Bullet trap ideas for recycling lead

[JIMinPHX]

The depth of penetration seems to depend on velocity & boolit weight. Surprisingly to me, boolit diameter does not seem to have much effect. A 200 grain .357 @1,000fps seems to go to about the same depth as a 200 grain .45 at the same speed. Boolit style doesn't seem to mean much either. Round nose or wadcutter seem to be the same. A thin skinned varmint boolit that blows apart easily is the exception to that rule. The ones that break up, seem to then act as several smaller boolits & not go as deep. Somewhere, several pages back in this thread, I posted a bunch of depth data. I'll post a quick general sampling here for convenience. Be aware, that if you shoot small groups (i.e. a lot of boolits hit the same spot) then a tunnel will form in the crumb rubber & the boolits will go much deeper.


Caliber Weight Speed Average Depth
.22LR 30 gr 1300 13.5”
.22LR 40 gr 1150 12”
.22LR 40 gr 1050 10”
.22Mag 40 gr FMJ 1875 14-22”
.22Mag 30 gr HP 2300 10”
.22Mag 30 gr TNT 2200 12”
.223 40-gr V-max 3200 11.5”
.223 55-gr ball 2950 21”
.380 95FMJ 950? 10”
.380 100 LRN 850 10”
.357 130 LRNFP 1300 19”
.357 150LSWC 1250 23”
.357 158 TC 675 11”
.45 200 LSWC 800 14.5
.44Mag 240LSWC 1000 23”
.44Mag 240 FP 1450 30.5”
.44Mag 180-grain FP 1800 30”
.30 cal 150RNFPGC 1300 23”
.30 cal 150RNFPGC 2000 25.5”
.30cal 150 gr Rem PSP 2390 20”

[sheepdog]

Well I tested the following on my box of boxes (small Fedex boxes in a paper ream box). 10 boxes total the following rounds were stopped at this number of boxes:

22 LR from Ruger 45/22: 2 boxes
22 LR from a Winchester Model 52 rifle: 4 boxes
38 special: 5 boxes
357 mag: 6 boxes
45 acp: 6 boxes
5.7 FN: 4 boxes
380 acp: 3 boxes
9mm +p: 5 boxes

Retrieved were like new except with rifling grooves. So much so going to take my 38/357s and run them through a sizing die to try through my 9mm/380.

[JIMinPHX]

Sheepdog,

Thanks you for the report.

Where did you get your crumb rubber from & what brand was it? Floodgate had found a finer grain rubber that stopped boolits faster than mine did. Yours seems to work even better than his did. I'd like to find out what you are using & see if I can get some. It would allow me to make my traps smaller.

[sheepdog]

Sheepdog,

Thanks you for the report.

Where did you get your crumb rubber from & what brand was it? Floodgate had found a finer grain rubber that stopped boolits faster than mine did. Yours seems to work even better than his did. I'd like to find out what you are using & see if I can get some. It would allow me to make my traps smaller.

Heres a picture of the bag and the target. It comes in dark brown and dark red. Looks to be mostly shoe soles, about the size of feta cheese crumbs. Bags are at Wally world for $6.78 IIRC. Good stuff, seems to resist breaking from the rounds, instead allowing the rounds to squeeze through but lose their energy. Also sprinkling in some of those rubber rings from tire stems that make their way into the wheel weight buckets.

Its worked out so nice my local gun store asked me for one so they could shoot their Walther 22 suppressed in the store. I don't endorse doing so but that is pretty fun.

[Nora]

1)Has any one tried this with just one large box?
2) is the rubber packed into the box or filled loose?

I really like this idea and would like to give it a try myself.

[sheepdog]

1)Has any one tried this with just one large box?

Yeah and that works. Problem is as you shoot out the front the box starts pouring out mulch and lead. Quite a mess. By doing a box in the front and in the back you can reduce the amount that pours out greatly and keep it dense. Only reason I did lots of small boxes is to gauge where it stops and fill past the top of the paper box.

2) is the rubber packed into the box or filled loose?

I really like this idea and would like to give it a try myself.

In mine I filled it loosely til at the top then put in a half handful to make it slightly packed enough so the corners were filled out good at the tops.

Overall the box is maybe 30 pounds, portable enough to take to the range.

[JIMinPHX]

This is the latest version of the box trap that I am using. I call it the pistol cube. As the name implies, it's cube shaped. It's about 1 foot high, wide & deep. The back has a 3/16" thick steel plate under a 3/4" piece of MDF. That composite back side of the box is hinged & held shut with a piece of 1/4" rod that goes through two pieces of 1/8 x 1 flat bar. The balance of the box is built out of 3/8" OSB & 2 x 2 pine. Everything is held together with drywall screws.

The 12" depth of crumb rubber is enough to slow down something like a .38 Special to the point where the 3/16" plate stops it easily. If I shoot .38's at it, I find all my slugs within an inch or two of the back plate. Most of the boolits bounce off the plate & get a pretty good dent in them, but I still get mostly whole boolits back for recycling into ingots. This trap doesn't give me the perfectly preserved boolits that are good for diagnosing boolit problems like some of the deeper traps do, but it is quick & easy to empty the lead out of since the back opens easily & it only requires me to dig down about 2" into the crumb rubber to get all my lead back.

The first two pictures show the trap sitting upright. First a front view (cardboard backing with target attached), then a rear view (showing 1/4" steel rod latch). The last picture shows the trap turned with the front down to the ground & the back opened.

[sheepdog]

Nice Jim. I been thinking about a box with ar500 plate in the back and about 10 inches of rubber mulch in the middle and layers of 18 wheeler tire sidewall in the front to hold it in. As you found you don't have to stop the round completely but slow it enough to keep it form self-destructing.

