Splitting Bullets with Butter Knives： Penn & Teller Tell a Lie.

Now here's a trick you can do at home. Get yourself a canning jar of rice and a 600-year-old hand-forged samurai sword capable of cutting a two-by-four with a single slash. Poke the rice until it starts to feel solid, then stab the sword in and lift. You will amaze yourself. Oh, and if you don't happen to have a samurai sword around, just grab any old knife out of the silverware drawer. It'll still work. Turns out butter knives are as good as samurai swords for a lot of amazing things. Samurai swords are incredibly sharp weapons used by Japanese warriors for precision killing. Butter knives are incredibly dull hunks of metal used by children to smear soft, yummy stuff on dry stuff. It seems silly to call them both knives. Clearly, there is no comparison between the two. Or is there? The butter knife can't do this, or this, or that. But the samurai sword can't do this. The video we got trying to spread margarine with a sword is horrific. But can either of these tools hold up to the ultimate knife test? We're taking knives to a gunfight. We set up a gun stand and lock the samurai sword down in the vice. Can the Japanese super sword survive being shot by a bullet? Three, two, one, fire! Amazing. That samurai sword sliced a bullet in half. Watch again. In ultra slow motion, 44,000 frames per second. Just whacked that sucker in half. Tell us, non-Japanese Japanese sword master, what makes these swords strong and sharp enough to chop a bullet? Oh, traditionally, a Japanese sword is just made out of steel. You're purely talking about iron and carpet. Okay, not exactly the technical explanation we were looking for, but we looked it up. These swords are drop forged and crafted by hand using a combination of different types of steel. The edge of the sword is formed out of a very hard, high carbon steel that can hold a razor sharp edge. But if that were the only steel, the sword would be too brittle to withstand a side blow. So it's combined with flexible, low carbon steel that is more malleable and can absorb impacts without breaking. These layers are folded over and hammered thousands of times to squeeze out any impurities and combine the two types of steel seamlessly. That's why this sword can easily split this bullet. But can the dullest knife in the drawer, the wimpiest utensil in the kitchen, the butter knife, do the same thing? We got the same weapon specialist we did not introduce earlier to shoot the butter knife. He's got over two decades of experience on the police force. We're going to use the same setup we used to shoot the samurai sword. Bill will be using the same .45 ACP handgun. The rounds we're firing out of the .45 automatic will be traveling at approximately 790 feet per second. For the test, our crew built a shooting bench that attached a pistol device called a ransom rest. Placing the gun in a ransom rest allows Bill to hold it steady and fire using this red lever. There was some debate whether we should use a red lever or a yellow lever. Red lever, yellow lever, red lever, yellow lever. We went with red. We set up a sheet of Lexan, the same material used in bulletproof glass, to protect Bill from shrapnel. And here's a butter knife he stole from a diner. It's locked down 50 inches away from the gun and a laser bore sight from the barrel lines up the shot so the bullet will strike exactly in the middle of the knife. Will the dull butter knife stand up to this beating? Let's ask our expert. I don't think the butter knife is going to stand a chance and you know what? We know what, we're just not saying it. Unlike the hand-pounded finely made sword, the butter knife is cold forged, a process best explained by showing you this 1958 educational flick. Say, look at that swell stamping press. It knocks out butter knives and other lesser cutlery from sheets of cold stainless steel, which are only 1 16th of an inch thick. No layering, no craftsmanship, and no centuries of tradition go into making this butter knife. But will it split a bullet? All right, fire in the hole, one round, three, two, fire! Wow, it split the bullet. A butter knife split a bullet. Take another look at that amazing real shot and listen to that amazing fake sound effect. Hey, what do you expect? Sound sucks in slow motion and we all love the sound of a bucket of glass being thrown against a golf cart. Really, we didn't think this was going to work, nor did our expert Bill. I'm amazed, man. I am. I'm not going to say that. Good, there you go. The cold stamped steel of the butter knife is every bit as effective as the samurai sword at splitting a bullet. We're pretty amazed ourselves.