Cast boolit target trap

[GregLaROCHE]

Has anyone seen anything suggesting the best angles for the plates?

[lightman]

Has anyone seen anything suggesting the best angles for the plates?

Not really. The only one that I've shot into had the back plate at about 45º.

I like the looks of that big red trap! Hum, the wheels are turning.........

[Orchard6]

I have one very similar to that red one only a bit smaller (16”square) and my pipe at the back runs horizontal instead of vertical. My great, great uncle built it back in the 50’s for muzzle loader and pistol use. I found it a few years ago when we were tearing down an old barn and have since put it to good use!

[OS OK]

Has anyone seen anything suggesting the best angles for the plates?

I had the same question and couldn't answer it until I did some experimenting with the angles and plate thicknesses...I was wondering about boolit splatter & how it would or wouldn't damage a thinner plate. I considered using a cheaper thinner plate than the 3/8's that I ended up with...

https://thereloadersnetwork.com/2018...-hmmmm-part-1/

It's been decades since my Geometry lessons & the angles are a bit confusing, I'm not so sure I have them figured correctly...from the shooters perspective & if shooting from the center of the front of the target I believe the rounds are hitting the side plates at a 30º angle. That would ricochet the rounds into the pipe at a 60º to the rear without much fragmenting, but when hit from the 45º to the side plate they just scattered. The nice part is that they all end up in the bucket in the rear.

[GregLaROCHE]

It seems like the plate will take less abuse at 30* than 45*. Does anyone agree with me?

[Mr_Sheesh]

GregLaROCHE, yes, agreed. Also the bullets will tend to hug the metal sheet and end up in the back, where if you have it at 45 degrees (like a radar reflector) you could potentially get a double ricochet that came back to visit you - Which isn't sounding fun to me...

[Petander]

GregLaROCHE, yes, agreed. Also the bullets will tend to hug the metal sheet and end up in the back, where if you have it at 45 degrees (like a radar reflector) you could potentially get a double ricochet that came back to visit you - Which isn't sounding fun to me...

Yes it can happen.

We have range here that banned fmj:s because of ricochets. The trap angle is about 45° ... Then someone came up with the idea of hanging rubber carpets in front of the traps. No more ricochets and they even look better.

[OS OK]

It seems like the plate will take less abuse at 30* than 45*. Does anyone agree with me?

That's what I got out of the testing at the two angles...cast will slide along the face of the metal pretty much in a partially flattened lump @ 30º where @ 45º they just spatter.
I think the conveyor belt or mud flap idea is a good one...I have had small shards come back and hit me in the shins shooting double hung targets where one of the targets gets the trajectory going at more than the 30º to one side plate, didn't break the skin but the fact that something can come back concerns me...I think I'll get on the hunt for some material to modify the front end.

Prolly the best design would be longer from front to back where the angles would be even steeper and less than 30º to trajectory but there's always a trade-off. Plate metal is expensive bought new & the more you use the heavier it is...but on the other hand if you can improve on a design as you make yours then you win.

All I could think about during this build was the fact that I'm going to have my Pb waiting for me in a 5 gal. bucket...then there's no more clean-outs and repairs to the mulch barrel and the Pb goes straight to the smelting pot. Using the mulch type catcher, FMJ's generally stay in very good shape unless they hit another projectile, that means you need to break those jackets before the smelting or maybe have an explosion in the pot. That's not an issue anymore...they're shredded.



It got tedious cutting the jackets with a ball-peen and chisel...in the end I just started smashing the rounds with the hammer so at least one edge would have a crack and called it good enough...but this is a pain and time consuming & I'm still finding ricochets in the shop that came from this process.
Another observation is that the thin 'plated' so called jackets don't have the thickness that a real full-jacketed round has...I'm not so sure that you'd need to smash the plated ones but I didn't take any chances and smashed them all.

[ioon44]

I found the I had to smash the plated also or cut into them with side cutters to break the plating. I use 5 gal buckets full of rubber mulch for bullet traps and use a disk of conveyor belt under the lid makes it last longer, I get around 50 lbs of bullets each time I clean out the bucket bullet traps.

[OS OK]

This was the take on my 'last clean out' of the mulch barrel, used to do it at least two times each summer...what a pain, my brother and I would spend no less than two hours to get to this point with the target stop repaired and back in service...no more!

Now I just keep check on the bucket behind the metal back stop and when It feels like 40 lbs. or so...I'll pull the ingot pot out and melt it back to useable lead, mark it, stack it and smile each time I go to the casting pot...'easy peezy, convienient'.

[crankycalico]

Anyone ever just thought of doing what our fore fathers would have done in a situation like this oh, 30-50 years ago?

"hey little johnny, I gots here 700 pounds of jacketed bullets that need to be snipped so they can get melted. When your done I got a cold sick pack in the fridge"