[JIMinPHX]

My plate is just a piece of garden variety A-36 hot roll. It seems to work fine for what I am doing with it.

Truck tire sidewalls may be a bit more than you want to use on the front of the trap. I seem to remember a number of years back when some guy stole a buss out of South Station in Boston, the Boston cops tried to shoot out the tires with bad results. The tires were not punctured by the 9mm pistol rounds & the ricochets went some places that caused problems.

I get a few hundred rounds out of a piece of cardboard on the front of that trap before I need to change it. There is probably some type of gummy rubber out there that would self heal after a round went through it, but I'm not sure where you would get that in a sheet or how you would spec it. I do remember about 8 or 10 years ago, a buddy of mine & I were shooting at blocks of wood & such, when he pulled out a big chunk of gum rubber or something that he used to clean his belt sander. We shot at it with a .22 several times with no apparent hits. I was starting to get a little embarrassed at my poor marksmanship, until I put a piece of paper over the front of it. The bullets were hitting it alright. They went right through & the hole healed back up. We couldn't find the hole in the rubber block, but paper on the front & back sides of it both had holes in them. I wish I knew where to find that kind of rubber in 1/4" thick sheets. It would be perfect for the front of a box trap.

[markinalpine]

...has anyone building a trap like these used, or considered using, corrugated plastic? The same type used for campaign signs? NOT that I'm suggesting anything that might get anyone in trouble for an imagined hate-crime .
(Just use it with any incriminating evidence on the inside .

Mark

[briang]

My gun club uses old conveyor belt rubber from the local cement plant as target holders. As the center gets shot out a new layer gets put up, sometimes there will be three or four layers on the outer edges. The only round I've ever seen stopped by it was a very light load from a ML and that went through the first layer. I don't think tire sidewalls would be much different.

[sheepdog]

My plate is just a piece of garden variety A-36 hot roll. It seems to work fine for what I am doing with it.

Truck tire sidewalls may be a bit more than you want to use on the front of the trap. I seem to remember a number of years back when some guy stole a buss out of South Station in Boston, the Boston cops tried to shoot out the tires with bad results. The tires were not punctured by the 9mm pistol rounds & the ricochets went some places that caused problems.

I get a few hundred rounds out of a piece of cardboard on the front of that trap before I need to change it. There is probably some type of gummy rubber out there that would self heal after a round went through it, but I'm not sure where you would get that in a sheet or how you would spec it. I do remember about 8 or 10 years ago, a buddy of mine & I were shooting at blocks of wood & such, when he pulled out a big chunk of gum rubber or something that he used to clean his belt sander. We shot at it with a .22 several times with no apparent hits. I was starting to get a little embarrassed at my poor marksmanship, until I put a piece of paper over the front of it. The bullets were hitting it alright. They went right through & the hole healed back up. We couldn't find the hole in the rubber block, but paper on the front & back sides of it both had holes in them. I wish I knew where to find that kind of rubber in 1/4" thick sheets. It would be perfect for the front of a box trap.

Good point, might be a bit dangerous. Maybe carpet? I have unlimited supply of old carpet from business next door. Carpet seems to be tough enough and usually have some ability keep things in if turned inside out and stapled over a frame like yours.

[sheepdog]

Ok my paper box held up to 7.62x25 from a cz52, 40 S&W, and amazingly 5.56 from a 20" barrel. However it didn't stand a chance against the mighty 30-06 from an M1. However did slow it down enough it bounced off the berm and remained intact. With the steel plate I might be able to do 30-06

[sheepdog]

Update: box handled 00 and 000 buckshot 2 3/4 shells from 1300 Defender and Saiga 12. Also took 1 ounce slug no problem.

[sheepdog]

Update: box handled a 180gr 30-06 with a 13 grain Red dot load.

[JKH]

sheepdog,

What range were you shooting the '06 at your trap? How did the boolits look after rcovery?

I am in the process of making mine now, we used to get UPS boxes similar to the Fed-Ex ones you use but not anymore, so I went to the post office and got a bunch of free bulk rate boxes that measure roughly 11+" x 13+" x 3+" They are tight side to side in the copy paper box I got from the office but still fit, I can get 5 of them in there but may gin up somethig else to hold them rather than the cardboard box. Now I just need 2 more bags of rubber mulch from Wally world to fill the remaining boxes and I can start collecting lead, this will be so much better than making my lawn look like a freshly plowed field after a .45acp session!

Jeff

[JKH]

I just re-read this entire thread, very good info here!

Jim, I like your pistol cube, have you tryed and .45acp in it yet? As for the front cover you might want to try a sheet of EPDM rubber membrane roofing, it can be stretched tight and stapled to the frame and should take a lot of hits before needing replacement, i believe it would be basically "self-healing" at least for a few hundred rounds, maybe more.

How much does your pistol cube weigh?

Jeff

[sheepdog]

I'm shooting pistols about 25 yards away, shotguns 25 to 50, and rifles 100. Most rounds are just fine unless a boolit hits a boolit. The 30-06s were lead boolits and mushroomed or bent.

[Bgddy]

I wonder how deep a box filled with crumb rubber would have to be to stop a 9mm at 7yards. For that matter any other typical defensive round .357 magnum out of a 3 inch or less barrel etc.

[JIMinPHX]

I just re-read this entire thread, very good info here!

Jim, I like your pistol cube, have you tryed and .45acp in it yet?

.45acp is one of the calibers it does best. The slugs end up in the back 3 or 4" of the trap for easy unloading.

How much does your pistol cube weigh?

It's 39 pounds with a 3/16" thick steel back plate.