I've heard lots of ways to recreate bullet holes and I know they are rare. However, I am working with 1/35 scale brass schurtzen and wondered if I can't just fire a bb at it to make a realist impact. I know a bb will penetrate the brass, but am unsure if it would look like a impact from a round.

If the brass is very thin, it may tear, similar to a soda can. If not, you may get a round indentation, but it will cause the whole piece to bend. Have you tried a drill bit?

Let me be the first to say "You'll shoot your eye out"

Safety first. I've already taken a bullet to the head.
I was thinking that the bb would cause tearing and a indentation in the metal, similar to a real shell impact.

Depends on a few things Matt .. first of what size pellet are you firing at the brass ..or is it a slug .like .177 or .22 and what FPS is it doing .
If it's moving to fast it will look like a round from a ship it is , like a 5in round or bigger . would cause massive buckling of the brass plate and make it look like it was hit with something huge .
The thickness of the brass to will matter alot . to thin and it won't give you the effect your looking for and of course to thick and ya get a huge dent,even 1mm would be alittle to tick i think . .5mm might work our pretty good .
If you some scarp give it a blast with that , would be interesting to see the end result.

Phill

Assuming you could hit the small piece of PE plate exactly where you wanted to, you'd still pretty much bend the crap out of any piece of PE that you hit. The velocities simply aren't high enough to punch through cleanly without transferring significant energy to the PE. Once that happens, it'll bend up like a wonton.

This is a tough problem because the thinness of the PE really does act against you. The physical behaviour doesn't scale from the real to the model parts.

Your best bet is probably to get a punch & die set. Use a punch the size of the hole you want to make and use a die that is one size larger. Most available P&D sets won't let you do this, you might have to make a new die to suit. Clamp the PE into the upper * lower sections of the die and make sure it's all nice & tight. Then punch through. The larger hole in the die will encourage both a relatively clean hole in the PE and, depending upon how much clearance you leave in the larger die, you should get a ragged exit hole. If you've clamped the PE nice and tight between the upper & lower sections of the die, the PE should stay flat and unwrinkled.

Oh, and make sure you anneal the brass first and don't even think of using the hardened nickle silver or stainless that some sets are made from. They're far too hard. Brass is nice & soft.

You'll probably dull any small hardened steel punch you use, at least a bit.

HTH

Paul

Thanks for the comments, guys. Looks like I will be going the way of the P&D. I already have a couple of sets to use.

Hi Matt,

Since nobody else has mentioned it, can I suggest you go out and buy a sheet of thin brass from your LHS to experiment on before you do something irreversible to your PE set? K&S Engineering does a range of thicknesses, and the leftovers can be added to your scratch-building supplies.

That way, you could try all of the suggestions, to see exactly what happens with each.

As for the BB gun, you could clamp the brass to something soft-ish (balsa wood block?) to hold it firm while allowing some distortion at the impact site. However, you'll need decent velocity to punch through...

Tom

Let me be the ultimate contrarian here. I gather that you're trying to replicate a shell hit on a shurzen plate,right? Unless it was a lower caliber (3.7cm) AP shot, anything else (especially HE rounds) would rip the shurzen right off the AFV. Gotta remember how they were constructed and mounted. Shurzen were 5mm thick sheet armor -- designed to deflect AT rifle rounds from vulnerable spots on the flanks. They were mounted on thin rails or posts. Any kinetic energy like a large AP or any HE round would just rip the whole thing off. If you found a bent up schurzen, it would be lying on the ground as it's highly unlikely that both the shurzen and its mounting hardware would have remained intact.

Just my two cents.

You make a good point. Perhaps, I will shoot one at a spare piece of Dragon styrene. I could locate this in between the shurzen plates. At a lower velocity(have a bb gun you have to pump up) I think I could recreate a shell impact.

I doubt it. A shell doesn't just hit the armor plate and dent it. HE and AP shells actually bore through and melt the armor plate through chemical reaction and kinetic energy. Also, they are pointy to assist in this, not blunt like a BB or pellet. You best bet is to recreate it using standard techniques of modeling such as melting a hole through with a soldering iron, heating and deforming the plastic, using metal foil, etc. The whole BB gun idea is pretty lame and won't create realistic effects at all, if you ask me. It is like using a sledge hammer to swat a fly. That is why most people stopped shooting their models when they were 14 or so.

Why not just hammer a round nail through the thing. Try out different sizes, and see how it looks. Not near as fun as the BB trick, but probably a lot safer.
Jacob

^ that's what I'd do.

BB gun scales out to a 157mm round in 35th scale. I'm trying to think what a broadside from an M-109 would do some hanging steel plate....I think it would be more than a hole.

To amplify my post a bit...

A round doesn't make a nice, clean hole as it goes through. Some examples:



And when not penetrated, they are usually knocked off the tank.



I don't think you can get anything close to this with a BB gun. It is too uncontrolled to work.

I'll try the soldering iron technique. Thank you for the photos.

My idea.
Use a tapered punch the size of your ammo. Place your sheet to be punched over a socket, that is just larger than the hole needed. Use s small hammer with enough force to punch it through.

If the supporting socket is too big you will get a deep valley with your hole in the center. I also use the back side of the socket to support as much of the metal as possible.

I simulated some hits on a Jadgpanther in 1/20 or 1/16 scale, the BIG one from Tamiya in the 70's.

A nail is cut with four flat surfaces and they will give you a hole with four "triangle" edges.

Matt,

If you are looking to create a penetration in the hull of a tank, please don't use a soldering iron. Heat is the wrong way to do this.

If the round you are trying to emulate is an APHE/Shot round then find a drill the same size as the shell and drill through the plastic of the hull. Make a nice clean hole. If you are very, very good with a pyrograveure tool then you can use that to prodce the slightly raised lip & splash marks around the penetration, otherwise, get some epoxy putty and apply a small doughnut around the penetration. Small and thin are key words here. While the putty is still flexible sculpt it into a slightly raised lip around the hole. Make the walls of the penetration slightly rough. That's it. AP penetrations left relatively little exterior evidence other than the hole itself, see Gino's pictures.

For HE impacts, they almost never penetrated, but they did tear up the exterior something fierce, especially the bigger rounds, like 150mm+. These would put a big dent in the surface of side & top plates and then blast away exterior stowage and scar everything around the impact point. They even pop welded seams and open joints.

they wouldn't usually do much to the main arour plate, so an HE impact on the glasis usually just broke optics & blew away the crew's stowage.

HEAT/Hollow Charge weapons tend to leave a very small hole (like 1/2-3/4" diameter in real life) in the surface and a small star of scorching around the penetration.

You're not going to get realistic impacts with a soldering gun.

Paul

A handy tool to use is a carpenter's awl, or scribing tool. It's pointy, round in section, tapers slightly, and is a lot cheaper than a punch and die set. As you pierce your PE schurtzen with it, it will make a neat hole going in and leave a raggedy edge on the inside.

Have two of them. Hadn't thought about using it as a punch in a long time.