Shooting range project

[Ian]

Got my 50-yard backstop almost finished yesterday, been needing to do this for a while and finally got the time/energy to move the 2'x4'x1" plate over the river and through the woods....manually with a dolly.

The ground was nice and soft from weeks of light rain, but dry enough to dig and shovel easily. I moved a bunch of big limestone rocks to make a low retaining wall, dug out the berm to the depth I wanted, placed and braced the plate, and backfilled everything. Still have a little hillside to carve out on the left side (very bottom left of the photo) so I can shoot at the left third of the plate, but other than that she's done.





L1A1Rocker came over and helped me test it out this afternoon with some 310-grain .45s, suppressed of course

Even with all the dirt behind it, the clank of the bullet strikes are louder than my .45 silencer on a 16.5" .45 Colt carbine. Might have to hang some mud flaps on the front to contain the sound a little better. All splatter just rides the plate to the ground at the bottom, so collecting it for recycling should be fairly easy as nothing exits the area under the plate.

Pay no attention to the shadow of the shy and elusive Texas Tactical Samsquanch on the ground in front of the backstop (It's actually a water stain from me sighting in my thermal scope on a bottle of hot water).

 

[Ben]

That looks like it would stop a 155 mm.

Ben

 

[waco]

Badass! I love it. Wish I could shoot at my place......

 

[Gary]

Well done Ian, I built mine out of RR ties in front of a dirt berm.

 

[Cherokee]

Looks good ! Have fun...

 

[Brad]

Would some sand under the angled portion of the plate help prevent some of the fragments from escaping? Would also be good behind the plate to fill in gaps and really support the structure.

Must be nice to have your own place to shoot. Color me a bit jealous.

 

[RicinYakima]

Glad you have a place to shoot at your home. Growing up on a farm, we could shoot when we could afford ammo. Now I live in town, and that is the one thing that I would move to the country for: pee off the front porch and nobody sees, and shoot of the back porch and nobody hears. Plus you did a fine job and should last for years.

 

[Ian]

This has been a dream of mine for a long time, too, though scaled down a bit from what I'd really love, which is enough property to shoot 500 yards and not have to use suppressors to keep from annoying the neighbors too much. At least I have this much, though, and it's better than just having the little 15 and 25 yard pit range I use for handguns. It's not the most ideal spot on my property to develop into a rifle range, and certainly not the most accessible, but considering the population density surrounding me on all sides now this is the safest direction to shoot and puts a big hill behind the range. It also goes right through one of the more densely-wooded parts, and skirts along the "cool" side of a hill, so it's a shady walk to the backstops in the middle of the day and the tree cover helps abate some of the noise and wind.

I wish I could put in some bigger sand traps for catching bullets whole, but that's just too expensive right now and I'm really going out of my way to minimize the damage to the land. I have zero dollars invested in the 50-yard berm (if you don't count the cost of the grubbing hoe handle I recently replaced), just used stuff I had laying around. The 75-yard berm (not really visible in the photo except for the green pipe gong hanging down) is cut into a natural bluff and shored up on the sides with stacked sections of old telephone poles and is directly above the 50 viewed from the bench, so no chance of ricochets if a shot at 75 goes low or one at 50 goes high. I use screened earth for the 75-yard backstop and can sift it out for whole bullets periodically. Again, the main benefits are being safe and virtually no money spent on it, just lots and lots of manual labor. Eventually I'll build a backstop at 100 yards, but that one is going to be a major project since it needs to be about 8' tall and positively stop high-powered rifle bullets without wearing out. Probably will make a crib out of timber and fill it with 10-12 yards of granite sand and put a roof over it to keep the sand from getting wet or washing out.

Brad, I'm trying to figure a way to make a catch pan. Probably a piece of 1/4" mild plate with a bunch of 2x1/4" strap chain-welded to it on edge, leaning back a bit at the top toward the main plate, like this from a side view: _/_/_/_/_/_/_/ This would keep the fragments from getting lost in the soil. Nothing much comes back out at all, but old truck mud flaps hung from the front would ensure nothing exits back out and could double as a target backer.

 

[Gary]

Over on CB a member built one similar to yours Ian. Jmorris is a wizard with metal and machines:

 

[KHornet]

I am jealous!

Paul

 

[quicksylver]

More energy than I have...

 

[Ian]

More money than I have. Jmorris does some cool stuff for sure, that has to be one of his most "low tech" projects though!

 

[Stonecrusher]

I like it! Wish I could put that in my back yard.

 

[L1A1Rocker]

It works very well. It was a nice visit, being able to try your new range.

 

[Pistolero]

Looks good, Ian. Nice to have a good backstop, ensure that you stop all the stuff you start.

Bill

 

[Will]

Looks nice Ian. You will really enjoy that.

Having your own place to shoot at home is great. I guess it's something I have always taken for granted.

I love being able to load something up and try it out 15 min later. I would love to build a little shack by my shooting bench to keep shooting bags and chronograph stand in. My biggest frustration is dragging out all the shooting gear.

 

[freebullet]

Nice work, Ian.

Agree with Brad on the sand. Would make it easy to sift out the lead.

 

[Todd M]

I like it! Very simple, effective, and affordable. I do like the idea of a catch pan at the bottom. I tried a piece of 1/2” plate once at an angle and was amazed at the “vaporizing” that happened, even at mild velocities. A catch pan would certainly catch a lot of fragments.

 

[Canuck Bob]

Outstanding simple but properly designed. Like others I'm happy for you and a bit jealous. Excellent work, and it looks like real work indeed!

 

[Ian]

Did some more "gardening" out at the range today, and took some more photos. I cleaned up a lot of the small rocks and dug out the hillside some more on the left side of the 50-yard backstop. Also removed a few small stumps and painted the targets.

Here's looking at it from the bench:



From the 25-yard mark:



From in front of the new 50-yard backstop:



And finally looking back at the bench from behind the 75-yard berm. The bench is washed out in the bright sun, but one day I intend to build a shooting shack there with a porch roof extending down range. The range faces almost due west, so morning is the best time to shoot. These pics were taken just before dark.