Thread: Ballistic Gel

There have recently been some posts on the forum showing results of different caliber and weight projectiles performance in blocks of ballistic gel. Apparently this gel mimics what you would expect from animal "tissue".
I have never handled such gel, or even seen it in real life but how good a representation of performance on a real animal is it? It looks to me like I could poke my finger into it (unlike a deer which has a protective skin) and there is no similarity to bone whatsoever?
If you put a thick piece of leather in front of it would the results for different projectiles be the same? Would the more frangible or lighter projectiles suffer greater performance loss than others? Would a bone in there change the comparative differences?
I am interested to hear peoples thoughts.

Originally Posted by Shearer

There have recently been some posts on the forum showing results of different caliber and weight projectiles performance in blocks of ballistic gel. Apparently this gel mimics what you would expect from animal "tissue".
I have never handled such gel, or even seen it in real life but how good a representation of performance on a real animal is it? It looks to me like I could poke my finger into it (unlike a deer which has a protective skin) and there is no similarity to bone whatsoever?
If you put a thick piece of leather in front of it would the results for different projectiles be the same? Would the more frangible or lighter projectiles suffer greater performance loss than others? Would a bone in there change the comparative differences?
I am interested to hear peoples thoughts.

IIRC the FBI grade calibrated stuff is made such that its matche to be the best analog of the avergae density and is held to a standard. most stuff online is a bit inconsistent. Also apart from the leg bone or or centre's of the shoulder on any ungulants bones are highly overrated. Even a moose shoulder bone is pretty thin. If anything it helps to expand the projectile.

If you google hornady TaP ammo they have all the gel testing after passing through barriers and bare. This is all controlled as it it's to meet duty requirements for Professional LE use in the states

Originally Posted by Shearer

There have recently been some posts on the forum showing results of different caliber and weight projectiles performance in blocks of ballistic gel. Apparently this gel mimics what you would expect from animal "tissue".
I have never handled such gel, or even seen it in real life but how good a representation of performance on a real animal is it? It looks to me like I could poke my finger into it (unlike a deer which has a protective skin) and there is no similarity to bone whatsoever?
If you put a thick piece of leather in front of it would the results for different projectiles be the same? Would the more frangible or lighter projectiles suffer greater performance loss than others? Would a bone in there change the comparative differences?
I am interested to hear peoples thoughts.

I've been thinking the same.
There's nothing really consistant about an animal. I guess if it were hit through the arse end and completely missed bone would be an exception.
About all I see the gel doing is providing a benchmark which projectiles can be compared against.

Do they measure how far the gel expands externally due to the impact of the projectile?

In clear gel you can see the wound track and expansion. Mason leather on YouTube is doing heaps of comparisons using 308 and all sorts of bullets

https://youtu.be/UaHWJrtybJw?si=9ibb6IYPLwbDiGDi

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6208714/

A reasonable summary

The "calibrated" blocks are generally darker and harder.
The nice clear ones on utube are softer but offer a good visual way to compare different projectiles.

This guy puts deer skin and a shoulder blade in front of his ballistic gel blocks when testing projectiles.

https://youtu.be/7VztT0CXc5g?si=Uk-0YqbmnYunpnUu