Went to look at a barn/shop remodel for a neighbor/friend at lunchtime. Owner wants an indoor shooting range, 2 lanes, has room for a 35′ distance. Will shoot anything from .22 to 44mag handguns. Problem is he is being annexed, and local ordinances prohibit discharging firearms in city limits, he can get around it indoors, and has the bucks, so is going for it. This is personal use, not for hire, or anything like that.
I am staying arm’s length for liability’s sake on the pistol range part, but it looks like I’ll be doing the remainder of the work, and he will take care of the range. As far as I am willing to go is to offer some possible ideas.
Question is, what pointers do y’all have as far as backstop, sidewall treatments, etc? Any of yall done something like this before.
The current shop is 40×50, 12′ wall. Concrete slab, block walls, one row of round 4.5″ steel columns down the center (along the 50′ line) about 12′ apart (3 posts).
Desire is: low-maintenance backstop, low ricochet/energy absorbing material for flooring, and low-ricochet/non-penetrable wall treatments….just in case of a moron (like if he lets me come over and use it).
We talked various options, including raised floor (sleepers on floor, fill voids with pea gravel, then plank with cardecking. What about the walls?
I think maybe I’ll take wifey out tonight, and shoot at chunks of 2x, plyboard, etc, and see how much does what. But then again, maybe tomorrow 🙂
PB
Replies
dirt.
Can't I go 1 day without spilling my coffee?
I'll help a little on the backstop part. That being said, my only experience with this was using a .22 rifle. Seems like the same principle would work for the larger calibers though.
I used a steel plate back behind the target area. (can use wire or string stretched across to clip the targets in place) Place the plate such that it is angled at about 45°. A bullet, after passing thru the target, will impact the plate and will be deflected *downward*. The bottom of the plate should rest in a good bed of sand. (Make sure that 4 to 6 inches of the plate are in the sand.)
The plate will deflect the bullets downward, they will "slide" along the plate and will stop in the sand. The only maintenance that will be required is to occasionally push the sand back in place along the bottom of the plate. I did this outdoors, so dust from the sand was not a concern - you will want good ventilation because of the burnt gunpowder anyway.
For my range I used 1/2 inch plate. It might be good to step the thickness up with the heavier calibers.
Also, this should only be used with soft nose rounds, not usually a problem with handguns.
HTH
David
>>>Desire is: low-maintenance backstop
Edited 2/14/2003 3:51:05 PM ET by David from Denver
Sandbags or a commercial rubber backstop.
Don't forget ventilation for pollutants like barium and lead, especially in a small range. Or he could modify his shot to reduce/eliminate them.
I once saw a backstop advertised, forget the name, that caught the bullets in a cylinder. After hitting the target the bullets went into a barrel collector. They then spun around the inside of the barrel until they ran out of pep. An angled steel plate also works, but have no idea on thickness, depth of sandpit, etc.. Our armory used excess armor off a battleship, but that was overkill.
The cylinder looked like a good idea. And, wasn't as expensive as most indoor ranges. Seems like they started at 4 or 5 grand.
Advise him to use 'encapsulated' bullets. These are bullets that have no exposed lead surfaces. This will nearly eliminate lead dust in the air.
Don't forget, you have to prevent shooting through the roof also.
I would do some web searching. I'm sure there are some sites about indoor ranges. I've seens several companies advertise that build them.
Found one company, I'm sure there are more.
http://www.actiontarget.com/
For indoor, you have several concerns. First is noise. I'm not being facetious here when I suggest suppressors (silencers) for this. For the sake of argument, I can target shoot in the basement and no one on the first floor would be any the wiser. The other concerns are airborne lead dust containment, bullet containment (in *all* directions), and expended bullet-lead containment.
Heavy steel backstops are good. Additional options are to also use a a layer of rubber to act as a semi-permeable shield prior to the bullet hitting the backstop. This controls the size of one space which needs ventilation. Also, if the sand/pea gravel used to collect the bullets is wetted prior to use, the amount of lead dust is reduced. You will want the final bullet collection area to be self contained to deal with any questions of cleanup down the road. One issue which often isn't dealt with is the fact that 90% of the airborne lead actually comes from the primer and off the base of lead bullets as they are fired. Keeping airflow going in a direction downrange is essential.
As for range design, the best for an indoor scenario is a buried concrete pipe in the backyard. Actually two pipes, one is for the actual range, the other is for ventilation/sound attenuation. for example, imagine a hole in the basement wall from 4-6 ft off the floor. Going off of this out back is a 2 ft diameter piece of concrete pipe for about 50 ft. At then end is a section of 4 ft diameter pipe that is placed vertically and connected to the tunnel through a 2 ft side port. The top and bottom of the 4 ft pipe are sealed with concrete, and the bullet trap sits inside this piece. The top of the 4 ft piece is either removavble or has an access port for maintenance. Also off of the 4 ft piece is a 6" piece of ducting pipe for ventilation. In this pipe are a number of baffles or right angles to suppress noise. The 6" pipe comes back towards the house in the same trench used for the 2 ft pipe, where it is connected to a fan and an additional outflow tube to carry the vented air up and away from the house (similar to a plumbing stack). Everything but the fan and outflow tube are buried under a foot or two of dirt. So you have a setup where the bullitz are contained in a heavy walled/buried pipe, there is ventilation which draws the bad air away from the shooter in a controlled manner, targets can be placed down range and changed via a clothesline running along the top of the main tube, there is a service area at the far end for bullet trap maintenance, and sound noise is attenuated through the ventilation system. The main pipe could also contain a number of circular sound deflector baffles to control noise and keep it downrange.
