Bullet trap ideas for recycling lead

Well, I took another crack at this boolit trapping thing again. I built a wooden box that was a little over 2 feet long out of some 7/16” OSB board that was on sale at Home Depot for under $7 per sheet, some 2 x 4s & some 2 x 2s. I also put a piece of 3/8 plate on the back, just to be sure that everything was going to stay inside of it, even the 30-30s. I also brought along a little 11 inch long cardboard box to try with .22s.

The 11-inch long box of rubber mulch worked well with 40-grain PMC sidewinders that have a claimed speed of 1250. I found them all between 8 & 10.5” deep. A Stinger went right through. So did an Agulia Super Max.

Next I moved up to the big wooden box, which had the rubber mulch packed tightly. I hit it with 7 200-grain .45’s at 800fps, 3 130-grain .357s at 1250fps, 3 158-grain .357s at 675fps & a couple of 30-30PSPs. Most of the .45s sunk in 11.5-13” deep with 2 going 17-18”. The 158-grain TCs went in 11.5-12”. The 130-grain RNFP at 1250fps went in 17-19” & to my surprise, the 150-grain 30-30 with a factory claimed speed of 2390 only went in 20” deep. I think that the 170-grain 30-30 with a claimed speed of 2200 was somewhere near there too, but I missed finding it when I was unloading the trap & I didn’t actually see it until after I was putting the rubber mulch back inside. Nothing hit the back wall so I know that it didn’t go that far. I had a piece of cardboard in front of the back panel & the cardboard didn’t have a mark on it. The boolits were all completely whole, except for the two 30-30 PSPs which mushroomed as they normally do & look to have retained almost all of their weight. I haven’t actually weighed them yet. A few boolits have dents in them where it looks like another boolit hit them. I guess that I must have been shooting with better than average accuracy a few times.

I’m wondering if the fast moving 30-30s stopped where they did because they had traveled through 20 inches of stuff or because they were within several inches of a hard backstop & the rubber was packing up tight against the hard backstop. I think that next I will try to shorten the box a little & see if the fast movers stop sooner. Does anyone else have any ideas or requests?

Recovered from rubber mulch
(sorry about the condoms that are mixed in)

Recovered from steel plate trap

Jim

Now you see why i chose the rubber.....whole bullet recovery.....I actually reloaded some 38spcl FMJ just to prove you could do it....looked kinda cool all pre-rifled and such...(I did run them through the lee push though first, just to be cautious).....maybe i will write csi and have them do an episode about the 12 groove right and left rifling...[smilie=1::roll:

I find 2 foot more than adequate, but i compress mine a bit with the slip on "doghouse" lid.

Max,
Thank you for tipping me off to that.

I just finished up a little more testing. The .30 cal mold that I had on backorder with Midway came in a few days ago & I finally got my first chance to take a crack at casting rifle boolits. The casting event had the usual little first time issues with needing to clean & lube the mold, but all in all, I got my first handful of boolits out of it with no unexpected trouble.

I tried the 150-grain .30 cal gas-checked RNFP 12-BNH slugs at velocities from about 1300-2000fps. The 1300fps slugs penetrated 23” into the crumb rubber & the slugs retained their shape pretty well. I was able to inspect the riffling’s engraving easily, which was one of my prime goals since I was using a microgroove barrel & I have been told stories about them tearing the riffling off of cast boolits. When I pushed these same pills at 2000fps, They ended up 24” deep in the crumb rubber & I found a dent 1/4" deep in the 2 x 4 that was an inch behind them. Apparently, they bounced back after denting the wood. The dent was bigger than the boolit, so I think that some rubber stayed in between them. Where two boolits hit the same spot, the dent was a little deeper. The front half of these boolits were pretty well smooshed up, but I could still inspect most of the rifling on the heals, which looked good even at this speed. The Remington PSPs that I had previously tried did not go as deep as the cast boolits did, even though they were traveling faster by nearly 400fps. I believe that the PSPs opened up sooner & therefore allowed their energy to be bled off faster.

