BrobeeBiter
New member
Hi there folks!
So about 10 years ago (before my kids came!), some of you may remember when I had a website where I chronicled a big ballistic gelatin shooting extravaganza I'd spent a winter doing. I tested in ballistics gel pretty much everything from #9 shot all the way through the various buckshots and even a handful of different slugs. I also did a whole bunch of .223 and .308 rounds. Not only did I have a tonne of fun in the process, but I also learned a whole lot.
Then for various reasons, several years ago I took down the website where all the results were catalogued. I've allowed some of the photographs to survive over in one of the stickied forums at shotgunworld.com, and they occasionally get referenced in other forums (such as thehighroad.org) when folks ask about the performance/suitability of a paticular shot size for a paticular application.
In fact, on another forum in a similarly themed thread my old ballistics gel tests came up again and it got me a bit nostalgic as I remembered how much fun it had been to do all the testing. It also got me thinking about how much better it could be in today's world of HD cameras and YouTube!
That was pretty much it then....I knew what my next project would be and I got busy!
In addition to better video equipment and better media delivery mechanisms, there were other improvements to make. The first was in the actual preparation of the gelatin. Previously, I had been constrained to winter gelatin testing only, as I was using my unheated garage as the source of refrigeration required to make and store the gelatin blocks. I would have to wait until it was cold outside, then use a small space heater to keep my garage at 5 degrees C. I only had one gelatin mold, so it would take me a while to make enough gelatin, and then I would have to wait until the weather was 5 degrees outside so that I could move the gelatin to the range, get setup, and then shoot it while was still the proper temperature. Talk about a pain!
This time around I wanted the freedom to make/store gelatin at any time of the year, so I set out to make a poor-boy refrigerator that I could tow anywhere. It is pretty much a chest framed with 2x4s and lined with 4 inches of rigid board insulation. It sits on my utility trailer (so I can tow it anywhere), and is powered by a room air conditioner I've redneck-engineered to maintain 4 degrees celsius inside the chest.
Inbetween bouts of building the refrigerated chest, I got on the phone and ordered up 50 lbs of ballistics gelatin, some dimethylpolysiloxane (de-foamer), and propionic acid (mold & fungus inhibitor). I also had a local sheet meta fabricator make me two 8.5x10x18 gelatin molds from 18 gauge stainless. The last of the materials arrived last week, and this past weekend I set up to cast the first blocks....I was thrilled when the first block slid out of the mold!
Now a week later my refrigerated chest was pretty much full, and I spent the long weekend at my little farm for a big bout of shotgun ballistics gelatin shooting! I started out with a good selection of steel and lead BB, BBB, and #4 buckshot (both plated and unplaced, some with flight control wads and others with conventional wads)m and now have a pile of video to to edit. I'll do this over the next bunch of weeks, and post each episode up on youtube as I get it done.
Here's the first one:
Federal's Premium Black Cloud BB:
As I have raw footage for more than a dozen more, I'd sure appreciate comments on format and content!
I've also done Federal's black cloud BBB as well as Hornady's heavy Mag Coyote BB with their Versawad (same thing as Federal's flight control wad). The black cloud BBB is really really interesting; I've got some coyote hunting lined up shortly where I'll be trying it out. Videos of that hopefully too, but I might save them for my website at www.coyotecanada.ca.
Anyway, more ammo reviews to come as I get them edited...
Cheers,
Brobee
So about 10 years ago (before my kids came!), some of you may remember when I had a website where I chronicled a big ballistic gelatin shooting extravaganza I'd spent a winter doing. I tested in ballistics gel pretty much everything from #9 shot all the way through the various buckshots and even a handful of different slugs. I also did a whole bunch of .223 and .308 rounds. Not only did I have a tonne of fun in the process, but I also learned a whole lot.
Then for various reasons, several years ago I took down the website where all the results were catalogued. I've allowed some of the photographs to survive over in one of the stickied forums at shotgunworld.com, and they occasionally get referenced in other forums (such as thehighroad.org) when folks ask about the performance/suitability of a paticular shot size for a paticular application.
In fact, on another forum in a similarly themed thread my old ballistics gel tests came up again and it got me a bit nostalgic as I remembered how much fun it had been to do all the testing. It also got me thinking about how much better it could be in today's world of HD cameras and YouTube!
That was pretty much it then....I knew what my next project would be and I got busy!
In addition to better video equipment and better media delivery mechanisms, there were other improvements to make. The first was in the actual preparation of the gelatin. Previously, I had been constrained to winter gelatin testing only, as I was using my unheated garage as the source of refrigeration required to make and store the gelatin blocks. I would have to wait until it was cold outside, then use a small space heater to keep my garage at 5 degrees C. I only had one gelatin mold, so it would take me a while to make enough gelatin, and then I would have to wait until the weather was 5 degrees outside so that I could move the gelatin to the range, get setup, and then shoot it while was still the proper temperature. Talk about a pain!
This time around I wanted the freedom to make/store gelatin at any time of the year, so I set out to make a poor-boy refrigerator that I could tow anywhere. It is pretty much a chest framed with 2x4s and lined with 4 inches of rigid board insulation. It sits on my utility trailer (so I can tow it anywhere), and is powered by a room air conditioner I've redneck-engineered to maintain 4 degrees celsius inside the chest.
Inbetween bouts of building the refrigerated chest, I got on the phone and ordered up 50 lbs of ballistics gelatin, some dimethylpolysiloxane (de-foamer), and propionic acid (mold & fungus inhibitor). I also had a local sheet meta fabricator make me two 8.5x10x18 gelatin molds from 18 gauge stainless. The last of the materials arrived last week, and this past weekend I set up to cast the first blocks....I was thrilled when the first block slid out of the mold!
Now a week later my refrigerated chest was pretty much full, and I spent the long weekend at my little farm for a big bout of shotgun ballistics gelatin shooting! I started out with a good selection of steel and lead BB, BBB, and #4 buckshot (both plated and unplaced, some with flight control wads and others with conventional wads)m and now have a pile of video to to edit. I'll do this over the next bunch of weeks, and post each episode up on youtube as I get it done.
Here's the first one:
Federal's Premium Black Cloud BB:
As I have raw footage for more than a dozen more, I'd sure appreciate comments on format and content!
I've also done Federal's black cloud BBB as well as Hornady's heavy Mag Coyote BB with their Versawad (same thing as Federal's flight control wad). The black cloud BBB is really really interesting; I've got some coyote hunting lined up shortly where I'll be trying it out. Videos of that hopefully too, but I might save them for my website at www.coyotecanada.ca.
Anyway, more ammo reviews to come as I get them edited...
Cheers,
Brobee