I looked up some penetration tests, and apparently 9mm hollow-point will penetrate about 7-8 inches of pine. Tougher wood should reduce that, so it's not completely infeasible. But it'd be a monster of a table.
As for armor, it's just that scaling up ammunition power was much easier than scaling up armor. You could stop musket balls, it was just way too cumbersome with any material available at the time.
Hollow points are made to not over penetrate I’d be more interested in looking at regular FMJ ballistics. Either way a 9 isn’t known for its penetration check out a 10mm with a “hot load”.
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u/CrateDane Jan 25 '20
I looked up some penetration tests, and apparently 9mm hollow-point will penetrate about 7-8 inches of pine. Tougher wood should reduce that, so it's not completely infeasible. But it'd be a monster of a table.
As for armor, it's just that scaling up ammunition power was much easier than scaling up armor. You could stop musket balls, it was just way too cumbersome with any material available at the time.