I also tried some 150-grain .357 semi-wadcutters doing 1250fps, also at 12-13BNH. They went in about 22” & 1 of them broke in half. I think that it may have hit another boolit that was already in there. They maintained their shape pretty well. The bases were pretty well speckled with what looked like a bunch of small powder burn craters. I think that I am approaching the limit of what I can do without a gas check here.

I kicked up the speed of some 130-grain RNFPs to 1300 & found them mostly at 18” deep with 1 at 22”. The bases of these boolits had less speckling than the 150-s above. I am not sure if this is because H-110 burns hotter than Unique or if it is because the heavier boolit caused higher pressures.

I also tried some super max .22 Rimfires, which are the hottest thing that I have ever found in a .22. They went about 13-14” deep & opened up a little more than the Remington HPs that just sort of turned into a cylinder with rounded corners.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JIMinPHX

This side view (with wood removed) gives you a little bit better idea of how it's put together. The yellow line shows the angle of the bottom deflector plate & also where it ends.

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looks good, got a question. if you or someone shoots that with a full metal jacket or harder lead bullet could it come back at ya? looks like maybe if it hit the steel travels down hits angle iron maybe it could be directed back at the shooter.

target looks good, just asking cause i know 2 guys thats been hit by bullets coming back. could you make it deeper and make a catch pan and fill it with sand so maybe if it did go way in or deep the sand trap pit would stop it. itd be easy to sift to catch the lead.

i made some spinner and some steel plates to simulate IPSC plates. i used A-36 and i case hardend mine for 18 hours and then rehardend it for 3 hours with ammonia and oil quenched it. my test pin on 1018 material showed .080" case depth. i had to give it a temper to bring it down a hair. and i ended up with like a RC 51/52 or convert to a 500 brinell hardness. it holds up to all the pistols FMJ or lead. rifle only at a long distance, tested a spinner at 30 yards with a .223 69gr SMK and it made a diviot. can be welded i guess but i dont like divots or any dents in metal targets.

just becarefull if shooting with rifles or high power, it may penatrate the steel.

-chris

JIMinPHX:

Jim. I have been looking around; got some samples of both the gardening mulch and the "playground" type, then ckecked Wal-Mart and they had two types in stock: one was just irregular shreds, from woodchip bedding size on down; the other was irregular little cubes about the size of peas or canned diced carrots - about 1/4" on a side, 0.8 cu. ft. for $8.95 and $7.95 respectively. The "cubed" stuff looks like it would be easiest to handle and sort through. What type have you been using? (Photo???) I thought I'd get a metal locker box about 12" x 15" x 24"-30", cut a 10" x 12" section out of one end and screw a section of truck mudflap inside it with paper targets taped to the outside, pack it good & full and clamp down the lid. Maybe put it up on a wheeled frame to make it easy to handle at the range. I'll be shooting .38 Spl. and .44 Spl. at no more than 900 fps at 10-15 yds. to test the Bismuth/Tin alloy bullets for "leading", accuracy, etc.

I really appreciate your writeups on these experimental traps; it has saved me a lot of thinking and potential expense!

floodgate

Quote:

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Originally Posted by colbyjack

looks good, got a question. if you or someone shoots that with a full metal jacket or harder lead bullet could it come back at ya? looks like maybe if it hit the steel travels down hits angle iron maybe it could be directed back at the shooter.

target looks good, just asking cause i know 2 guys thats been hit by bullets coming back. could you make it deeper and make a catch pan and fill it with sand so maybe if it did go way in or deep the sand trap pit would stop it. itd be easy to sift to catch the lead.

i made some spinner and some steel plates to simulate IPSC plates. i used A-36 and i case hardend mine for 18 hours and then rehardend it for 3 hours with ammonia and oil quenched it. my test pin on 1018 material showed .080" case depth. i had to give it a temper to bring it down a hair. and i ended up with like a RC 51/52 or convert to a 500 brinell hardness. it holds up to all the pistols FMJ or lead. rifle only at a long distance, tested a spinner at 30 yards with a .223 69gr SMK and it made a diviot. can be welded i guess but i dont like divots or any dents in metal targets.

just becarefull if shooting with rifles or high power, it may penatrate the steel.

