The long and winding road to 10% Ballistic Gelatin...

Making ballistic gel in your own home is... relatively easy. If you are super patient and don't set unrealistic expectations of either time or cost.

First of all, creating two 6x6x16ish blocks requires some 7 gallons of gelatin mix. That means you're looking at ~$130 in gelatin powder alone. 

Having made the gelatin mix once and melted it back down 2 times (now that we've finished filming our first 2 tests [videos coming by the end of the week!]), I would be fairly confident in my ability...

...to make it again with moderate success. However, when Joel and I first decided to tackle the mixing process, we spent some 4 hours from the time we set out all our materials until we had a (poorly) completed product. What you see below was following the first meltdown I did just to get us a useable product with the proper density for ballistic testing.

The real problem with the original idea was that my quick study on the internetzzz gave me the impression that very little gelatin was needed, until I actually ran my own formulas for the necessary liquid volume and appropriate amount of powder by weight.

Here you can see the chilled and set gel, just needing to get carved into the appropriately sized blocks.

So, if you're interested in making your own gel, go for it! This guide was the one I found to be the most professional, however, I did alot of comparing recipes and verifying the weights per gallon to ensure a 10% mix as expected. I just encourage you to NOT expect it to be incredibly easy and to go incredibly smooth. For myself and the rest of the EDG crew... I expect that we will be switching to Clear Ballistics products sooner than later, as it should work out to allow us more reuses over time than the traditional organic 10% gelatin mix.

Good luck and happy shooting! Check out the channel at Youtube.com/EverydayGunner to see the gel blocks functioning perfectly in our videos!