I’m looking to slowly make a woodswalking course on my property, maybe get a couple of targets each year. Do people mostly use the AR500 steel that is commonly used for centerfire? Or is 1/2” steel fine for lower velocity stuff? I saw a bunch of thick steel plates at the local metal yard cut into all kinds of shapes of targets. Definitely wasn’t AR500. But I don’t know what kind of velocities those things can take.
The reason why folks like me went with AR500 steel, was that soft lead from muzzleloaders just chips off paint, and if thick enough, you can use modern, jacketed stuff from a modern gun on them too, PLUS if you ever want to sell them off, you have a much wider customer base than a DIY steel target of unknown steel.
The DIY stuff may stop the lead and lead alloy bullets, but if not hard enough you start to get very shallow "craters" of the steel displacing. This can then cause bits of the impacting slug that break off to fly in
interesting directions rather than being deflected parallel to the face of the target. On the other hand the DIY stuff price may be too inexpensive to pass up.
I like to check Sportsman's Guide to gauge prices.
Sportsman's Guide AR500 Steel Targets 3/8" is the minimum if you want dual purpose. 1/4" AR500 will work fine for round ball..., but might bow over time if you hit it a lot with a heavy minnie, and I'd not want that for modern stuff. 1/2" will last for a generation for both modern and ML targeting. I compare the price of the target PLUS don't forget the shipping, and then I'd compare it to the DIY stuff...are you really saving enough money ?
You also might see if a local AR500 fabricator has a good price. Saving on that shipping, and "buy once ; cry once" might be better than DIY.
LD
