Bullet trap for recycling lead – need help please

[JIMinPHX]

I haven’t tried mudflaps or belting. They probably would last longer. The real low power gallery loads that I sometimes use might bounce back at the shooter though. That’s why I stuck with cardboard. I can get a few hundred rounds through a sheet of it before it needs to be replaced. 30 seconds with a staple gun takes care of it. The mudflap/belting idea might be real good for the back side of my extension box that I’ve been using in front of my main trap for high power rifle rounds.

After the box traps get a bunch of use, especially with larger calibers, tunnels tend to form in the rubber mulch & the boolits go in deeper because they travel further before hitting the first layer of resistance to their motion. This is especially true if you are shooting very small groups. This is why I put a hard stop at the back of my traps.

After the tunnels form, new boolits sometimes hit old boolits that are already in there & boolits start getting mashed up & can even break in half. I’ve only had a few get mashed up. I’ve only had one break in half so far. I think that each time I use it, I get a few more small rubber chips & a few less big rubber chips. I have not seen the boolits drop to the bottom yet. I have not fired more than about 75 or 100 rounds before recovering my boolits & fluffing things back up in the process. So far, I’ve only been using these things for load development & test shots. By the time I’m 100 rounds into it, my test ammo is spent & my wife is tired of shooting her little pocket auto. I haven't given any of the traps a real serious workout yet.

I’ve got too many of these things now & I’m thinking about getting rid of all but 1 or 2 of them since I’m done with my tests. I may put a post over in the swapping & selling area pretty soon.

[floodgate]

JIMin PHX:

I finally got some time (and we have swilled down enough "box wine") to get a bit further on my "wine box / crumb rubber boolit trap" project.





Here, you see (from left to right on bench) an empty 5-liter wine box, with inner Mylar wine bag removed; tape and rubber bands; box with top opened and pouring spout aperture taped over with duct tape; upright box nearly full of 1/4"+/- rubber crumb; and 5-gal. bucket with 20 lbs. of crumb. In front is a copy paper carton with two filled boxes, the folding top panels held closed with a large-size rubber band. The boxes measure (outside) 4" x 9" x 10-3/4" and hold 6 lbs each of the crumb rubber; and four boxes fit into the carton with 2" to spare for a couple of sheets of plywood and a 9" x 11" sheet of 1/4" plate. I'll tape a small-bore target to the end opposite the plate and check the system's stopping and capture capability with several standard velocity Reminton 40-gr. .22 LRs from my Savage 24. (Just lift out the individual boxes until I find the one with holes in the front but none in back; that way I only have to pour out the crumb rubber from that one wine box to fish out the fired slugs. Holes can be taped over and the wine boxes re-shuffled to extend the life of the system.) Stay tuned.

Floodgate

[JIMinPHX]

Thanks for getting that together Floodgate. I’ll look forward to comparing your penetration data to mine.

[Tumtatty]

I Just shot 40+ rds of 9mm (both cast and jacketed) into my mulch fillled boolit trap!

Success!!!

Thanks for the awesome idea and the details about how to consruct this box.


My box is only 2' deep. The both types of bullets went nearly 20" before stopping completely. The cast boolits penetrated deeper than the jacketed ones on the whole.

I was only about 5-10' from the box when I was shooting.

[JIMinPHX]

I'm glad to hear that worked out for you. It's kind of cool to get your boolits back in good condition, isn't it?

I've found that my cast boolits penetrate further than soft points or hollow points of the same weight & caliber at the same speed, but that FMJs are about on par. My 13BNH cast boolits don't start to mushroom very much until they are over 2000fps. By the time they hit 2400FPS, I get pretty fully developed mushrooms. The factory soft points also mushroom normally in the crumb rubber with very high weight retention.

Just out of curiosity, does your box trap have anything on the back of it for a safety stop, like a piece of thin plate or stack of 2 x 4s? the first one that I build was just a cardboard box, but after several shots went in the same spot, they started to go through the back. My last few generations of the box traps have all had hard stops on the back of them.

[JIMinPHX]

Hey Floodgate, did you ever get a chance to test the penetration depth of .22’s in your smaller pieces of crumb rubber? Inquiring minds what to know.

[Sherlok]

Well to add my 2 cents, my very first attempt with an indoor .22 lr bullet trap 40 years ago was a hot roll plate at a 45 degree angle into sand. The bullets simply slid down the plate and out the back into the next room. After much experimentation I've found that the plate needs to be at least 3/8" hardened T-1 steel at an angle of about 30 degrees off of vertical. That's for a .22 lr. although it seems to hold OK up to limited 9mm Luger use.

Side plates will wear and need to be replaceable. I've since added a lead dust remover using a bathroom vent fan into a filter box.

Good Luck, Sherlok

[floodgate]

Jim:

"Hey Floodgate, did you ever get a chance to test the penetration depth of .22’s in your smaller pieces of crumb rubber? Inquiring minds what to know."

[Copy/Paste from the Makarov thread:]

Got a chunk of cold-rolled 1/4" steel plate as a backstop for my "crumb" trap; adequate at least for .22 LR's, and .38 and .44 Spls. at moderate velocities, after penetrating 16" of tire crumbs. But we've been busy getting the garden ready for planting. "Food before fun!"

floodgate

[JIMinPHX]

Well to add my 2 cents, my very first attempt with an indoor .22 lr bullet trap 40 years ago was a hot roll plate at a 45 degree angle into sand. The bullets simply slid down the plate and out the back into the next room. After much experimentation I've found that the plate needs to be at least 3/8" hardened T-1 steel at an angle of about 30 degrees off of vertical. That's for a .22 lr.

