Catching bullets

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

I find it useful to recover spent bullets and read the rifling marks and such, and digging them out of the snow works, but can be difficult to find them. Does anyone have any clever ways to catch bullets with minimal deformation on impact?

[elmacgyver0]

Perhaps rubber mulch?
Or hire Superman or the Flash to catch them.
Sorry, I couldn't resist!

[osage]

I used snow drifts or piles from clearing drive. I bought rubber mulch and loaded it into flat screen monitor boxes. I have not used them yet. Lack of snow it going to change that. As I recall I got the rubber landscape mulch idea from here. I figured that leaving gaps between boxes would tell me which one to dump.

[Winger Ed.]

Labs commonly use a tower full of water.
Ya shoot down into it, and there is a basket on the bottom you pull back up with a light duty chain.

You could make one out of a length of 4-6" PVC pipe.
Just be careful to aim straight down.

[Messy bear]

Metal detector in snow works well. Also if speed isn’t to high, ice stops them without much damage

[Bloodman14]

The rubber mulch may have been my idea; I got a 55 gallon plastic drum, cut a hole in the side, built a stand for it and dumped in several bags of rubber mulch. Depending on the caliber/load, I have recovered some nearly intact boolits. The rubber mulch slows them down REAL fast. Make sure to put a lot of mulch in there, and have a good backstop just in case! Use an old rug or something to cover the hole.

[BLAHUT]

Water

[WRideout]

A cotton box has been used by crime labs for bullet comparisons since time immemorial. It is essentially for pistol bullets, but I suppose it could be scaled up. When I worked in a sheriff's crime lab on the Left Coast, the firearms examiner used a wooden box 1'x1' and 18" long on a stand. It was filled with loose cotton fiber, and he put paper spacers at intervals so he had an idea where the bullet had stopped. He said it did actually work for 44 mag.

Wayne

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Do the bullets mushroom or deform when they hit rubber mulch?

[Misery-Whip]

Paull Hurell on youtube uses fleece blankets wrapped with a belt.

I use a 5 gallon bucket with a 3/4" disc of plywood in the bottom, followed by a bag of rubber mulch, and a disc of old yoga mat or anti fatigue foam from harbor freight as a wipe. Snap the lid on and lay it on its side and fire thru the lid.

You will go thru 3 or 4 lids per bucket. But painters and bakers usually give buckets and lids away.

45acps and 38s come out in good shape unless they hit other bullets in the bucket. 357s will deform the noses some, but rifling is in tact.

[Txcowboy52]

Why not use a 55 gallon barrel filled with water , seems like a good way to catch bullets with minimal deformation.

[megasupermagnum]

Water is a decent way to catch bullets. It's a horrible way to catch them without deforming them. I really doubt rubber mulch is much better. I've shot into rubber mats, and that might even be worse than water. The reason snow works so good is that they slow down over 10 to 20 feet. The only way you can replicate that is to use something that will slow them down gently like that. T shirts or cloth wont do it. Sand and dirt don't do it.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but I haven't found anything either. Snow is the best there is. If I were to try anything, I would try something like pillow stuffing which is not overly expensive.

[ascast]

oil soaked sawdust, fine grain dust,not chipper grade or chainsaw stuff - from a cabinate shop or sawmill.

[uscra112]

Perhaps rubber mulch?
Or hire Superman or the Flash to catch them.
Sorry, I couldn't resist!

Yup, a barrel full of rubber mulch will catch almost anything. I haven't done it, but have read that a full-house .30-06 will only penetrate about 24". Only problem is finding the little buggers. I had to dump the entire contents onto a tarp and spread it out, and even then it was hard spotting .38 Special SWC. Once found, though, I could easily have loaded them up and fired them again. In future I will use a much smaller barrel.

[fall7rise8]

I save plastic gallon window washer fluid jugs after filling my cars reservoir. Fill with water and line six of them up in a row on a saw horse. Shoot at close range.


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[pworley1]

I use the rubber mulch. I took a plastic 55 gallon drum and cut it into half way down. I took six 2x2's and cut them so that they reached from the bottom to 2 inches short of the rim. I cut a circle from a simi mud flap to just fit inside drum. I packed the drum with the mulch up to the top of the 2x2's and screwed the circle to the 2x2's that were screwed inside the drum. I built a 2x2 frame for the front of the drum and screwed an old rubber mat to the frame to attach targets to. About twice a year I retrieve the lead and and replace the circle and mat. Unless the bullets hit other bullets that have already been stopped by the mulch they are almost undamaged.

[smokeeter]

I made a two sided wooded box that breaks down for transport I fill it with clear sand , you can easily get bullets by sifting thru the sand.

[farmerjim]

Swimming pool deep end.

[Bigslug]

A cotton box has been used by crime labs for bullet comparisons since time immemorial. It is essentially for pistol bullets, but I suppose it could be scaled up. When I worked in a sheriff's crime lab on the Left Coast, the firearms examiner used a wooden box 1'x1' and 18" long on a stand. It was filled with loose cotton fiber, and he put paper spacers at intervals so he had an idea where the bullet had stopped. He said it did actually work for 44 mag.

Wayne

A newer version of this is a five foot metal tube with an open end blocked with a cardboard disc. It's filled with shredded Kevlar fluff which balls up around a bullet and stops the common auto handgun rounds in about 18-24". The tube has a couple access ports along it's length. I used to insert cardboard spacers to get a better idea of where the bullets were stopping when we collected projectiles, but it stopped them so consistently it became a simple matter of feeling for lumps in the fluff in the right location.

Water is fine so long as your bullet alloy is non-deforming - but it can take nine milk jugs or more of it to halt heavy-for-caliber auto pistol rounds.

[charlie b]

Everything I have tried deforms the nose (never fired into snow and recovered bullets). When the bullet hits clean sand in the range backstops they mushroom nicely and the base area is relatively intact.

A lot of stuff works if all you need to look at is the rifling near the base. I'd try packed cotton or dacron. Cheap, light, easy to carry, and you can shoot several rounds without changing anything out.