Bullet trap ideas for recycling lead

[frankenfab]

[pmeisel]

That's good looking work.

[BOOM BOOM]

HI,
MUCH THANKS TO LEFTEYE!
HE JUST FINISHED BUILDING ME 2 BULLET TRAPS.

[maillemaker]

I shoot black powder weapons in North-South Skirmish Asociation (N-SSA) competition. We are talking .50-.69 caliber, around 800 fps. Big, slow lead. My .58 minie balls are 530 grains. That's $.15 in lead every time you go boom.

I live in a subdivision, so I don't have the luxury of building a permanent bullet stop/catcher. I go to the public range. So I wanted a bullet catcher that was first and foremost portable. Secondly, I want it to be cheap.

We typically shoot at 50 yards and 100 yards, and you will need to be able to consistently hit a 6" circle at 100 yards if you want to win any medals. Turns out the mouth of a 5-gallon bucket is just the right size for a target.

My first attempt was a Home Depot 5-gallon bucket full of sand. It worked great, except that the sand has a tendency to leak out of the bullet holes on the front of the bucket. I thought about wetting the sand down, but the bucket is very heavy even with dry sand. I used my kids Red Ryder wagon to roll the bucket down range and back again.

The sand was nice because I can pour the bucket into a case media strainer and the sand pours through and the bullets stay behind.

I did some Googling, and learned about the chipped rubber mulch.

I took my Home Depot 5-gallon bucket full of chipped rubber mulch to the range last weekend.

The good news is, it is much lighter than a 5-gallon bucket of sand! Instead of needing a wagon to roll it downrange, I could easily tote it.

The bad news is, it didn't stop bullets. Now I think it is close to stopping bullets. After I knocked the bottom out of the bucket, I found a bullet in the grass right behind it. So I think the bullets are nearly spent as they get through the bucket.

Here are some pictures of the failed bullet bucket:

http://i.imgur.com/Kmmkg.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/oG063.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WFmZV.jpg

You'll notice also that "near misses" will score and/or penetrate the sides of the bucket, with no great catastrophic failure. I'll just tape over the holes when that happens.

I wrapped the bucket with fiberglass strapping tape, but I don't know if that is necessary.

More good news: Shooting through the HDPE cover is very nice. I was worried about the lid cracking or shattering, but it is almost self-healing in nature. This is good because the chipped rubber won't leak out the holes from a normal shooting session. And the lids are only $1.69 at Home Depot, so you can just replace it every trip to the range.

Here is a picture of the lid after shooting about 40 rounds at the bucket. 20 of these rounds were from 100 yards, and I had never shot this carbine at 100 yards before so it took a while before I started hitting the bucket. I was shooting low (and thus my poor camp stool is now shot to pieces!)

http://i.imgur.com/exDAq.jpg

One thing I noticed is that in my first attempt I just poured the chipped rubber into the bucket. I did not compact it. I took a dowel rod and was able to push it pretty much to the floor of the bucket. Tonight, I filled the bucket up to the rim and then stood on the mulch to crush it into the bucket. This compressed the mulch a good 4-5 inches. I then filled it up again and stood on it again.

Here is what the mulch looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/vJttQ.jpg

To reinforce the bottom of the bucket, I first put a piece of 3/4" chip board in the bottom, followed by two sheets of .03" thick mild steel.

http://i.imgur.com/EytYV.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Li59T.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WDNpe.jpg

Lastly, I grabbed a piece of my wife's garden netting. This stuff is very "sticky" yet flimsy. My hope was that if the bullet holes in the front lid got too big, the netting would keep the chips from falling out. I believe it will do this, but I think the lid is going to hold up for at least one shooting session no problems anyway.

http://i.imgur.com/1SSoj.jpg

I used the netting on the last bullet bucket and it worked perfectly. Bullets go right through it but it stays grabby.

The use of the steel plates in the bottom of the bucket is against the rules at the public shooting range I am going to. I considered trying it with just the wood, but I have more confidence with the steel in the bottom of the bucket. After this next shooting session with the compressed mulch, I will see if there are dents in the plate. If not, I will omit the plates next time.

I'm not too worried about the steel. I'm sure the rule is to prevent ricochet, but I do not see that as possible in this arrangement as there is no way the bullet will come back out through the mulch or any way I can see it going through the side of the bucket to come back to the firing line.

I think this will make a simple, generally reusable, cheap bullet catcher. With lead at $2/pound from rotometals, and caps $.07 a piece from Back Woods, and powder about $.01 a shot from Back Woods, the lead is $.15 of the $.24 per shot. An afternoon of target practice that would normally cost $24 will be reduced to $9. That's a big deal.

And if you can't hit the mouth of a bucket at 100 yards? Well, that's a good incentive to shoot better!

Steve

[markinalpine]

Steve,
Why don't you try lining two buckets up?
I also found that the boolits will occasionally veer off to the side when using the rubber mulch, but I was just trying to recapture my lead. I was using a 24" long cardboard box that I packed with the rubber mulch and tamped down with my feet, and it would stop .45 Colt boolits at 50 feet, but some started to careen off to one side, and tore up the box. Luckily I had a small leaf rake in the back of my pickup, and was able to rake up the mess. I also used a garden cart to carry the prepared box down to the target berm, so I had something to rake the mulch into.
Welcome to the board,
Mark

[Czech_too]

I believe that you will notice a big difference in the depth of penetration from tamping down the mulch. I've been using mine at 7 yards with 45ACP, 9x19, 9x18 and various 32's and have yet to have a round penetrate the bottom. Now watch, tomorrow I will!

