There are a couple of "Secrets" to shooting at metallic targets:
1. Use adequate powder charges, so that the Pure lead ball flattens and splatters.
2. Avoid, when possible targets that are stood on legs, unless they are placed on something flat, and with the feet of the target at the very back edge of the flat base. You don't want weak loads to fail to upset those targets quickly, so that the ball becomes directed away from bouncing back at the shooters. Even then, the balls will tend to fly upwards and sometimes backwards over the target, negating the value of most earthen backstops, unless some kind of roof is placed over the target(s).
3. Use,instead, Hanging bang plates( swingers)- any shape you choose--but suspend the plates with chains attached to the back of the target itself, down about 20% of the length of the plate, so that the metal plate tilts TOWARDS the shooter at a 15-20 degree angle. This causes even high hits with RB. to be deflected downward into the ground.
4. To save metal targets, put a limit on the size caliber that can be fired, even with light loads. Those HUGE one ounce+ balls fired from Brown Bess type guns are gong to beat those metal targets to death sooner or later, and can break the welds on the chains that hold the targets. Even two inch thick steel plates can be broken if hit often enough by these heavy lead balls. No conicals should be allowed, and, or course, no non-lead "bullets".
I think a .54 cal. RB is the largest diameter permitted to be used on our range plates. You can shoot paper with larger guns- but not the plates.
Unless you have several strong men to go out and lift up the heavy targets you must use for high velocity, or heavy ball loads, ask people Not to use those "cannons" on your metallic targets.
My club has metal targets made from 1/4 and 3/8 steel plate- not armor plate. We simply can't afford armor plate.
The 1/4" plates take a lot of beating, and, annually, our Range officers pull the targets into someone's workshop in town, and hammer out the dents from the back side, clean them up, check the welds and re-weld where needed, and then get them ready to put back out in the Spring. Even the 3/8" thick plates can get bowed over time, and they also get inspected, hammered, when needed, the welds checked, etc. annually.
We have been slowly replacing the 1/4" plate targets with thicker ones, as we can afford to do so. If we had a reliable source of armor plate we could afford, I suspect that we might begin to use that for metallic targets. But, armor plate is both heavy, and costly.
Our practice of mounting metal plates so that they tilt towards the shooter has not only proven to provide a great margin of safety, but by redirecting the forward momentum so quickly, we have saved the targets and the welds on them, extending their useful life, so that we rarely have any target fail during the year.
As for edge hits- inevitably that this will occur some time-- we pick spots in ravines to hang our plates, so that there is a high wall on both sides of the plate. Targets are generally placed Lower than the shooters, so that all shots are fired in a generally downward angle. Only an edge hit on the top promises to divert a ball up and back of the plate, and we either have a dirt embankment formed by the ravine's walls, or thick forests above the top of the ravine to stop the occasional errant ricochet.
A lot of work has gone into picking spots for these targets, on our Woods Walk( Hunter's Walk), and then clearing shooting lanes back to where the shooters will stand to shoot at the targets.
The only complaints I have heard about these metallic targets is that sometimes a target is more visible in the morning in the light, than in the afternoon. The Range committee takes these complaints seriously, and have moved targets, or cleared trees so that there is No advantage to shooting early or late in the day, because of lighting conditions.
At my club, because of the terrain, targets are usually placed so that shots can be from as short as 10 yd. out to 60 yds. We don't have a straight enough line in the ravine to shoot 100 yds, and that is sorely missed by some of our members.
When I was a kid, I used to shoot at a rifle range inside a played out quarry, where metal bang plates were hung at both the 100 and 200 yd. rifle ranges. These were 4" thick Gear Blanks, at least 12" in diameter- and often wider, suspended from 1/4" dia. Stainless steel wire, and cable. It took two strong, grown men to lift those targets out of the pickup truck bed, and then into place, and volunteers often went down and helped the staff replace broken down targets( the wire took a beating)just to help speed getting the range back open for shooting.
They made the mistake of attaching the wires to the tops of these gear blanks. There were shooters with scoped rifles who could shoot the wires by aiming for the spots where the wires attached to the plates.
I learned from their mistakes, and recommended the change of location to our club members when we built our swingers. I also recommended tilting the plates forward to deflect RBs down to the ground for safety. We4 used heavy chains from the beginning.
They also had problems with bouncing bullets, coming back to the 100 yds. range. In fact eventually, a sign was posted prohibiting .22 rifles from being used to shoot those plates. The cavities in the face of the plate, caused by the impact of jacketed bullets from high power rifles, could and did turn .22 RF. bullets around and send them all the way back to the 100 yd. firing line.
I didn't think it was possible, until a shooter went down to shoot the plates, and didn't notice the sign. He was shooting his .22 RF., and we could hear bullets hitting the broad leaves of a poplar tree( cottonwood) not 30 feet behind the firing line. We didn't realize what caliber rifle he was using, until a range officer came down and chased him off those targets.
Because we Tilt the plates FORWARD, we don't have the same problems shooting RBs as light as those used in .32 caliber rifles( which weight about the same as the .22 RF bullets do). An unexpected benefit of deflecting the lead balls into the ground at the front of our bang plates is that there is eventually a good quantity of lead that can be recovered at each site, melted down, and recast into lead balls. :hmm: That is a lot easier to do that digging into a dirt embankment to find lead balls and bullets. :grin:
You probably know wheel weights are not pure lead,might have been different results with soft lead.Griz
