Nick from Great Plains Traditional Bow Company tests FR4 and linen phenolic against rifle fire from .22 to .416 Remington Magnum. FR4 resists chipping and penetration while linen phenolic shatters. Great Plains uses FR4 in their Lobo, Eldorado, Blackhawk, and Piranha bushcrafter models.
Questions this video answers
.22 up to .416 Remington Magnum
85 grain, about 1,700 ft/s (spoken as 'about 16, 1700ft a second')
55 grain
400 grain, 2,400 ft/s
180 grain
Chapters
Nick here with Great Plains Traditional bow company. Today, we're going to be shooting FR4 with calibers ranging from.22 up to.416 Remington Magnum. Why are we doing this? Well, a lot of people use linen phenolic. A lot of people use FR4. We want to show off how strong FR4 actually is. FR4 is a lot denser. It's made of fiberglass cloth instead of linen. And so this linen phenolic, you can kind of see the difference in it. It's a tighter weave, and it's a lot denser. This is. 416 Remington Magnum.
That's.
303 British next to it next to a. 300 Winchester Magnum.
You can also see on this linen phenolic. Over time, if you put your boat in the sunlight, it grays out the FR4 stays. Jet black. This stuff hasn't even been in the sunlight, and you can see the difference in it already. It's just been sitting in a storage barn, and it's kind of aged. We do not like that in our bows. This is a factory edge of this linen phenolic, and it needs to look like that on the bow. And this will look like that for the lifetime of the bow. This will kind of gray out over time. So that's why. That's another reason we switched to the FR4. We no longer use any linen phenolic in our bows.
We're going to start with the.22. We've got these two pieces that are relatively similar in size. These are cut in the same grain direction as well. So this is a relatively fair test between the two of them. Let's get to shooting. First, linen phenolic.
There you go.
And Fr4.
There you go. That chipped off that. That front layer on that phenolic. But look at that. FR4 didn't chip it at all. It's just a mark on there with a.22.
My front sight is bent. Now we're gonna try 9 millimeter. Left or right?
Left, right. Left. Left, right, left. Left, Left, right, left. This is sad. There you go. Look at the nine. It still just made a mark. It didn't even chip it. And then the FR4. Actually, you hit it twice on the FR4. Did you hit up here?
No, that's the phenolic.
Yeah, sorry. That's the phenolic. The FR4. It just left a mark. The phenolic. You hit it right. There's lead in there. But you hit it up here, too. But it totally shattered that. Still just a mark on the FO4, so good stuff.
45 ACP.
Chipped it there. You hit it. Good shot, dude. It still just left a mark in that FR4. It, it did crack it, but it's just a mark. Of course this guy hit on a little bit of an angle. There's some lead in there, but you could see the damage it did to that one. Pretty significant.
We've got two pieces grain oriented the same way now. 7.62x25 Tokarev is an 85 grain bullet moving about 16, 1700ft a second.
The FR4 is on the right this time.
Yep.
Direct center hit there. But you can see it kind of chipped that out a little bit on the FR4. The phenol leak, it just blew that thing apart. There's a little miss. Didn't do anything there.
7.62X39 out of an AK moving into rifles here.
Oh, let me go set that up. All right.
Phenolic.
That was awesome.
And FR4 again, just for good measure.
Here'S a piece of literally disintegrated the phenolic and the FR4. It did some damage, but it's still together. The first time he hit it there and it didn't do as much damage here. Second time he hit it here. It's interesting how that puffed back towards us on the entrance, but it didn't even make it all the way through. It didn't even make it half way through. But the phenolic of course is disintegrated.
Also forgot to mention on the last test, but those were steel core Chinese rounds, so those are actually made for light armor penetration. We're shooting 55 grain on this round.
Let me set that back up because you hit it clear at the bottom. You kind of missed that too. I did. No, you actually hit that pretty good. Okay, just shoot, shoot that again because you hit that fr4 pretty good. All right, there you go. So on the FR4 once again, we didn't even make it halfway through. Only made it about a third of the way through. This hit it kind of on the side it looks like, but it went all the way through. You can see all those stress fractures in there. I've had bows break with the solid cap of this lymphenolic on them. Like a real aggressive limb profile and you can see why that stuff, once it starts going, it's just game over.
Now we're going to use M855 penetrator around.
Got pieces all over the place. Total disintegration. The FR4 I think we missed. Oh, right there. Shoot it again. Yeah. There you hit. Didn't even make it all the way through. That bullet's. It's not even that far. So it's somewhere in here. But it did split the grain which is common. But it didn't even make it. I don't think even halfway through. I could see the bullet actually right there. So it's in there about like that.
A Enfield chambered in. 303 British.
The British are coming.
That's about as close as I want to be.
I love that. Complete disintegration of the phenolic. I even put a thicker area up for the phenolic and most of it's gone. That's the biggest piece we got. There was pieces 20 foot up in the air. FR4 didn't even make it halfway through. Stopped it like right there. That's not even halfway through. Incredibly strong material.
300 win mags. These are 180 grain bullets.
High to the left. So it went almost all the way through and then it stopped it right there. So didn't quite make it all the way through that block yet. We just quit with the phenolic because it was just blowing it up.
This is a.416 Remington Magnum. It is shooting a 400 grain bullet 2400ft per second.
Let me go check. I'll put it back up.
I'm not going to say this thing kicks too hard. I'm just going to say it's rather unpleasant to pull the trigger. Hit it on the side.
Yeah. On the left side. It didn't make it all the way through. There you go. It didn't even get all the way through.
It just split it.
It just split. Hit right down there. And then the impact the bullet. Well. Oh actually it came through. That cut out there is what.
But that was the first strike here.
Yeah. And it didn't even get all the way through.
The real lobo bow that we make is a solid FR4 riser. The Eldorado, the Blackhawk also have FR4 caps and are extremely strong bows. Also the Piranha bushcrafter has a FR4 riser and is our survival bow. That's a spar. That's a quarter inch thick FR4 and that's what we put in our bows for two pieces to reinforce them. We are making bulletproof bows. Well, this test was a lot of fun and a little bit excessive in reality. You're never going to put the amount of force on a bow that this.300 Winchester Magnum put on this FR4, and it's overbuilt for a reason. We want you to be able to rely on your bow and never question if it's going to break. If you take it backpacking and you're hunting elk and you have a perfect shot, we want you to be able to have confidence in the bow that you took with you. Thanks for watching, everybody.
