge is vanishingly small. They attack just a very tiny area at a time. But, when those bullets start hitting a larger area, more of the kinetic energy of the bullet is transfered to the sword and it ends up breaking.

 

[spyder8]

if they used incerary bullets (can burn through steel) or green-tipped mil spec. ammo (has a tungsten penitrator that can perice very heavy armor) that sword will have no chance

btw a .50 cal bullet can put a hole through a man hole cover at 2000 meters with mil spec ammo. also i dont see how a sword can stand up at point blank range when the bullet can also go through a car engine at over a mile

 

[Gollnick]

btw a .50 cal bullet can put a hole through a man hole cover at 2000 meters with mil spec ammo. also i dont see how a sword can stand up at point blank range when it can also go through a car engine at over a mile

Imagine the internationally-famous Bladeforums.com Marching Marimba Band under the direction of yours most truly, but without instruments. Imagine a line of maybe 187 people all standing side-by-side (and that's not including our marching Timpani Drum section). Instead of playing their marimbas, each one is holding the hand of the person to his left and also of the person to his right (the exceptions being the person on each end).

Imagine what would happen if that marching band hit a piece of paper pulled across their path. What would happen is that they would crash right through the paper because their force is greater than the strength of the paper.

Imagine what would happen if that band were marching along and all the sudden marched right into the Great Wall of China. Bam! They would all plant their faces right into the wall. They would all be stopped in their tracks. But the wall would stand because it is stronger than the force they exert.

But, imagine what would happen if they marched into a thin sign post standing up in the road. Just one person would hit the post and the rest would march on unobstructed. That poor guy who hit the post would be stopped in his tracks. But the rest would march on. That poor guy who hit the post is linked to the others because he's holding hands with the guy on each side. But, those links are only so strong. Eventually, as the portion of the band on this left and the portion on his right both continue marching forward, those grips are going to give up. What we'll be left with is one poor guy with his face planted into a steel post and two half-bands marching on... now disconnected.

A bullet is like a marching band. It's made of of many individual members, atoms. Each atom is held to the adjoining atoms by cohesive forces. There are actually several different cohesive forces in action here, but that doesn't matter. For this discussion, they can be lumped together and just called "cohesive force."

A bullet hitting a piece of paper is a bit like a marching band hitting a piece of paper. The force of the marching band is greater than the strength of the paper, greater than the cohesive forces holding the atoms that comprise the fibers in the paper together, so the paper breaks and the band marches through.

A bullet hitting a manhole cover is much the same.

A bullet hitting suitable armour, though, is a bit like our band hitting the Great Wall. The armour is stronger and so it stops the bullet.

But, a bullet hitting a knife is lot like our band hitting that sign post.

 

[yoda4561]

You're a white kid who's never been to japan, or any other asian countries, have you? Except maybe as a tour group? But you like anime and video games and bushido and eastern martial arts and all that?

No offense, but we're not some mystical people with super reverence following ancient ceremonies and going on and on about our sacred elders and self-sacrifice and incredible codes of honor and all that crap. Most of that stuff died a long time ago. Hell, go down to a major airport or tourist spot and you'll almost always find a couple wierdos looking for ugly american girls, so they can seduce and marry them to get american citizenship. There's kids who tell their "elders" to STFU. In our pop culture, we've become largely westernized. Martial arts are seen as somewhat of an oddity, a little ridiculous, like it is in the states. The world is drawing together, and we're part of that. It's not surprising at all that they'll destroy a katana. Anything for a buck.

#1: Bite me, for one thing I ain't white. I'm one of these strange "asians" that I know nothing about.

#2: I don't give a damn about japanese pop culture, it's really wierd, and quite frankly creeps me out. I also don't see what anything in your post has to do with this thread, save for the last two sentences.

#3: I honestly don't think you meant to be a flaming jerk in your post, perhaps being from japan as you seem to imply english isn't your first language. Please refrain from assuming I have all these pre-conceived notions about Japan, it's just not that important to me aside from the beautiful blades that they make.

Now then, that being said those katana's take a load of work to make. Someone correct me if i'm wrong, but that looks like a bladesmith of some repute. The blade appeared to be fully polished, made of folded tamahagane or whatever the correct technical term is(hard to tell with the video quality, but when the guy is holding the broken sword at the end you can see some detail) and I have to wonder just what motivated destroying this sword. Sheer curiosity I can understand, but the video was just so damned funny in it's presentation I have to wonder who sponsored them/made the video. It wouldn't have struck me as such a waste if the blade were unpolished and made of homogenous steel.

 

[Will P.]

