Ball/Bullet trap

[Hangfire]

Been wanting to build some type of ball/bullet trap to help recover some of the lead I've been depositing in the dirt bank out back. Was going to make something out of steel plate and was wondering if any of you guys have ever made one. Thickness of plate used and a few pics of what you made would sure help getting me in the right direction.

 

[JeffG]

The heart of your backstop should be a piece of AR500. Angle it back away at the bottom to direct bullets down into your trap medium. Make it sand, cat litter or rubber. Something that will skim out when you re-smelt. The steel can be mounted in wood. Mount your targets on a vertical truck mud flap ahead of your steel, to prevent back splatter .

 

[Canute Rex]

Hey Hangfire (great name, by the way),

Don't bother with steel (no offense intended, Iron Dog). There is an easier way. I didn't believe it when I first heard about it.

Make a plywood box (stay with me here) about three feet long, two feet wide by two feet high. Give it a hinged top. Make one of the two by two ends so you can change out that end easily. Maybe 1/4" plywood in slots cut into 2x4 like a picture frame. I use those sheet metal angles for holding stair treads in place.

Make legs to prop it a couple feet off the ground. Fill it with rubber playground mulch. It's just chipped up tires. You can get it in bags at Home Depot or any yard supply store.

You can shoot a 62 caliber ball in the end and it will stop about 18" deep. I put a 1/4" steel plate in the back end just in case, but I get about four dents a year in that. That only happens if I let the mulch level go down and shoot high.

Eventually you can either scoop out some mulch and poke around in the box, or else dump it all out on a tarp and pick through for your lead. The balls will retain about 99% of their mass.

I have noticed that with a particular ball and load they will all cluster in the same area of mulch. I can find them by the stain of sawdust from the front plywood panel.

When the front panel gets too shot out you tip the thing onto its back end and slide out the old, slide in the new.

I just made a new one which will have a sloped top and tin roofing. The old one rotted out after a while.

Happy shooting.

 

[Brokennock]

+1 for rubber mulch, either in a box as described or a huge pile against a railroad tie retaining wall. I work on a indoor range and have experience with a military indoor range that uses a rubber "mulch" backstop. 16" deep pile stops 5.56 bullets handily, sometimes shredding the bullets and jackets. Stops shotgun slugs and buckshot without the risk of the latter bouncing around the range. Maintenance amounts to redistributing the rubber (bottom to top, gravity pulling the pile down as you scoop from the bottom) occasionally, how often depends on usage level. Academy range was once a week. Once a year we float the rubber in a tank of water, the manure sinks and the good rubber floats, skim it out with a screen, any rubber that slips through the mesh doesn't go back on the backstop and is replaced.

 

[BigBoreBLR]

Shoot into a pile of sand, sift the sand annually.

 

[larry wv]

I just use a plywood box with dry sand in it. Cover with whatever to keep it dry.(easier to dig lead out). The sand stops most stuff pretty quick. My box is 2 foot thick and I have never shot through it. I patch the front once in awhile with junk wood of some sort. Larry

 

[roundball]

Been wanting to build some type of ball/bullet trap to help recover some of the lead I've been depositing in the dirt bank out back. Was going to make something out of steel plate and was wondering if any of you guys have ever made one. Thickness of plate used and a few pics of what you made would sure help getting me in the right direction.

I bought a few bags of chopped up rubber mulch from Home Depot to make a trap box...mount a section of rubber across the front opening to keep the mulch in (Home Depot usually has a roll of 3/16" rubber sheeting, 5' wide, buy it by the linear foot)

 

[BrownBear]

I use sand because it's handy.... And because I can't get the rubber mulch locally. If I could buy it, there's no doubt I'd quit the sand.

 

[nkbj]

A dirt filled short stack of freebie old truck tires. A hardware cloth wood frame shaker box for recovery.

 

[Naphtali]

I have been using one foot thickness of duct-taped together DRY magazines. So far no bullet from ANY cartridge gun or muzzleloader has penetrated more than 6.5 inches - regardless of range. I shot as close as 15 yards.

I first began using this back stop to compare penetration among several rifles - with my custom 775-grain .72-caliber muzzleloading bullet.

I discovered that dry paper is significantly more penetration resistant than wet.

Were I to not be confident of hitting a magazine sized back stop, I would use a cardboard packing box to load four of these back stops as a square.

Hope this helps.

 

[bpd303]

A dirt filled short stack of freebie old truck tires. A hardware cloth wood frame shaker box for recovery.

My trap exactly... four old tires stacked and filled with sand, behind my target stand. Sift it out about every couple of years.

 

[Hangfire]

Thanks everyone for the ideas. Got me thinking of ways to build one that I wouldn't even of considered. Pays to just ask sometimes.

 

[robinsroost]

I made one for a police department that I worked at. Its made of a sheet of 3/8" boiler plate, set at a 45 degree angle. The frame is made of railroad ties, with one across the front. The bottom was filled with sand, to the top of the front tie. The targets were hung in front of the plate. Shots hit the plate and did a 90 degree turn into the sand...........Robin

 

[MSW]

nice description of a clever gadget ... gotta build me one of those!

thanks!