DIY bullet trap, Capture your lead

[Lizard333]

I use carpet on the front of mine with a piece of cardboard I replace when it wears out. My cube is 18x18 with a half inch steel plate for a back stop. I use it in my garage for testing loads. It catches all the pistol rounds including 44 mag.

[pipehand]

yup, just dump it out and sift through it. buddy of mine sudgested dumping it into a kiddie pool, lead will sink and rubber will float to the top, skim off rubber and walla! lead

Not quite. The rubber will sink too. However, if you add say 25 pounds of salt to five gallons of water(really strong brine) the rubber will float to the top. So far, I haven't been able to add enough salt to get the boolits to float.

[tenneesse]

I use a 18"x10"x10" plastic catlitter container, my neighgor uses a 5 gallon paint bucket, pack it with rubber mulch. I made a wood framed cover that I bungie cord on and at the top of the mulch behind the cover I just lay squares of cardboard 5 or 6 and and it helps compress the mulch. I did pour 10# of wheel weights into a cake pan and layed the wafer in the bottom. Interesting at 15yds full of sand I tunneled right through it at 1100 fps 124gr lrn it shattered a hole through the lead wafer it was about 3/8" thick. When I replaced the sand with the mulch Ive never lost another bullet. the mulch doesnt seem to create a tunnel that sand tends to do. I hoped the sand thing would work cause I could just dump it in my sifter and the sand would pass right through and leave my lead. Still the mulch thing is great. It doesnt weigh anything . I print my own targets and have 2 bungie cords stapled accross the front of the lid and all seems to work just fine.
Im shooting 9mm and 45acp 44mag and 357 and 22 and its all staying together. the card board layers work fine to contain the mulch and the front of the lid is pretty much gone. You cant see the stakes but I have it marked off from 15 to 35 yds right now its at 25yds. Tried to delete some of the pics but having a problem. the bucket thing investment was $7. for the mulch

[Cap'n Morgan]

I think an efficient self-sealing front frame could be made with a simple crisscross woven pattern of bicycle inner tubes or similar.

[Lizard333]

I use an old piece of carpet with cardboard in front to attach targets to.

[uscra112]

I like the brass catcher.

[geargnasher]

+1 on the layered cardboard over mulch idea and the brass catcher.

Gear

[tenneesse]

I like the brass catcher.

Could have been another 6" deep they bounce occasionally but all in all it catches 99%. I slit some carpet to buffer the brass and it generally falls straight down.

The seat is in need of widening to fit my wide butt, like maybe a piece of 2x12 instead of 2x6. I had some old salvaged treated lumber and it came together pretty solid.

[psychicrhino]

@ Tenn - I really like the brass catcher. I shoot 32 auto that I am lucky to find 75% of my brass.

[tenneesse]

@ Tenn - I really like the brass catcher. I shoot 32 auto that I am lucky to find 75% of my brass.

Thanks Rhino,
Its a great brass saver when sitting but I am working on another that will save my brass when Im shooting off-hand and portable. I found an old minnow seigning net at the flea market about 20' by 4' of light nylon material so it should take care of the annoying tarp on the ground which always gets blown away when you least think it will (along with the brass). Im thinking something more along the lines of a square dip net maybe 4' x 4' by 3'deep. on an upright. I'll post it when I get it done.

[psychicrhino]

Thanks Rhino,
Its a great brass saver when sitting but I am working on another that will save my brass when Im shooting off-hand and portable. I found an old minnow seigning net at the flea market about 20' by 4' of light nylon material so it should take care of the annoying tarp on the ground which always gets blown away when you least think it will (along with the brass). Im thinking something more along the lines of a square dip net maybe 4' x 4' by 3'deep. on an upright. I'll post it when I get it done.

That is a neat idea too, sounds kinda like one of those soccer ball practice - kick back net. Another idea if a body didn't have a seine might be the rolls of burlap they sell in alot of landscape areas of home improvement stores. I bought a roll of that a while back in teh Wally world garden section and used it to make a dipnet for my boys using the top3-4 inches of a bucket I cut off a 5 gallon bucket with a skil saw. Then just made a big plastic needle by whittling the he head off of a plastic spoon and sharpening one end of the handle, boring a hole in the other with my pocket knife. Then used some twine I had laying around for the thread. Boys caught a slough of minnows and bream with that thing

[jeepyj]

Plus one on this thread there is a lot of good feed back. I share mine after completion.
Jeepyj

[tenneesse]

hey Rhino that burlap idea is great. It should resist bounce back and let the brass fall into the catcher. Cool idea, like to see what other have come up with too. Dip net sounds pretty creative.

[lmfd20]

I need a basement with one big wall sized bullet trap.

[Springfield0612]

I was using a 5 gallon bucket with 3 layers of rubber backed carpet in between the rubber mulch ($.99 for a sheet of the carpet at Homedepot). It does pretty well to stop mid to high loads of cast 9mm and .45 ACP. Once the carpet got big holes in it I got some pass throughs as the bullets started mining holes in the rubber to follow each other to freedom out the back side. Also was having issues with bullets going in straight and coming out the sides of the bucket resulting in a couple burst buckets (not fun to clean up). But all in all was getting 95%+ lead recovery. I then tried some anti-fatigue matting from Harbor Freight as a self healing component. It works quite well especially considering I shoot all flat points. The more impressive thing was that I put a piece at the bottom of the bucket, and you can see the indents of where the bullets hit at the back of the buck so it acted as a last shock absorber. Very interesting. I was wanting more out of my bullet buckets to stop and keep ALL of my lead and was reading another post on here yesterday where a gentleman took an old propane tank, cut the top off to have a straight wall, inserted the upper 5" of a cut off 5 gallon bucket and screwed it to the propane tank, he used sand, I'll be using shreded rubber, but now it is a metal bullet bucket! You can still attach the lid as before, I bought some handles at Home Depot yesterday to be able to carry them for $3/ea, and I picked up the propane tanks local used for $10/ea! So all together with the tanks, buckets, handles and rubber comes in under $50 for two bucket tanks. I'll re-sell the good valves off of the tanks and make a couple bucks back. They should weigh about 30lbs ea? I'll post some pics once assembled.

[Suo Gan]

Will it last long enough to justify its expense. One can buy quite a lot of alloy for $100 or so. What will that thing look like if it has been shot ten or fifteen thousand times?

With the current price of alloy I don't see the cost justifying the expense. But that is just a hunch.

[markshere2]

Here's 33 pages of DIY bullet trap posts...

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...recycling-lead