BALLISTICS GEL DIY!!

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I’ve seen ballistics gel used in Mythbusters and other youtube videos and I always thought it was so cool, and assumed it was super hard to acquire or make. And I was kinda correct, there’s actually a ton of really interesting information about ballistics gel creation and usage but it’s not really all that difficult to make at home. Ballistics gel is material or medium used to conduct scientific tests that is comparable to human tissue when it comes into contact with high velocity projectiles. And while ballistics gel does not model the tensile strength of muscle, skin or bone it does give useful data as the gelatine mixture closely simulates the density and viscosity of human tissue as a whole. When it comes to ballistics research and real scientific testing, there are very specific formulas used to keep ballistics gel tests uniform.
The most common is called “10% ballistics gel”. This particular recipe and slight variations are used with government agencies like the INS and NATO.However since this is an at home build we’re going to be using a recipe that gets us close to this “standard” recipe.

One of the biggest variables is that our gelatin has a lower bloom value.

The bloom rating is a number that tells us how strong our gelatin actually is. It also correlated to how large the molecules making up the gelatine are, the larger the molecule, the larger the molecular mass, the higher the bloom value. The gelatin were using for this build, called knox gelatin has a 225 bloom rating. Where as the “standard formula” requires a 250 bloom value.

So here’s how were going to make our ballistics gel

We’re going to mix 1 pound of knox gelatin with 4 liters of COLD water. Were then going to put this mixture into the fridge for 2 hours. After that we're going to melt it down to a temperature never exceeding 130 degrees F.

From here we pour this fluid mixture in a container that is easily bent to get the gelatin back out later. We let that cool off to room temperature and then stick it into the fridge for 12 hours.

Note, I wouldn’t recommend putting the gelatin into the fridge hot because it creates a ton of moisture in the fridge which freeze up the air circulation from the freeze to the fridge (which is how a fridge works).



LMK in the comment section below what else you think would be good to test with this gel! If you haven't hit that subscribe button and I’ll see you soon!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_gelatin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_(test)

The most commonly used formula is a "10% ballistic gelatin", which is prepared by dissolving 1 part 250A bloom gelatin into 9 parts of warm water (by mass), mixing the water while pouring in the powdered gelatin. It is chilled to 4 °C (39 °F). The older NATO formula specifies a 20% solution, chilled to 10 °C (50 °F), but that solution costs more to prepare, as it uses twice the amount of the gelatin. In either case, a 1988 research paper by Martin Fackler recommends that the water should not be heated above 40 °C (104 °F), as this can cause a significant change in the ballistic performance.[4]



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Production Team:
Writer/Producer: Nick Uhas
Crew: Kaleb Seaton
Best Girl: Opal Roo (the dog)