Is it possible to build a homemade bullet resistant vest with everyday materials?

No, not only no but HELL NO.

Yes. Find 5 people around you that you do not like very much. Strap them around your body.

Oh boy..... l gotta agree with falconry, l sure would not want to be the test subject!!

You watch toooooooo much TV!!! Get in the field and check out what a real bullet does!

There is no homemade kevlar. You could always make a vest with a bunch of pockets and fill em with iron plates or wet sand, but you would not be able to move and would probably still die!

It depends on how strong and creative you are. Are you strong enough to wear a (very) thick vest built of metal built by melting down your silverware, car doors, copper tubing, etc.?

Mythbusters was able to make a bullet resistant material out of ceramic floor tiles & a sort of plaster mixture. As l recall it was not that heavy & stopped a 9mm bullet at close range. l doubt it would be feasable to use as body armor however, & since u would be putting ur life on the line by wearing it u should probably just buy the real stuff.

Edit: Falconry needs some lessons in reading comprehension to go along with his Urban Legends 101 class. No one said it would be a good idea to copy the Mythbusters bullet proof vest experiment. Just the opposite in fact!

l am trying to put this in a socially acceptable manner....................................................................and l am not sure there is one.

Do you have children? If so use them as initial test subjects. Any idiot who trys to make a bullet proof vest out of everyday material at home deserves to win a Darwin award an totally remove his genes from the Human Gene Pool.

If you keep plate steel around.

Yes
The first ones made were homemade
The problem is figuring out what household materials will work

You could always buy Kevlar in bulk & make one

And Falconry is way off
Black Talons were not taken off the market because they penetrated vests, as a matter of fact they were never taken off the market only renamed
Talk about watching too much TV
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Teflon does not a make bullet armor piercing
No matter what CS l tells you

l am sure you could take a sturdy backpack and fill it will phone books. That would stop most any pistol rounds.

It would be heavy as all get out, but it would work, to a degree.

Possible? Yes.

Practical? No.

Good idea? No.

Protecting your life is the sort of thing you REALLY do not want to go cheap on.

l mean, would YOU want to go bungee jumping after the bungee guy told you how he was able to get the cheapest cords he could find?

Would you want to jump if he said he made it himself? :-D

Would somebody just answer the question already?!

Before Kevlar, l believe nylon was used for soft body armor (and before that, silk). l do not know how u would obtain the correct weave or amount of nylon, but it is easier to obtain & cheaper than Kevlar.

If u look at commercial vests, there r usually pockets into which plates can be inserted to increase bullet resistance. These plates r usually ceramic (very ''tough'' in the materials science sense) in order to save weight. Since one normally does not have access to fancy ceramics, mild steel will do, but u will pay a big weight penalty. l would go with 0.5'' or more to stop slower handgun rounds. High power handgun rounds might still make it through. l suppose ceramic tiles could work too (a la Mythbusters). It is worth noting that on Mythbusters they used tiles plus a glass fiber reinforced plaster. Without this bonding agent, a bullet hitting the tiles would shatter them, rendering them useless, & also send sharp shards into ur eyes & skin. Plus, u would look like an idiot if ur suit of ''armor'' suddenly fell to pieces like a Sarah Palin interview. Of course, this assumes u did not already feel foolish running around with patterned floor/wall tiles dangling from you.

In summary, the answer is yes, it is possible to make ur own homemade body armor that is capable of stopping whatever u want, but the weight & bulk will be prohibitive if u plan on stopping anything more than slow handgun rounds.

l agree with everyone that u would not want to make one to save a few hundred dollars & go on ur nightly patrol, or steal drugs from a drug dealer. But the reality is that we could find ourselves in a desperate situation where an improvised vest could be the difference between life & death.

Having done some searching on the web, l found one forum discussion with some great ideas. Tyvek is a strong,flexible, common material that could be layered to create resistance. Also, Lexan is not flexible, but could be inexpensively used to resist bullets or knives.

Instead of building clothing from scratch, u could use spray glue & attach it to the outside of an existing piece of clothing.

You could also get used or surplus body armor from ebay.