Well gents (and ladies), I finally got to shoot the ballistic gel and capture the action on 1000FPS video. Before anyone gets too excited, understand the 1000FPS is not near as fast as the bullet stop action you see on TV from time to time. In 1/1000 second the typical pellet may travel from 6" to a foot so you won't be seeing slugs slowly rotating as they penetrate targets here. Those of you with 100,000FPS cameras please step forward!

That disclaimer aside, the boys and I took advantage of my getting home during proper daylight and having the authority to command rapid action to get a little shooting videography in.

The objective was to shoot homemade ballistic gel with a commercially available .22, the Prairie III .32 and the Woodsman .62. These objectives were chosen because no better ones had been suggested prior.

Here's what I said as far as predictions went long before today... "I'm fairly confident that for the .22 I can just lay two of the blocks end to end on a flat surface and be good. For the .32, because I can place the shot so accurately, I should be able to place all 4 blocks end to end where I'm shooting into the 3"x4.5" face and get a good result. For the .62 I need to give myself a little more room for error. I thought I might stand up the blocks so I'd be shooting into a 4.5"x 7" face but that only gives me a 12-13" depth. Maybe that is plenty but I just don't know for sure. A 12ga. loaded with #2 buckshot is supposed to have about 12" of penetration but at a shorter range. At worst, the big slug blows apart the 4 blocks of gel and collapses the support structure all on slow-mo video! I'll need to lay out some cheese cloth to collect the bits for re-melting I think.... "

I think you'll find that I was pretty close on the .22 and .32 shots but wildly over-estimated the impact of the .62. I would note for the record that the support structure I actually used was far sturdier than I anticipated when making predictions (I used a proper table vice a cardboard box as I had considered). Nonetheless, the results are either interesting or not. I hope you enjoy the results!

Here's the most anti-climactic video:

This video shows a 14.3gr pellet launched at about 29FPE from 42 yards penetrating the gel. The pellet makes it all the way through the first block and stops right at the edge of the second block, about 7.5" of penetration. That's some pretty solid penetration given the relatively low power. I think this demonstrates that 29 FPE is not something you would scoff at if it was aimed your way...

Well, maybe the video itself doesn't make the point as you can't see that much going on...sorry. Maybe the pictures will help:


The pellet drove through 7.5" of gel that closely mimics the resistance of flesh.

Without bone to impact, the pellet seems to be relatively un-perturbed.

Now let's take a look at the .32 Bishop fired at about 110 FPE (I wish I'd had time to set up the chronograph but that would have used up the available daylight, for those wishing to re-figure the estimate, the 94gr Bishop was shot from the Prairie III at low power using 3000psi):


To get this shot, I had to put a container in the frame to get the camera to focus properly. I didn't realize at the time that the container would provide data. Can you see it jump? The gel is on a pretty solid table. It is a folding table but made out of plastic that is an inch and a half thick. The empty container bounces around pretty good telling me that there is a fair amount of energy being dissipated.


That's a solid 16-17" of penetration! Some of us are aware of an actual in the field shot that confirms the results shown here. 100+ FPE is serious power!

The channel is visible here but even more pronounced if you could move about and let the light play off the internal damage..

OK, the .32 was interesting enough but lets move on to the .62! I used the 420gr slug for this test as I'm down to the last couple of rounds in the 545gr class and I didn't know if I might have an issue with my sighter shot. As it turned out this entire test was done with 6 shots. I took a sighter shot and then fired with the video running and only one take was recorded for every shot. Here's the .62 video:


Did you see the slug bounce out at the tail end of the show? That was not visible or apparent to anyone involved until I ran through the video editing it for this post! As far as we knew, the big slug had buried into the target wall. After I saw the video, I showed it to Chris and he ran out and found the slug based on where the video indicated to look. I won't show the slug here but it's a wee bit shorter that it started and has some damage from the bounce...


Big temporary cavity there.


I shot braced against my back door frame. I'm sooo glad I didn't miss! Honestly, I oriented the gell blocks more for my accuracy issues than the gun's. I've been pretty lucky in that every video or still shot of a target shot with the .62 smoothbore has been captured in one take and has impacted well within the target zone. I figured it would look pretty silly if I set the blocks small end towards me and then edge shot the whole thing or missed. Especially, since I didn't have time to use the bench. So, I got a good shot but naturally, the penetration was more than the 12-13" of the gel blocks as assembled. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter as any deer is just plain dead at this range but for some of you the lack of absolute penetration depth is going to be a bother. I'll try to capture that another time.


Just a shot of the wound channel.


I thought maybe the .62 round would cause expolosive damage or even bust up the gel blocks. Wrong. The gel really is strong stuff. This picture shows the exit of the third block and also the exit of the fourth block. Just to cage the viewer, the exit of the third block is the star shaped wound in the near block which is right at the entrance to the 4th block which shows the exit side...



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2009 11:57PM by Jerry.

Hey Jerry!

Neat videos!! Boy, the shock waves really wiggle the jello. wow. I guess that's the hydroshock waves working.

Thanks for documenting it. I was surprised to see the penetration of the Prairie. I'd love to see one with it turned up nearly three times the power with the pointed Torpeado slug!!! Man .... you'd need a bunch of jell for that ....

Fun stuff ... glad the camera is working again for all of us.

Thanks guy.

Gary

Nice video work Jerry. Interested to know what the wound channel looks like inside, is there more than just a slug-sized track?
Cheers
Neil

Neil,
The wound channel appears to heal up pretty good but there are a bunch of tears in the gel that are hard to see. The damage is not as bad as a frame by frame view leads one to believe though.

Neat stuff. Low velocity, heavy weight bullets. Wow. Dory

Nice video Jerry, don't want to be on the wrong end of any of that action. It makes me think back to the wound tracks of some of the animals taken and how far the coagulation was from the bullet track. Those shot waves transfer lots of energy to the tissue.

It seemed that the gel was opening up on the face of the blocks. Did you have any video showing a frontal view, just a thought.

Hope the boys are all doing well,
Kent

I was just mentioning last night that I want to get a frontal view! It's just a matter of opportunity at this point.