The mechanical properties of a number of polyacrylamide gels have been studied by means of elastic measurements in elongation. Different gels were prepared by varying the proportions of both comonomers, acrylamide and N, N-methylene-bisacrylamide which is used as crosslinker, and a very broad range of concentrations was covered. The most important results considered were the elastic phantom modulus, the degree of (equilibrium) swelling and the elongation at rupture. The data were interpreted in terms of the mechanism of the gelation process taking into account a number of parameters that affect the final structure of the gels: comonomer reactivities, sequence length distributions and cycles formation. Consideration of these factors can explain properly all the features of the elastic results as well as some other properties related to the gelation process such as gel point data.