A novel experiment developed for researching the initial collapse of an aluminum shaped charge liner was designed, executed, and validated. The experiment evolved from the need to recover shocked liner material to enable the analysis of relationships between microstructure and early liner collapse behavior. The research required material that had been shocked, yet was sufficiently intact to allow for metallurgical examination. Additionally, the experiment was designed to replicate the unique shock loading of shaped charge liners. Practically, the experiment had to be inexpensive to perform. The paper describes the experimental design, execution and validation and presents practical examples of the utility of the output. The experimental design is based on recreating a unique shock front, halting the deformation within a few microseconds and recovering material suitable for examination. Validation of the experiment employs a combination of available hydrocode modeling data and shaped charge liner collapse theory. The data collection supporting the validation was performed with computed tomography (CT) and laser generated 3D imagery. The output is recovered material valid for study.