Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to the shop. In this video, today
we're doing one of those experiments that you really shouldn't try at home.
We're gonna be taking one of these brass cartridge casings, loading it with an ear plug, and trying to shoot it out of a Glock
19.
Now the inspiration for today's experiment comes from a YouTube channel called TWANGnBANG, and one of his videos
I discovered a couple years ago was where he was using ear plugs for target practice.
Apparently if you take an empty cartridge casing with a single primer, and fill it with the ear plug, you can actually get it to
shoot at reasonable speeds.
So the purpose of our experiment today is really to see if we can replicate those results using a Glock 19 handgun and some empty
nine-millimetre casings. A standard round of ammunition has three main components. It's got a primer;
It's got the gunpowder inside, and it's got the bullet that gets projected out at great speed.
But take away the bullet, empty out the gunpowder and all we're left with is the primer, and the cartridge casing, which amazingly is just
the right size for accepting a generic ear plug. Now before we jump into this experiment,
I do want to stress that guns are not toys. This is not an experiment I want you to replicate at home;
It is here to show the power of the primer itself. The primer is the main source of ignition in a bullet,
but for this video, I wanted to show you just how powerful they are, in and of themselves.
So the premise of this experiment is actually very, very simple; We're just gonna take an empty cartridge casing, with a fresh primer,
We're gonna take one earplug we're gonna squish that end down, push the two together, and let the earplug re-expand.
We're gonna simply load that into the chamber, point it in the safe
direction, pull the trigger and see what happens. Now whether or not you're playing with toy guns or real
firearms, all the standard safety procedures do apply. Never point at people, any living thing and always treat the gun as if it's loaded with
a live round of ammunition.
With that being said, let's go ahead and load our earplug bullets into our Glock 19, blow up some balloons and pull the trigger to
see what happens.
So here we are guys, moment of truth. We've got all of our balloons blown up and taped to the wall.
I think we need to take the first shot at the green one in the middle using an orange earplug bullet.
So you can see we've got no magazine. We've got one earplug bullet in the chamber. Let's make it count okay
Ok so I was aiming for the green balloon it took the green balloon out you can actually see a mark on the wall right now
Where the earplug hit it oh
my goodness, okay, so
This might not be the smartest thing to do you can actually see it's actually put a hole in my wall an indentation
Shaped like an earplug. I went straight through that balloon and
Bang on straight into the wall so apparently even though
This is an earplug it carries a tremendous amount of force
Which is wild because there's no gunpowder in there all we're using is the primer itself to project it. Isn't that amazing?
Let's try another one
Alright guys for the second shot
I don't really want to damage my house much more than I have done already, so I've attached the balloons to this crafting mat
Which will hopefully soften the impact and prevent any more holes in my wall for the shot
I'm gonna go for that green balloon on the bottom left.
Oh I missed I missed but where did that hit it might have been a little bit low
Alright chambers clear I
was aiming for this balloon right here I
Don't know if they hit it or not, so let's load up another one and try it again
Which one poped the one on the left oh
yeah, it's an orange balloon because you can see it went up to the top so I was going for this green balloon here and
I think it popped the one just to the left of that orange one which is evidenced by the
Shrapnel you see sticking to the ceiling right now so either these ear plugs aren't as
Aerodynamically accurate as I was hoping they would be or I'm just a very poor shot in case
We've got a couple more rounds. We can try a few more shots
And see if we get anything different this time. I'm going for the blue one and dead center. Oh
a little to the right interesting
Alright chambers clear while we're here. I'm going to go for one more
Which one did I hit oh?
Look the bullet bounced back look at this. I hope we actually recovered the bullet it's got scorch marks
There's like ripped in half and it's got scorch marks in it
But that is the bullet that we just shot it bounced off the wall and rolled up my workbench here
Okay, so we've seen primers by themselves shoot earplugs off with tremendous force
I have a couple more shells here that still have the Gunpowder in them
So what do you think will happen if we add earplugs to gunpowder will that make any kind of a difference?