-chris

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When a cast boolit hits the plate at 45 degrees, it shatters & the fragments go in every direction. About 20% of the spatter seems to want to come back out the front in tiny fragments. By the time you get to 40 degrees, that number is down below 10%. I went down as far as 30 degrees, but didn’t see any real difference after 40.

The material that is recovered after contact with the steel plate is mostly dust/powder. You also get a few chunks mixed in if the original slug was big & slow, like a .45. Cast or jacketed, they all seem to shatter on impact with the steel. This material would not be easy to separate from sand. It was a pain to separate from crumb rubber, even after I got that stuff to float.

This trap is just made from a piece of virgin 3/8” A-36 with no heat treat. I’ve hit it with a 130-grain 13BNH cast slug at 1250fps & a 200-grain cast slug at 800fps so far with no damage. I also hit it with one jacketed 150-grain soft point bullet from a 30-30 that had been slowed down by going through a small box of crumb rubber first. I don’t know the actual velocity that it hit with. I would estimate it to be around 1,000-1,500fps, but that’s just a guess. That bullet did not bounce back. It shattered like all the others, but knocked the mill scale off the steel where it hit. I found jacket fragments in the decelerator chamber with the other lead. It left the same few small shrapnel marks coming out through the top of the paper target, mostly in the top inch.

When the slug hits a backplate, almost all the shrapnel seems to want to stay within an inch of the plate. After it hits a second surface at a 90 degree angle, like the 3” steel sides, it deflects & seems to then want to stay within an inch of that plane. I probably could have gotten away with side plates that were half as wide as the ones that I used. I probably should have added 1” strips of metal under the side plates to catch the spatter that falls. I'm guessing that a 1” catch rim across the top of the trap would probably bring the ratio of recovered material up from 90% to about 97ish%.

It’s been my experience that BB’s will bounce back at you from a .22 trap that I had years ago, but pellets would not. I suppose that jacketed bullets might bounce back if the velocity was low enough to be below the threshold of elastic deformation of the jacket, but that’s pretty slow. An included angle of more than 90 degrees between the two backstop plates might make a bounce back more likely, but I didn’t try that.

So far, I haven’t exceeded the capacity of this backstop with anything that I have shot at it. I know from past experience that .308 ball ammo hitting a piece of 3/4" 1018 at a 45 degree angle will take a nasty chunk out of the plate & the bullet fragments will behave much like what I have described above. I’m not planning on hitting this little thing with any ball ammo from a high power rifle of any description.

The crumb rubber traps that I have been experimenting with have been showing promise for recovering boolits whole & also for stopping faster moving rifle rounds. See my last few posts here on this thread for more info on that.

sounds like a good trap. looks good too. -chris

Quote:

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Originally Posted by floodgate

JIMinPHX:

Jim. I have been looking around; got some samples of both the gardening mulch and the "playground" type, then ckecked Wal-Mart and they had two types in stock: one was just irregular shreds, from woodchip bedding size on down; the other was irregular little cubes about the size of peas or canned diced carrots - about 1/4" on a side, 0.8 cu. ft. for $8.95 and $7.95 respectively. The "cubed" stuff looks like it would be easiest to handle and sort through. What type have you been using? (Photo???) I thought I'd get a metal locker box about 12" x 15" x 24"-30", cut a 10" x 12" section out of one end and screw a section of truck mudflap inside it with paper targets taped to the outside, pack it good & full and clamp down the lid. Maybe put it up on a wheeled frame to make it easy to handle at the range. I'll be shooting .38 Spl. and .44 Spl. at no more than 900 fps at 10-15 yds. to test the Bismuth/Tin alloy bullets for "leading", accuracy, etc.