That conflicts with what I’ve seen elsewhere. The commercially available .22 rimfire traps are only about 3/16” thick steel on the back plate & the rest is a bunch thinner. The material in them appears to be garden-variety hot roll. Also, I don’t recognize T-1 off the top of my head. Is that an alloy? It sounds like it might be a heat treat spec. or something.

[Sherlok]

T1 is actually hardened tool steel. Not cheap, but we use it at our club's outdoor range for sillouhoutte targets. It will not deform.

Yes, I'm sure that my 3/8" plate is over-kill for .22s. But if you're dealing with an indoor range, you just can't risk loosing one in the house.

Regards,
Sherlok

[JIMinPHX]

OK, I did some digging & found the specks on T1. It’s a trademarked name for a quenched & tempered version of alloy 514 that’s currently owned by Mittal. It was originally developed by USS. It’s a high strength steel (100+ ksi) but it has higher than usual susceptibility to concentration point fractures. The same guys that sell this kind of stuff (like Chapel Steel) also sell ballistic plate grades like Mil A-46100. Since they don’t list the T-1 in the ballistic section, I would expect that they don’t consider it a good choice for that use. I don’t see why this particular material would be a good choice for a backstop. Do you know why it was chosen at your range? I’m not trying to break your chops here. I’m genuinely curious about this. I may be just missing something. Also, how did you guys attach it? Is it bolted through holes in the plate? Is it welded?

[Sherlok]

You got me there.

We started using it at our range because one of our members had a machine shop, had pleanty of it, and the means to cut and weld it for us. Now that he passed on, I'm not sure what we are doing now at the club. All I know is that he recommended it to me at that thickness, it is available locally and works.

I've been playing with my indoor range for going about 40 years. I've seen other plate after repeated shots (even .22s) at the same general area eventually bend over time. I'm sure there are other materials out there that would be fine and maybe more effecient. And if I were going into production on these things, you can bet I would do a lot more research.

My point (at least to myself) was that if you have an indoor range trap designed for .22 long rifles, you will be tempted (and will) fire something through it much larger occasionally. So it better be able to handle it. T1 plate is expensive, but you need only to buy it once.

Just my experience.

Regards, Sherlok

[colbyjack]

ive made some targets at work out of cheap steel and they hold up. i used 1018 case hardened it. ..040" case depth then tempered it back to a RC 52/54 around a 500-550 brinell hardness. i can nail it close all day with a .45 acp or 9mm and they hold up perfect. i made one bout the same and use a .223 and .22-250 on them at 100 yards and no problems. T-1 or S-7 shoot any tool steel would be overkill. 4140 thru hardned would be best but just cheap old mild steel with some case on it would hold up fine in a trap. -chris

[floodgate]

JIMinPHX, et al.:

Finally got the corners chipped off my "tuit", set up the wine-box crumb rubber trap, and had at it with a dozen rounds of standard velocity Remington solid-point .22 LR's, at 20 ft. from the 20" top barrel of my Savage Model 24 .22/20 ga. All went through the first 4" deep box and stopped in the second - so penetration into the 1/4" +/- crumbles (plus one layer target paper and four layers of corrugated cardboard) is between 4" and 8". Trading precise penetration figures for convenience, I dumped the second box into a 30" aluminum water heater splash tray, and "panned for lead":

.

The .22 slugs came out with noses pushed back into a rounded lump, and some collapse of the hollow bases, but as the rifling marks are still clean-cut I don't think there was any tumbling to speak of:



I am satisfied that this "modular" approach will be useful for my purpose, which is primarily to recover expensive bismuth/tin alloy, and only secondarily to check bullet performance and deformation.

Next time my "tuit" rounds out, I will set to making up and casting with some 1:16 tin/bismuth, using all "virgin" metal, pot, dipper and mould. The latter will be one of a pair of Lee 0.495" round balls, as due to the way they are final formed over a carbide sphere, they should be much more uniform than their bored moulds - comparison will be with pure lead in the other mould from some 0.200" lead swaging wire I have. Then maybe I'll break out my early (serial 5050!) .50 T/C Hawken and see how they shoot.

stay tuned (but don't hold your breath!)

Doug

[JIMinPHX]

My standard velocity .22s went in about 10” & didn’t deform as much as yours did. I’d say that your material is the more efficient stopper. You can probably make the whole trap smaller with your crumbs. My larger chunks will probably go for a longer time before they start to fall out of the holes in the front of the trap though. Interesting. Thank you for posting your results Floodgate.

[JIMinPHX]

By the way, if you tape the holes up, you can keep using the same cardboard for a very long time.

[floodgate]

Jim:

I did, and rearranged the boxes for the next go-round. May try some .44 Spls. from my 5-shot S&W M&P.

Doug

[Sherlok]

Good Grief!

[WAHO]

If u want to recycle lead this is what I use

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...AHO#post314825

[JIMinPHX]

My spare traps are up for trade -

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=29648