So I have two ear plug bullets here one green one orange and these cartridges are filled with gunpowder as well
So let's see how much of a difference the Gunpowder makes
I'm still thinking that bottom green would be a good shot, so let's go for that. Oh
Dang that was loud that was ear piercing lis loud. I still missed the green balloon
You can see it's still intact
But that was Wow like I think next time I need to put ear plugs in my ears as well as the gun
So adding gunpowder definitely more power definitely a lot louder not much more accuracy of course it might just be user error
Right over here. I can actually smell the Gunpowder I can smell that smokeless powder
It smells delicious. It smells like the fourth of July fantastic
Let's see if we can find the bullet so just found the green ear plug here. What's really interesting is
There's a hole in the top here, and it seems to be very consistent like most of them have these little holes near the top
I'm not sure if that's because it's hanging up in the barrel or something, but that's a little bit odd
That'll just be chunks missing out of the top probably have something to do with the friction of the barrel
We can see the rest of the plug is still in tact
cool
Round 2 and this time I've got your plugs in my ears
Once again, I'm going for that stubborn green one from the bottom left
Nailed it yeah. Oh my gosh, holy heck Oh
Oh
My goodness look at that it put a hole straight through my craft mat
Oh it actually put a hole through my wall as well or at least it dented it if you look down there
There's quite a bit of damage so
From this map being bubbled a little bit apparently there was enough powder in that ear plug to go straight through this mat
Which I've cut this with scissors. I've cut it with exacto knives, and I've never been able to do any damage to it
It's self-healing but that ear plug went straight through it and left a nice little scar on the wall behind
Better do it again. Let's go for the top green
Where did that one hit oh
Look at that
This mat is destroyed. I have to buy a new one it went straight through it hit the wall
bounced off I
Was aiming for this green one apparently I was off a little bit to the left
So look at that it shredded that mat
That is unbelievable
That's an earplug all right. I got one shot left guys. I'm going for that orange one
Just to the left of the blue and right underneath the green
We got one shot to make it count, and I'm completely destroying my wall, but I'm doing it for you. Are we learning something here
Haha, okay a little bit high
So it looks like I hit a little bit high and to the left I check out that green one there
And if you look at the mat here
It doesn't look like we did any damage until you pull this forward, or push it back it actually took out that entire
Section almost as one clean circle look at that. Let's go ahead and take this down. Let's look at the damage
It's left behind on the wall
Oh
Gosh that was not a good idea
Alright so duct tape on the wall and does that
Be getting that fixed
Have to hang a picture there or something that was our first shot right there left a nice little indentation
That was our second shot that went through the craft paper and then over here. We've got another indentation now
I didn't see any damage from that last shot and just crack the board itself
But here we have a totally damaged wall and the most damaged ironically is done from the duct tape itself
That was used to tape the board to the wall so use caution when using duct tape lesson learned
So there you have a guy's ear plug bullets. It's a relatively viable idea and shoot him off here today
We learned a few things
First of all we learned that just because there's no bullet and no gunpowder in a cartridge
Casing doesn't mean that they're safe if you have a loaded primer on the back it can still pack enough punch to send an earplug
Bullet flying and leave a fairly substantial impression in the side of your wall
Taking time to actually aim the gun at a specific target had mixed results
Sometimes we hit the targets dead-on and other times
They seem to miss completely missing the target by up to 5 inches for one final experiment
we tried firing ear plugs from cartridge casings with the gunpowder left in them to see what kind of a difference that made and the
biggest difference
I noticed is how loud they were I have no way to measure how much faster those projectiles were going
But they definitely left a lot of damage on my wall and the bang was so loud it left my eardrums ringing
So the point were actually used earplugs for their intended use so there you have a guy's ear plug bullets they fire
They fire very quickly they can do a lot of damage is this an experiment you could try at home
Possibly is it something you should try probably not, but thanks for joining me for this experiment today
So we can see exactly what happens if you did I'll see you in the next video. Talk to you then.
Might be a stupid thing to do
And all we're left with is the cartridge casing
We were shooting earplugs. I kind of wrecked the wall a little bit and check that out