Home-made ballistic gelatin

[Shawn Dodson]

I guess if you're gonna use ballistics gelatin at least stick some bones in it.

If this were the case, what bones? Where along the bullet track (near the beginning, middle or end) should the bone be located? What part of the bone should be targeted? How will this information be of practical value?

Given the variables of any particular shooting, precision shot placement and wound path through the body cannot be controlled by the shooter. Terminal performance involving bone is what it is.

[geminidglocker]

If this were the case, what bones? Where along the bullet track (near the beginning, middle or end) should the bone be located? What part of the bone should be targeted? How will this information be of practical value?

Given the variables of any particular shooting, precision shot placement and wound path through the body cannot be controlled by the shooter. Terminal performance involving bone is what it is.

My point exactly. Why use ballistics gel? But in all seriousness, my post was just meant to be funny, as well as intelligent.

[DocGKR]

Gelatin block weight and size are dependent on the projectiles that will be tested. It is critical that the block size be large enough to fully capture the projectile track, including any fragments, and stretch—one can place a second block behind the primary block in order to capture deep penetrating projectiles, however the blocks must be intimately in contact, with no air gap. Small 20 lb blocks can be used for handgun projectiles, 40 lbs blocks can be used for 5.56 mm projectiles, while 60-80+ lbs blocks are needed for larger rifle calibers. We use 66 liter rectangular plastic storage bins as molds for blocks in the 40-100 lbs weight range; size if roughly 20x14x5-10" depending on weight.

geminidglocker--Your posts don't make sense; please clarify.

[Shawn Dodson]

I'm not a "Pro". Nor do I have a college degree. I'm just a Regular Joe who's a student of wound ballistics. So feel free to argue with me all you want! LOL

I can understand the rationale for the Red Cross DVD to present medical information showing complexities of wound trauma produced when a bullet encounters bone.

From the standpoint of selecting a bullet to quickly stop deadly violence – we’re just making holes, be it soft tissue or punching through bone. The goal is to damage tissues critical to immediate survival. These tissues are all soft tissues.

[Glock17JHP]

David...

Polyurethane is not a good material to model bones with... I think...

Pig bones (human sized) would be much better (since human bones are harder to get)...

[BushmasterFanBoy]

geminidglocker--Your posts don't make sense; please clarify.

To the untrained eye, it would seem to make a lot of sense to just skip to the chase and just test rounds intended to be used against living animals, on, well.... living animals. I'm sure to the more anatomically astute, that might seem like comparing apples and oranges, but to me at least (and I'm guessing gemindglocker as well) it seems like a closer test than just using gelatin.

[Jim from Houston]

But see, the key is that the "untrained eye" doesn't really understand the process.

The reason that properly calibrated (and that's key) ballistic gelatin is used to test is not based on some sort of hypothetical discussion of "gee, what is a better simulant, gelatin or a goat?"

It's used because over decades of experimentation AND comparison with real world shootings, researchers have been able to establish scientific proof that properly calibrated ballistic gelatin is indeed an excellent predictor of what bullets do in the real world.

All of this is much less hypothetical than people who oppose ballistic gelatin testing want to make it sound...researchers have a keen interest in real world shooting incidents (provided they are PROPERLY documented) as well as ballistic gelatin testing.

But what you find when you compare the two, is that the properly calibrated gel is indeed an excellent predictor.

Look-up the work of Eugene Wolberg if this sort of research interests you further. In short, he researched actual shooting incidents of the San Diego Police and found that their rounds in the field performed as gelatin tests would predict.

With regard to putting bones in gelatin, if anyone's interested in this and isn't familiar with the Dahlstrom and Powley Royal Canadian Mounted Police tests, here's a link to a summary:

http://www.css.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/cprc/tr/tr-1995-01.pdf

The Mounties tested with swine rib bones embedded in gelatin blocks...to make a long story short, they found that rib bones don't have a large impact on the terminal performance of defensive rounds. Ribs, of course, are some of the flimsier bones, so long bones like femur, etc. would no doubt have much more of an impact, but ribs are what you find in the normal firearms target zone. Shooting at the skull, of course, can be challenging for a number of reasons.

[Glock17JHP]

A few comments on gelatin may be in order at this point, also...

Gelatin is especially good to use because it is HOMOGENOUS. Some are thinking right now that HOMOGENOUS is not good because the human body (the 'target') is NOT homogenous. That is true. However... if you AVERAGE all of the typical shots into the human body, they will match properly prepared gelatin in penetration depth, and the expanded bullet characterisics overall. When a scientific study is done, you need a 'control' (a constant) so you are comparing apples to apples. The homogenous properties of properly prepared gelatin give us that 'control'. Human gunshots wounds (and comparable animal gunshot wounds) back up the gelatin data, but are much less CONSISTENT. This is why gelatin needs to be a major contributor to wound ballistics testing... it has CONSISTENTCY. Using actual shooting data exclusively (human or animal) will result in data with such a wide amount of 'scatter' that it will be much harder to gain usefull information from it from a comparison viewpoint. Gelatin use allows comparison between shots to a much, much larger degree... and this will yield much more useful data overall. This does not mean actual shots into humans or comparable animals are NOT important, it only stresses the importance of gelatin use for wound ballistics. Neither gelatin or actual shooting data should be used to the exclusion of the other... BOTH have their places.

I hope this makes sense...