Here's Why Clear Gel May Be Lying To You: 10mm Federal 180gr Trophy Bonded soft point gel test

I fired 10mm Federal 180gr Trophy Bonded soft point from a pistol and a 10.5 inch "carbine" into clear gel and real ballistic gelatin to find out the truth.

Clear gel is generally "good enough" to produce results that correlate pretty closely with real 10% ballistic gelatin in regard to penetration, expansion/fragmentation, and retained weight measurements when testing hollow point pistol ammo, but the difference in material properties can make the results from tests of other ammunition types less accurate. When I tested 10mm Federal 180gr Trophy Bonded soft point in clear gel, the results were not consistent with the results from real 10% ballistic gelatin.

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4.5" bbl clear gel:
Penetration: 28.2"
Retained weight: 179.3gr
Max expansion: N/A
Min expansion: N/A

Velocities in fps:
1,223
1,232
1,195
1,210
1,204
Average: 1,213
StdDev: 14.79
Min: 1,195
Max: 1,232
Spread: 37

10.5" bbl clear gel:
Penetration: 21.3", 21.7"
Retained weight: 180.0gr, 179.7gr
Max expansion: 0.641", 0.643"
Min expansion: 0.579", 0.554"

Velocities in fps:
1,414
1,427
1,425
1,450
1,388
Average: 1,421
StdDev: 22.53
Min: 1,388
Max: 1,450
Spread: 62

4.5" bbl real gelatin:
Penetration: 21.5"
Retained weight: 178.8gr
Max expansion: 0.627"
Min expansion: 0.517"