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From: decwrl!well.sf.ca.us!well!tmi@uunet.UU.NET (Peter Kasler)
Newsgroups: rec.guns
Subject: Re: Ordinance Gelatin, where to get it?
Message-ID: <34947@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 28 May 91 12:11:14 GMT
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steve@gumby.Altos.COM (Steve Scherf) writes:


#In article <34470@mimsy.umd.edu> decwrl!well.sf.ca.us!well!tmi@uunet.UU.NET (Peter Kasler) writes:
#] Dux-Seal, for example, yields large wound cavities that bear little or no
#] relationship to temporal or permanent wound cavities in human tissue.
#] Likewise,
#] recovered bullets do not necessarily deform the same in such media as they
#] deform in human soft tissue, whereas wounding potential and bullet
#] deformation
#] in human tissue is well-correlated to ballistic gelatin.

#Why go to all this trouble? Won't a side of beef work well for testing
#"wounding potential"?
#-- 
#Steve Scherf
#steve@Altos.COM    ...!{sun|sco|pyramid|amdahl|uunet}!altos!steve

#These opinions are solely mine, but others may share them if they like.

A side of beef, or any other non-living flesh for that matter, is of no
greater value in wound ballistics testing than any of the other various
media people have tried over the years. It simply doesn't correlate well
to living human flesh. (The FAA used to use live chickens to test the
integrity of jet aircraft windshields until they were stopped; now they
use freshly-killed chickens that are no more than a few minutes (I forget
the parameter) dead. The concern here is the same: flesh that has been
dead long enough for lividity to occur does not correlate sufficiently
well to living human soft tissue to be of much value).

Joe Zambone used to (he may still, for that matter) test his MagSafe Ammo
in corned beef, still in the plastic wrapper, obtained at the grocery store,
but alas results just weren't close enough to living human flesh to be very
valuable. The last I heard, Joe was experimenting with ballistic gelatin,
but I don't know if he actually switched or not.