FWIW, I shoot outdoors whenever possible, and anything that can be suppressed is. Attracting attention doesn't help.
Lots of good gouge going your way. I'd really check into the bullet trap. The're pretty SOP around here for indoor ranges. Think conch shell stood up on edge. The other stuff also sounds good, but not sure about necessity of everything. The walls of most ranges here are concrete block. Sure, you could wing one sideways, but a pistol bullet at a low angle of impact won't penetrate. It would ricochet to the trap at the end. A poured concrete floor would do the same. The roof, however . . . I've seen enough newbies punch bullets up there on outdoor ranges.
A good, possibly free resource is law enforcement. They have to shoot, they probably have indoor ranges. There's a guy here I know who's the ballistics guru for the state patrol and, were I in your shoes, I'd think he'd answer everything I ever wanted to know for a lunch. Or talk to existing ranges for what they use (which also answers what passes, legally, in your area). Good luck. Me jealous. Fair warning for the customer, the best bullet traps aren't designed to catch more than probably that .44. If he digs out the 375 H&H out of the chest and starts whacking away, he'll blow through it and the wall.
" To the noble mind / Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind" - Wm Shakespeare, Hamlet, III,i,100
Better add some more beef to what ever you use to deflect the bullits.S&W just came out with a 5shot .50 mag!Just for hunting.
Here's a little anecdote (and a true story) you might enjoy on the subject:
One of my brothers was an optics engineer for Leopold (the gold ring brand) and in the basement of their manufacturing facility they had a 100 yard tunnel for bench-rest shooting to test the durability and accuracy of their scope designs.
This range was used frequently for a number of years for company testing, but employees were also allowed to use it for sighting in their personal firearms.
Apparently, no one had ever considered the minute quantities of unexpended powder that leave the muzzle on any given shot and, over time, quite a buildup of the stuff had accumulated along the walls of the tunnel.
One weekend, an employee came in to sight in his 30/06. When he touched off one of his rounds, the powder residue ignited, blew him backwards about 20 feet, singed his hair and eyebrows and...cleaned the tunnel!
Fortunately, he escaped with only bumps and bruises, but a regular cleaning regimen was practiced thereafter.
Jules Quaver for President 2004
Did that guy ever go back and use that range? Ouch!
If at all possible build it as deep in the ground as possible, Deep enough to get 2' of dirt over the roof would be ideal, and have a concrete roof. A good steady forced air flow away from the shooters and toward the targets will go a long way to making the shooting experience more enjoyable. It also helps with the the heavy metals problems associated with indoor shooting.
Some military ranges, particularly the Close Quarter Battle (CQB) range feature stacks of tires. These are sometimes compressed by installing a cable up the middle and tightening it up with a come along. Compressing the stack makes the softer sidewalls fold inward Increasing the likelihood that a bullet will strike the tougher tread and stop. The tire treads, a woven steel covered by rubber, tends to absorb the shots and, from what I understand, limits the amount of lead that become airborne.
A staggered double row of these will stop most light, non-AP, rounds. In more critical spots the stack can be further reinforced by filling the middle with concrete. These commonly stop AP .50 cal rounds. Just don't keep hammering the same spot. An advantage of the hollow stacks, less so the concrete filled ones, is that when one face gets holed you can rotate the assembly and get at least double the wear.
For the roof 6", maybe a bit more over the benches, of good concrete should serve. Any round, outside of the firing posts, hitting the roof, assuming a 7' to 10' ceiling will be at an acute angle and will tend to bounce down range doing little damage. Above the firing posts I would hang a commercial ballistic blanket To absorb any shots that get misfired directly upward.
While most rounds will be stopped by 6" of concrete I would worry most about it coming back after striking the concrete. A good ballistic cover will slow the bullet before it hits the concrete and stop it completely on the rebound. Not that rare a problem I hear. Some rifles can fire when dropped on their butts and most can get hot enough with extended firing to cook off rounds. Don't laugh. It happens.
A light steel plate, 10 ga or so, sandwiched between two layers of 3/4" ply, glue with a thin, even layer of PLPremium on cleaned sheet metal and screw from the back with inch and a quarter pan head screws, would probably work also as the idea is to stop the rebound. Space it several inches away from the concrete to get the most from it. I would give it a try at the range just to make sure but FWIW I think this would work well and would be much cheaper than the kevlar blankets.
Just a few ideas I have been thinking of for indoor ranges. I too would enjoy a private range on site and have thought about what it would take to build one.
http://www.shootingrangeproducts.com
I think the NRA offers assistance with shooting ranges.
We are ALL responsible for what we do.
Unless we're celebrities.