TexasCHLforum.com

For those of you that have an old vest, remember the true life span on most of them is about ten years. They are all certified for five years because that is the NIJ standard, but most will actually work for about ten years. After that, the material degrades so much as to be almost useless. From the five year mark to about ten years, I would prefer the vest to nothing but I would not want to ebt my life on it.

I no longer have any of my old vests. When they hit the five year mark, I would take them out for the academy classes to see what a vest will and won't do. It can be very interesting the first time to see how a vest really works. Of course, our demo's would never be realistic and we would use the same vest for multiple hits with multiple calibers.

Watching the backplate deformation and the target getting knocked around convinced me, and most cadets, that it might save my life but I certainly did not want to test it by wearing it.