Hey guys, has anyone ever tried to replicate bullet holes bofore? If so, how is it done?
According, (roughly), to the Shep Paine book:
from the backside of the plastic, sand/grind until you get ithe area pretty darn thin.
then from the outside, use a knife to puncture.
needless to say…might want to practice that 
ah, yes, here is what ya need:
There was a good thread about this recently. A look at photos generally shows much more damage than the Snoopy Red Baron type. A .50 or of course a cannon shell blows a big hole the size of a fist up to a grapefruit into the a/c and what happens inside depends on whether it ricochets or explodes, but neat exit holes, never. Same with smaller like .30. There’s a lot of damage inside the a/c perhaps, and no clean shot through. The exception is the photos of ground crew looking at, grinning and poking a finger through a hole in an aileron or such, but a big slug into an aircraft either incapacitates the pilot, wrecks the engine, punctures a fuel cell, tears off a panel and on and on so forth, often resulting in a crash where modeling the damage is a different exercise. But don’t take it from me, there was a lot of good info. Remember, Shep was a tanker.
A flying locomotive like a B-17 might return with damage, but usually it would seem to be a whole assembly, like an engine or a rudder. An ME-109, not likely.
Thanks alot man, this will help. I don’t think I’m gonna get to in depth with the bullet holes…just may add a streak of them here and there on my B-17. Thanks again.
Just remember that a machine gun isn’t a sewing machine…
Please remember, less is more. Hans said it best though, a MG is not a sewing machine, so NO lines of bullet holes.
Having shot at sheet metal computer cases with real 30 cal guns (I have a FAL and a Garand [:)] ), it does make a surprising hole. It sort of tears the metal and dents it in slightly. It’s not perfectly round. It also fractures the paint around the hole, so you end up with a jagged circle of unpainted metal around the hole.
And B-17 guy is correct. It’s almost impossible to shoot a straight line of holes, even if you are standing still and really trying. With two moving aircraft, it would be impossible. Even with an expert marksman, you’d end up with a widely space, random pattern.
There are a few ways of making bullet holes. One way is the soldering iron method, use a thin tip and just poke it untill it makes alittle melted hole, then use a exacto to feather it just right. Another one, to make it more rough (a tear no exlosive to melt, like a soldering iron) ut the tip of the exacto in and spin it, untill its how you want (doesnt work for etrance and exit)
use a small drill bit and drill a hole, make sure its the correct size, then use the blade to feather.
example of drilling the hole, then feathering with the exacto.
best thing to do, find pics of planes with the damage from the bullets you want to represent. and try and mod after the real thing.
check this http://codyscoop.com/ht-damages.html
Dont let the fact that its a tutorial for mecha scare you away. He knows of what he speaks (again, why us mecha guys need some respect!)
Hey dmk, (not to change the subject drastically), you have a picture of your FAL? My dad and I each have one and love them to death. Huge followers of the gun and want more, lol.
Josh
There’s obviously a whole science to this, but for instance a British Hurricane might have put out about 60 or 70 rounds per second and only scored a couple of hits in a three second burst.
A cloud of bullets at the aiming point, but certainly not a line.
As noted, there’s a possibility of shooting a line of holes in an old dishwasher if you’re kneeling 50 feet away with an AR15, but otherwise forget it.
Aircraft skin is really thin too, and doesn’t take a solid punch like a piece of steel sheet, say an old car door. A high velocity impact will more likely kick a big dent hole than punch a neat circle.
A friend of mine took a cannon shell into the cockpit of his a/c. Since he survived and landed, the results were able to be photographed. The shell did not explode when it hit the skin, it was probably a 20mm from a German aa gun. The entry hole looks like you shoved a telephone pole into the nose of the a/c. Then it hit something hard, the instrument panel, and exploded, killing the pilot and creating all kinds of mayhem inside the cockpit.
Yea, man. You don’t come across too many FAL fans. Oh, BTW I built the FALs from parts. That’s a fun build project. [:)]
Here’s a terrible pic of my other one
Here’s my 1943 Garand (I like this one much better, and it’s much more accurate)
I love the first one, lol. Unfortunatley, i’m not a fan of the folding paratrooper stock. And as far as the M1 goes, i’m jealous. They have a newer tactical M1 over here and it’s not too expensive at $1,200. And with the word of gun bans it might be tempting enough to go and get.
Here is a picture of mine:
Wish I had a picture of my dads, much nicer than mine.
Josh
Nice blaster Josh! Gotta love the mighty FAL.
Sorry Tiny, enough of the thread veer. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread…
Heres a good example of a bullet strewn fuzz of a b17. Plenty of shrapnel from splintering bullets.
Heres what happens if those little fluffy black clouds of flak get a little too close…
Ignore the obviously need nasal surgery, but look just back and you can see a line of, what looks like bullet holes!
…Guy
Thanks alot guys…these tips and pics will help quite a bit.
I don’t think it’s in print anymore, but if you can locate a copy of “German Bombers Over England” by Bryan Philpott, you will find some excellent closeup pics of shot-up German aircraft. Another good one (but equally hard to find) for battle damage pictures is “World War II Fighter Conflict” by Alfred Price. The second one has comparison photos of damage from rifle caliber rounds and cannon rounds, even a photo of a field test of the dreaded .30 mm German Rheinmetal Borsig MK 109 on a Spitfire fuselage. The fuselage was completely severed by one round!
As has been said, even .303 caliber bullets do a lot of damage to an airframe and don’t always leave nice, round symmetrical holes. Many of the hits shown in the above books are more like tears or large gouges and look like they were made with a pick or a sledge hammer. In air-to-air combat the bullets would be coming from behind, most likely at an extreme oblique angle to the aircraft surface, which would produce a rip in the skin rather than a round hole.
A photographic archive of BATTLE DAMAGED B-17s:
http://www.daveswarbirds.com/b-17/
Lots of photographs in there and organized too.
Thinning the plastic to mimic scale is what I’ve found to be convincing. Like Bspeed said.
Trexx…that link you posted doesnt work for me, is there some thing missing?
Dang!
Try:
This aircraft was used as an ABDR trainer and later was sent to the gun range. You can see what a 20 MM shell will do to an airframe. Only TP ammo was used so there isn’t a lot of damage that an HEI round would do.
