I've been able to find a lot of videos and posts on the internet about what a sling can do to various analogs at close range. However, I haven't been able to find anything other than historical anecdotes about what a sling will do at distance. I was wondering if anybody has done or has the ability to do a pine baffle board test to see. For those that don't know, pine baffle board test (bbt from here on out) was a standard used by the Army around the turn of the century to test the max effective range of propsed cartridges the army was looking to adopt. Basically you set up an array of pine boards out at range and back up a ways and fire into them to see if the bullet will punch through. I'm not certain but I believe this is how the effective ranges for cartridges like the 45-70 and 30-40 Krag were worked out. I was thinking a similar test could be done with a sling and various types of ammo. Start at 50 yards or so and back up until you stop punching through. Compare the difference between lead glandes, stones, clay, and even steel ball bearings. Thoughts?

This could be included in the sling myth busting checklist originally posted by GurtTractor

I wonder if it would be accurate test though. It's highly probable that there will be no penetration.
what are the dimensions of the board and how is it held? free hanging or rigidly held ? the length of the board changes how easily it will bend and absorb energy. In high velocity projectiles the above parameters become less and less important.

If you could work out some way to tell how much of an indentation on the baffle board would equal a likely killing blow you could make a very rough estimate. Assuming you adjusted for the variables Sarosh mentioned.

A shock indicator sticker on a coconut would work better I think. and it's easier to carry to the range.
we should work on our accuracy for this :P

For the original army tests the boards were secured rigidly in a stand. However, Sarosh brings up a good point   that there is likely no penetration at all due to the nature of the weapon. I wonder if an array of boards hung like a ballistic pendulum would work better? I want to see what kind of downrange hitting power these things have at say... 200 yards

I can't find it but I remember reading once how the army tracked rifle bullets and found where downrange the bullet was going subsonic and which bullet was more stable in the transonic area.(could be a dream). this kind of equipment is what we need .
or a very very accurate slinger .

You are correct Sarosh. Some specialty sniper rounds are designed to be stable during the transition to subsonic so they are accurate for longer distances. I’m not sure there’s any particular machine to measure that, but you can do experiments with high speed cameras and schlieren imaging, etc.

As far as impact testing, Mythbusters used poplar dowels to simulate bone breaking.  You could stack dowels side-by-side to make a big enough target.

Hängen Sie Papier im gleichen Abstand hintereinander. Schießen Sie darauf. Sie erkennen sogar eine abnehmende Kurve.

if using lead glandes - don't think you'd have too many problems seeing where it hit.

Mind you at historical distances, it would need to be a BIG target !