[curiousgeorgio]

There are two potential issues that I wish he either explored or explained in more detail:

1. When he cut the post-treated wood and the middle looked very much like untreated wood. He kind of glossed over that and explained that he thought the chemicals were penetrating all the wood, but that shot looked really suspicious. I’d be surprised if the chemicals were really effective for that thick of a piece with only one soaking (which left a very dirty by-product by the way, suggesting the solution’s effectiveness may have deteriorated before it had time to work on the innermost part of the wood).

2. There didn’t seem to be any bullet-stopping until he decided to glue more than one piece together with a fairly strong glue. And oddly enough, the bullet seemed to stop near the boundary between pieces that had been glued. I’m sure the wood was strong, but how do we know the glue itself wasn’t a substantial barrier stopping the bullet? I can imagine many very thin slices of untreated wood with enough glue interfaces binding them together (depending on the glue) also potentially stopping a bullet.

In either case, it was a cool experiment and looked like it took a lot of time to pull off.

[spacebacon]

It actually did really well with just his one original panel. The back would have been completely blown out if it exited fully expanded at a high velocity.

I agree with your treatment observation and believe that shows room for improvement.

[wongarsu]

I suspect the benefit of the multiple layers was mostly from the different grain orientations stopping the splintering. I agree that more layers of thinner boards would have performed better, but I'd wager this would hold true even for the weakest of glues, or no glue at all.