This is what's called a culture barrier. It's not about making it perform better, it's out of respect for what it is, and how such blades are meant to be treated.

Speaking as another Asian.... it's just a piece of steel. Now the Three Gorges Dam and the associated urban relocation and growth, there's something of God in that, or at least the Devil.

About the video...
1. The katana blade has a low mass, and cannot absorb a great deal of energy.
2. Hence, not a lot of force is being dissapated when the bullets hit the blade and fragment.
3. Therefore the object behind the katana must recieving near to the full energy of the bullets, if not the full penetrating effect.

That wall of unreinforced concrete blocks should be GONE. M2 rounds make things disintegrate. I suspect that Ebbtide is right and that the rounds were downloaded. The steel in 'em made the chips before being deflected rather than being cut - it takes a lot less energy to push aside a small, fast piece of steel than to split it.

The sword gets cleaned before the "fight" and the Browning Machine Gun gets cleaned (probably with equal reverence) AFTER the fight.

The M2 doesn't need that much cleaning. We do fairly elaborate cleaning and inspection ritual for the M16A2 though, because the gas tubes feed the gasses directly back into the reciever and the bolt gets covered in carbon. The XM8 will change things - there's a a rod that the gasses contact that pushes the bolt back.

 

[Ebbtide]

I rather doubt it considering that even fragments were blasting through the concrete blocks and the last bullet seems to have even bent the tang. Probably standard M2 ball ammo since it is the most commonly available, and I doubt they used the tungsten core AP rounds or they would have mentioned it.

These bullets are not lead like regular bullets, they are made of steel with a bit of lead inside the nose, for added weight, and a full brass jacket, so this was basically steel bullets on a steel blade (perhaps the sword maker didn't realize this)

Chewed the crap out of that sword, delaminating it in places and even put a vertical crack in the back. The bullets did chip the edge out and you can see that it did split some of them. Watching the slow motion, you can see that there was a slight vertical spread and only 3 bullets hit the same place.

Of the 3 that hit the exact same spot on the blade. Of these 3 the 1st one chipped it (and appeared to have been split in the process), second delaminated it and spread it out a bit so the 3rd one hit smack on the soft steel back between the spread outer steel lamination. That last one hit a broad enough area that it delivered most of its energy to the target, shattered the back and even appeared to bend the tang in the holder.

Well, the .50 cal round that I have sitting on my desk doesn't seem to have a steel core. Granted it is 70's vintage. Just lead and a copper (not brass) jacket.

With the popularity of .50 cal rifles, there are tons reloaders and specialty ammo makers, like Black Hills. If you're going to own and feed MaDeuce, it would be very cost effective to reload. That goes for Fifty cal rifles too.

I'm not saying that they were light loads, just that it is possible. And not at all difficult.

As Gollnick said a parlor trick like tearing a phone book in half.
On one of the forums someone mentioned showing new recruits this bullet splitting with an axe. Except the shooter (unknown to the recruits) was using a shot load in his pistol!

Since I don't speak or read the language, could someone tell me if they were selling/promoting those swords?

 

[Eric_425]

#1: Bite me, for one thing I ain't white. I'm one of these strange "asians" that I know nothing about.

#2: I don't give a damn about japanese pop culture, it's really wierd, and quite frankly creeps me out. I also don't see what anything in your post has to do with this thread, save for the last two sentences.

#3: I honestly don't think you meant to be a flaming jerk in your post, perhaps being from japan as you seem to imply english isn't your first language. Please refrain from assuming I have all these pre-conceived notions about Japan, it's just not that important to me aside from the beautiful blades that they make.

Now then, that being said those katana's take a load of work to make. Someone correct me if i'm wrong, but that looks like a bladesmith of some repute. The blade appeared to be fully polished, made of folded tamahagane or whatever the correct technical term is(hard to tell with the video quality, but when the guy is holding the broken sword at the end you can see some detail) and I have to wonder just what motivated destroying this sword. Sheer curiosity I can understand, but the video was just so damned funny in it's presentation I have to wonder who sponsored them/made the video. It wouldn't have struck me as such a waste if the blade were unpolished and made of homogenous steel.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, sorry if it came across that way. English is my second language, but I've lived here for 15 years, since I was 4, so I'm perfectly fluent in it. But maybe I said it wrong with pop culture. I mean mainstream culture.

Having an anime picture as your avatar and talking about cleaning the katana as a cultural difference, "respect for the blade" and all that sounded like you thought we were still following those crazy old notions. I guess it kind of bothered me in the sense that(I imagine) a modern indian might be bothered by seeing a bunch of white hippies playing indian in a teepee and playing with peace pipes and babbling about respect for the great mother earth.

