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Equipment & Gear => Guns and Ammo => Topic started by: Blsum on March 01, 2010, 12:14:07 PM

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Title: Ballistics gel
Post by: Blsum on March 01, 2010, 12:14:07 PM

Okay, I did a search on here but couldn't find much. Have any of you tryed making ballistics gel? I found some things online that show's how to make it fairly inexpensivly. I'm thinking about making some and testing a few different muzzle loader bullets. It's going to be a while before I get a chance to do it. Let me know if any of you guy's have tried it and what you thought. How easy was it to make? Would you do it again? Did you think it accuratly (sp) portrayed the performance of the bullets?

Title: Re: Ballistics gel
Post by: Atroxus on March 02, 2010, 07:09:56 AM

I found the following link among others pretty quickly with just a fast google search using the terms "how to make ballistics gelatin".

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Ballistics-Gel (http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Ballistics-Gel)

Bleh, I guess I should have read your post more closely before responding. My bad. Good luck with the testing though. I assume since you are doing muzzle loaders that you are testing for hunting? If so are you doing blocks of gell and just measuring penetration depth, bullet expansion and weight retention? I wonder if you could use a deer decoy to make a mold for a deer sized/shaped ballistic gel target?

If I could afford it I would really like to do tests of modern handgun ammunition vs fully clothed human torso shaped blocks of ballistics gel and home construction materials like drywall. I like the testing done at places like box o truth, but I have not seen anyone test by taking a mold of a human torso and filling that with ballistic gel for testing. I think it would be interesting to place one in front of a a setup like the box o truth to see how many walls a bullet would penetrate after exiting a human body. I also am curious how many walls a bullet would have to go through before it lost the ability to be lethal to a human.

Title: Re: Ballistics gel
Post by: fishcrazy on March 02, 2010, 08:34:24 AM

Sounds like a great idea. I might even have soem bullets to donate.

Keep us posted or send me a pm when yer ready.

Kris

Title: Re: Ballistics gel
Post by: AWS on March 02, 2010, 08:49:26 AM

What's there to test?  500 yrs and the Round ball still works just fine.  Need more power get a bigger ball  .45, .54, .58, and .69 I think that will cover anthing in North Amareica.

Don't you just hate traditionalists.

AWS

Title: Re: Ballistics gel
Post by: coriantonk on March 02, 2010, 11:25:54 AM

Hey. What about .50  :dunno:

Title: Re: Ballistics gel
Post by: AWS on March 02, 2010, 01:04:28 PM

Never saw the need, my .45 works for small game up to 50 lbs.  My .54 and .58  handles everything else.  My .690 is a heavy breeched cape gun smooth bore for buck or ball only killed one deer with it but it works good.

AWS

Title: Re: Ballistics gel
Post by: Blsum on March 03, 2010, 11:14:42 PM

Like I said before it's going to be a while before I can get to any testing. The wife is due on the 12th of this month with our second child.

As far as making molds. I was figuring on testing bullet penetration. So I was thinking something something like 6"x6"x ? I will probably start with something about 24" deep. I would like to see just how far it would take to stop a bullet. I know that the preformance will differ slightly on an anmimal. i.e. bone and what not. but I figure I this way I can look at how fast the bullets are expanding, how well they are expanding and how deep they are penetrating.

Kris I have a few different types of bullets I would like to try out but I could alway's use some more. Hell maybe we can get together and go shooting some time. Seeing as you know a few of the guy's I hang out with.  :chuckle: Maybe we can all make up our own batches and bring them all together and do some serious testing. I have some 300 grn hornday sst, hornady fpb, dead center, a couple of different power belts 4?? grn,and a 270 grn platinum, plus I have some conical's that I could test. The one's I'm more interested in testing are the SST's and the D.C's. Both shoot great out of my gun. Just want to know what works best when it comes to killing something. I'm thinking about switching to barnes bullets. Still undecided though.

I will post some pics and hopefully some video, if I can, when I'm done with my testing. Let me know if you want to join in.

Ben

Title: Re: Ballistics gel
Post by: JackOfAllTrades on March 03, 2010, 11:22:48 PM

I'm really interested in what you come up with with home made gel.  Years ago I did some testing with wet fine sand that wasn't in a containment. The testing wasn't scientific at all but sure gave me a lot of information to determine the bullets I wanted to have in my carry gun.

-Steve