Homemade ballistic gel

[mrhappycow]

Alright so, I made my own ballistic gel and it performs almost as well as the real stuff from what I can recall.

Once when out shooting a person next to me had ballistic gel to test the difference between hollow points fmj and standard rounds.

He had a little bit left over and I played with it. So from what I remember it feels a lot like the real deal.
If you don't know how to make this stuff you need two things.... Knox Gelatin (un flavored) and water. Instructables tells you to mix the gelatin with water in an 8:1 ratio. 1 oz of gelatin to 8 ounces of water. But through a week of investigation their amounts seem to be wrong. I had to put in almost double the asked value to get what felt realistic. After mixing the contents you have to put the 'stuff' in the refrigerator for 2 hrs so it can do something called "blooming" it's a reaction where the water mixes with the powder to make an even amount of everything so by refrigerating the mix you are evenly distributing the gelatin with the water so one section is not more dense than the other. After it is nice and cool you take it out and put it on the stove for sometime till all the contents are liquid. It is yellowish brown and smells bad. When heating make sure it doesn't go above 130 degrees or your fun is done. The process is ruined and you have to start over. By the way if you don't have a thermometer 130 is hot. 135 sets off normal sprinkle systems and most hot tubs are set to 103 or so degrees. 130 degrees is hot to the touch and can burn you so be careful. After the contents are heated you have to put it back in the refrigerator for another 36 hrs.

Yes the process is simple but takes a long time. Make sure you take your time and do all the steps right because the gelatin is expensive at 9 dollars a box. In the box contains 32 envelopes of powder gelatin. Each envelope contains .25 oz just as a reference.

Good luck in your homemade projects and I'll post some pictures of my upgraded sniper and bb gun so you can see what they did to it.

[L J]

To ike with your homemade gel!