In american videos, you can see people destroying cars and whatnot, which are far more expensive than a sword, so I didn't see why you'd have thought it was shocking. But you say you're not white, so maybe you're not in the states? Where do you live then? Which town, country, are you from? Or are you a non-native asian? You were talking about cultural differences, so it sounds like you must not have been back for a while to not know much about modern asian culture? Anyways, I try to be polite, but sometimes words don't seem the same if your face isn't there too. They say most communication is nonverbal. No offense intended if it came out wrong. later.

 

[Neko2]

#1: Bite me, for one thing I ain't white. I'm one of these strange "asians" that I know nothing about.

#2: I don't give a damn about japanese pop culture, it's really wierd, and quite frankly creeps me out. I also don't see what anything in your post has to do with this thread, save for the last two sentences.

#3: I honestly don't think you meant to be a flaming jerk in your post, perhaps being from japan as you seem to imply english isn't your first language. Please refrain from assuming I have all these pre-conceived notions about Japan, it's just not that important to me aside from the beautiful blades that they make.

Now then, that being said those katana's take a load of work to make. Someone correct me if i'm wrong, but that looks like a bladesmith of some repute. The blade appeared to be fully polished, made of folded tamahagane or whatever the correct technical term is(hard to tell with the video quality, but when the guy is holding the broken sword at the end you can see some detail) and I have to wonder just what motivated destroying this sword. Sheer curiosity I can understand, but the video was just so damned funny in it's presentation I have to wonder who sponsored them/made the video. It wouldn't have struck me as such a waste if the blade were unpolished and made of homogenous steel.

I'm almost positive that this is from the "#1 show in Japan" "Hey spring of trivia". This looks to be from the "seed of trivia" segment where they introduce new trivia to the world via a sponsored test or exhibition. That's why it seems so comical.

The translated show is being shown currently on Spike tv here in the states.

N2

 

[yuzuha]

AFAIK the military rounds are these http://www.atk.com/international/precision/descriptions/products/small-caliber/50cal.htm

Here's a pic of one with the brass cut away (has 5% zinc so it does qualify as red brass). The steel core has lead/antimony weighting the tip where you can see the color change. This one is an API round with the hardened tungsten steel core, the regular round just uses an ordinary unhardened steel core. http://www.50caliber.net/50jacket.jpg

There are some non-military versions now that the BFG and Subaru etc. are being used as sporting and target rifles, like 30 cal bullet with a breakaway sabot housing to adapt to a 50 cal shell casing ( http://www.beastwerks.com/products/product_images/50calsabot.gif ), and a lead bullet with an aluminum tip and some other target match rounds, like the J40 which is a 773 grain copper jacket bullet.

There are some military rounds for sale on this page http://mactec-militaryarms.com/ammo_sales.html

 

[Ebbtide]

Exactly. It could be any of those.
Or the type that I mentioned.
Or, it could be a plain cast lead wadcutter downloaded enough so it just barely cycles the action.
We just don't know. Do we?

 

[Gollnick]

It has been my experience that owners of machine guns (and I don't know any owners of guns as large as that used here) are predominately reloaders. Certainly, the guy in the video has that certain aire of a reloader about him, don't you think? Given the rate at which these guns can go through ammo, it's pretty much necessary to reload.

So, what exact ammo is in use is anyone's guess.

It really doesn't matter that much, though. Obviously, the way the cinderblock "backstop" is being destroyed, this is serious ammo and the F=MA forces involved are quite high.

 

[yoda4561]

I use the term "culture barrier" loosely, it was sorta just an offhand remark, not trying to imply that I was terribly shocked and horrified at what I saw I was actually laughing through the whole thing, especially the part where the guys were making exclamations when the water filled barrel was being shot apart.

To put it in perspective, I see the way the guy wiped down the blade as more of a "well, this is the last time I'll see this sword in one piece, was nice knowin yah" kinda deal. I could imagine feeling the same way if something I'd labored on like that was donated to the chopping block to see how long it would take to turn it into scrap metal.

In regards to why I used the term in the first place is because of all the odd rules and regulations they seem to have in japan about nihonto, import restrictions, rankings, having to make the blade with these things in this way otherwise it's not a sword at all. This all implies that they don't view these as mere lumps of metal, after all, if they did why bother with all the rules and restrictions in the first place. If swords really mean this little to them they could donate one to me for some display stand tests

 

[Ebbtide]

It really doesn't matter that much, though. Obviously, the way the cinderblock "backstop" is being destroyed, this is serious ammo and the F=MA forces involved are quite high.

If I absolutly had to break cinder blocks, I'd forget the knife and go straight for MaDeuce