I really appreciate your writeups on these experimental traps; it has saved me a lot of thinking and potential expense!

floodgate

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I’ve been using the stuff that looks like big chips of redwood. Now that I know I can get the little cubed stuff for less, I will probably try using that next. It was what I really wanted in the first place.

I started out just using a cardboard box full of the stuff & that worked OK until too many shots went to the same area, then the cardboard gave way. I’m now using a 26” long wooden box with 2 layers of 2 x 4 & a 3/8” steel plate for a just in case backstop. So far, the only thing to hit the back wall was a 30-cal 150-grain slug doing 2,000fps. It just put a dent in the first layer of 2 x 4. I’ve been using cardboard on the front face where the targets go. That’s been working out OK. This wood chip looking stuff really doesn’t seem to want to run out of a small hole in the cardboard the way that something like sand would. Right now, my box is about 10 x 14 x 26”. It weighs about 90 pounds stuffed with rubber. It’s 15 pounds less if I pull the plate off the back, which I do when moving it.

It sounds like your intended setup should work well. You might want to put a few layers of wood inside the back wall before you fill it, just in case.

This is the material that I used:

The current wood box

The back of the wood box with 3/8 plate in easy removal slot

Quote:

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Originally Posted by colbyjack

looks good, got a question. if you or someone shoots that with a full metal jacket or harder lead bullet could it come back at ya? looks like maybe if it hit the steel travels down hits angle iron maybe it could be directed back at the shooter.

target looks good, just asking cause i know 2 guys thats been hit by bullets coming back. could you make it deeper and make a catch pan and fill it with sand so maybe if it did go way in or deep the sand trap pit would stop it. itd be easy to sift to catch the lead.

i made some spinner and some steel plates to simulate IPSC plates. i used A-36 and i case hardend mine for 18 hours and then rehardend it for 3 hours with ammonia and oil quenched it. my test pin on 1018 material showed .080" case depth. i had to give it a temper to bring it down a hair. and i ended up with like a RC 51/52 or convert to a 500 brinell hardness. it holds up to all the pistols FMJ or lead. rifle only at a long distance, tested a spinner at 30 yards with a .223 69gr SMK and it made a diviot. can be welded i guess but i dont like divots or any dents in metal targets.

just becarefull if shooting with rifles or high power, it may penatrate the steel.

-chris

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You have any pics of your targets Chris?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JIMinPHX

I’ve been using the stuff that looks like big chips of redwood. Now that I know I can get the little cubed stuff for less, I will probably try using that next. It was what I really wanted in the first place.

I started out just using a cardboard box full of the stuff & that worked OK until too many shots went to the same area, then the cardboard gave way. I’m now using a 26” long wooden box with 2 layers of 2 x 4 & a 3/8” steel plate for a just in case backstop. So far, the only thing to hit the back wall was a 30-cal 150-grain slug doing 2,000fps. It just put a dent in the first layer of 2 x 4. I’ve been using cardboard on the front face where the targets go. That’s been working out OK. This wood chip looking stuff really doesn’t seem to want to run out of a small hole in the cardboard the way that something like sand would. Right now, my box is about 10 x 14 x 26”. It weighs about 90 pounds stuffed with rubber. It’s 15 pounds less if I pull the plate off the back, which I do when moving it.

It sounds like your intended setup should work well. You might want to put a few layers of wood inside the back wall before you fill it, just in case.

This is the material that I used:

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Gosh darn I've got loads and loads of that stuff around my mill.

I know... how bout' "PatMarlins World Famous California Trap Filler" or PMWFCTF.

?.......:mrgreen:

Pat,

It LOOKS LIKE big chips of redwood...not actually big chips of redwood.

Sorry about that.

What kind of chips are they?

They're rubber mulch from Lowe's.

The stuff is made from ground up car tires.

Ya got to read the fine print