Gel cavity dyeing

Does anyone know if simply mixing some food coloring with water and pouring it in one end of a ballistics gel block that's been shot with a rifle round will result in the permanent and temporary stretch cavities being easily visually inspected?

I am thinking about performing a terminal ballistics comparison between three different types of commercially-loaded .223 ammunition by firing one of each of the three different rounds into three separate gelatin blocks (constructed by following a do-it-yourself recipe for ballistics gelatin using readily-available Knox gelatin) positioned approximately 100yds from the muzzle. The three rounds I'm going to compare are Federal Vital-shok 55gr Barnes TSX, Federal Fusion 62gr JSP Bonded, and ASYM 70gr Barnes TSX. The intended purpose for this test is to assess which round produces the best terminal wounding effects for the application of deer hunting. I am not planning on shooting BB's into the blocks for calibration (since I'm only assessing relative performance amongst these three rounds), but will do what I can to make sure they're as uniform and as similar as possible to each other for the experiment (making them at the same time, letting them cure for the same amount of time, making sure they're the same temperature, and making sure that the shots are taken quickly so as to minimize the effect that exposing them to ambient air temperature will have on their elasticity).

Even though this was conceived solely for the purpose of giving me a comparison between these three ammunition types in choosing which one to hunt deer with, I will try to take good pictures documenting the results if anyone else would be interested.

Don't dye the blocks--it actually makes assessing the wound channel MUCH more difficult. The only time dye is used is for cute marketing photos...

All three of the loads you mentioned will work fine for deer. Both the 55 gr and 70 gr TSX will have the highest retained weight. The 70 gr will penetrate the deepest, likely exiting your deer, especially if they 100-150 lbs small size ones... The Fusion is the same as the Gold Dot--it will likely expand the best, but can have a bit of fragmentation.

You might wish to reconsider calibrating the gel, as that is the only way you can determine if your get has any validity.

Deer around here in NC are pretty small from what I've seen so far, so hopefully I should be good to go.

The reason I wanted to avoid calibration is 1) because I don't have a chronograph nor a BB gun at my disposal in my current living situation, and 2) because this was meant to be an assessment of the relative performance among these three. Assuming from from the get-go that they're good for deer (as you've stated both here and in other posts), I simply want to find out what sort of wound ballistics each round displays relative to the others under consideration. That's the reason attention needs to given to making sure the gelatin blocks used are as similar to each other as possible.

I'm not looking to re-prove that the rounds are good for deer, but rather see the differences in wound profiles created by each round (and make a judgement based on that as to which one is "best"). As such, the results would be totally useless for comparing to gel tests of other ammunition since my gelatin isn't calibrated. Does this make sense, Doc?

Unless you are shooting over 300 yds or are going after 200 lbs deer, the 70 gr TSX is probably more bullet than you need. Take the 55 gr TSX and the 62 gr Fusion/64 gr Gold Dot and spend your time on discovering which is more accurate and reliable in your rifle. The home gel testing seems like a lot of effort to try and duplicate terminal performance testing that has already been done to a higher standard...

Alright - saves me a lot of time and fiddling. I'll take your word for it and just see what happens on the deer w/ the lighter two bullets, pending them being accurate and reliable enough for my comfort. Once I get my fill, I'll give the 70's a try.

Thanks for the guidance.

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Originally Posted by twadsw01

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... I'll take your word for it ...
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I think you're safe taking DocGKR's word for it. :)

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Absolutely. Hope that didn't come across as me sounding like a smart ass.