Your last line says it all.
"And if you can't hit the mouth of a bucket at 100 yards? Well, that's a good incentive to shoot better! "

[35remington]

The problem with rubber mulch has been noted before, which is that if several rounds hit in nearly the same spot, a tunnel will be created that the mulch doesn't fill back in. Then a subsequent bullet will go down this tunnel nearly unhindered and punch a hole through the back.

So in other words, the smaller the groups the gun shoots, the less suitable rubber mulch is. .22's are one thing.....midrange loads of 1600 fps with, say, a 160 grain rifle bullet quite another. It doesn't take too many closely grouped shots before that type of loading punches through the bucket.

Found out the hard way. Buckets can be used, but their usefulness is quite limited.

[yondering]

I haven't found a good way to sort the lead fragments out of the rubber mulch? Whole bullets are easy enough, but if you're shootin' straight, one bullet is bound to hit another pretty soon, and that makes a bunch of lead fragments.

My low-tech bullet trap is just a large 2' round of firewood. That's enough to stop most bullets that I'll be shooting in the back yard, and when the wood gets too torn up, I split it open and pick out all the bullets I can. I burn the rest, and recover the melted lead from the ashes.

[maillemaker]

Why don't you try lining two buckets up?

I actually considered nesting two buckets together. I assumed the problem here was the force being transmitted by the mulch to the bottom of the bucket, which then cracked. (Now I suspect the problem is that I did not compress the mulch, so the bullets were hitting the back of the bucket).

I was going to nest two buckets together, with 3-4 inches of rubber mulch in the bottom bucket to support and cushion the floor of the top bucket, which would be completely full of mulch.

I'm hoping that will not be necessary.

The problem with rubber mulch has been noted before, which is that if several rounds hit in nearly the same spot, a tunnel will be created that the mulch doesn't fill back in. Then a subsequent bullet will go down this tunnel nearly unhindered and punch a hole through the back.

I'm hoping with the big, fat, slow, soft pure-lead .58 cal bullets I am throwing that the tunnel will fill up or collapse.

I've put some steel sheet metal and a 3/4" piece of chipboard in the bottom of the bucket for a final slow-down, if needed. If that's not enough I'll get a piece of 3/16" thick steel and that should do the trick for sure.

I haven't found a good way to sort the lead fragments out of the rubber mulch?

I'm hopeful with the minnie balls I'm shooting that most will be recovered intact. When I used sand they all came out intact.

Steve

[JIMinPHX]

I've used 2 buckets in a row before. If you connect them together good & snug, it works well. If you leave any space between them, then the bottom of the first bucket gets the snot kicked out of it pretty quickly. It doesn't seem to matter if the second bucket has a lid on it or not. The bottom of the first bucket just needs to be supported by something.

[Danderdude]

For you guys using sand, I feel obligated to warn you...

I tried making sand ingot molds. The little bit of sand that sticks to the ingots and won't come off with a wire brush likes to be held to the bottom and sides of the pot by the surface tension of the alloy. If you go tossing sand in a smelting or casting pot you are in for some headaches.

I'm seriously considering using rock salt as my medium with old hay baler belts for the front.

[.5mv^2]

Thanks for the link, Hope it never comes to that.

http://www.survivalmonkey.com/50bmg-...ion-table.html

[frankenfab]

Thanks for the link, Hope it never comes to that.

I can personally verify the 1.8" of mild steel, and the timber. I shot an 18" diameter log about 18" tall, and thought I missed, because the log didn't even twitch.

[maillemaker]

Well, my 5-gallon Bullet Bucket was a success! I made a little article about it here:

http://www.4thla.com/bullet_bucket/bullet_bucket.htm

Enjoy!

Steve

[Mal Paso]

I finally cut apart one of my lead recovery Cedar Stumps. There was a wad of lead centered and about 10 inches in. I was trying to figure how to separate the wood chips and lead when it dawned on me. This was very accurate lead from the center of the target. I'll leave the wood chips mixed in and use it for flux to produce a More Accurate Alloy.

[Oreo]

About those wood chips...

I've found that too much wood, or other debris in the ore impeads heat flow, slows the melt-down process, and burns more fuel.

One way to separate the lead from the wood is to submerge it all in a bucket of water aand agitate. Most of the wood will float and can be skimmed, and most of whats left will flow out when the water is dumped.

[JIMinPHX]

A while back, I read that during colonial times, a common process for smelting Galina ore into lead was to put the ore in a hollowed out stump, burn the stump & then recover the blob of lead that was found in the ashes.

[azrednek]

A while back, during colonial times,

Gee Jim, I thought you only looked that old!!

Leg pulling aside. I read during the War of Northern Aggression. Confederate soldiers at times being so desperate for lead and out of mini-balls. Resorted to a similar tactic. If they couldn't dig the lead out with their knives. They'd chop down a tree and/or cut out a portion and burn it.

[IllinoisCoyoteHunter]

A quick video of the one I built.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyiA...&feature=g-upl

[WilliamDahl]

A quick video of the one I built.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyiA...&feature=g-upl

What was the angle that you used between the two plates?