Indoor Range at Home

[ihasagun]

I have 10 meters indoors I can use at home for shooting air rifle. I ordered the Daisy pellet trap and I am trying to figure out the best way to mount it and put a backstop behind it. Any suggestions? I'd particularly like to learn about good pellet backstop material, because the pellets ricochet from wood. What works best?

[silhouette shooter]

The best thing to put behind it is something that the pellets will not go through.

Here is the pellet trap that i built for my use indoors at 10 meters. The trap is approx. 24" tall by 24" wide and 16" deep. The plywood on the outside is 3/4 inch plywood. I used 1/8 inch thick steel plate for the top, both sides, bottom and the back.

I used a mud flap to go between the steel plate and the plywood in the back. The mud flap takes all of the ring out when the pellet strikes the plate. All 5 steel plates are bolted to the plywood.

I then took another piece of 1/8" thick steel plate, a mud flap and a piece of 1/2" plywood and bolted the 3 pieces together. This hangs from two hooks about halfway back from the front. The two hooks that hold up the angled striking plate are bolted to the piece of angle iron that is across the top of the trap. The bottom was wedged to the back. Now this striking plate is at a 45 degree. When the pellets strike the angled plate, you just hear a dead thud. The pellets just fall to the bottom.

I bolted 4 wooden strips to line the inside front edge of the trap. Now I am able to just staple a big piece of cardboard to the front of the trap. This makes the trap completely enclosed. The pellets stay inside the trap and no bounce backs. I just staple my paper practice targets to the cardboard.

I guess the trap weighs somewhere between 125 and 150 lbs. I takes two men to pick it up. the trap sets on a rolling stand. I can roll it to where ever I want it.

[ihasagun]

Thanks for all that!

[Freepistol]

I mounted my .22 trap in the basement from the floor joists.
Since you have a pellet trap, you don't need a backstop behind it.

[Ricardo as guest]

Get "ballistic nylon". It will stop an AP pellet fired at 2 in. with no damage to the fabric.

[USMC0802]

a cardboard box to attach the target filled with old towels, blankets, cardboard and/or foam seemed to work great for me for a couple of years until I bought an elec tgt. Total cost was approx free.

[ihasagun]

Since you have a pellet trap, you don't need a backstop behind it.

That's what I thought when I hung a dartboard on my wall. D-:

I have yet to fire my avanti at a 10m target. I have no idea if I can even hit the trap consistently. All of my rifle experience is prone and benchrest. Standing seems like it will be much more difficult.

It is the Gamo cone pellet trap, so it is not that big. http://cdn.pyramydair.com/images/acc/Ga ... rap_lg.jpg

I plan to start close and work my way back so long as I stay in the rings, but I'd feel better if I had some kind of backstop behind the trap that would prevent damage to my wall if I miss. I don't really have the room to use the mudflap solution. I was thinking I might use a blanket or a bulletin board with a sheet of tin behind it.

[poogi]

I just bought a yard of ballistic kevlar fabric off eBay. Don't know how good it is. I'm planning on using it as my pellet trap. I suppose you could hang it around or behind the pellet trap.

[redschietti]

At our club with a lot of new shooters, we have 4 by 8 sheets of plywood covered in carpet to protect the walls. They will stop a random shot that misses the trap...dont expect them to stop a 20 shot group though. We have to carry them in and out of storage every week as we just use the building. Hope this helps

[Guest]

I have a daisy pellet trap in my garage range and I use a 4 X 8 piece of drywall behind it to catch the strays. Teaching kids to shoot, I get quite a few, but the drywall is holding up well.

[USMC0802]

I think Sil Shooter went a lot overboard building his but he did a really great job on it and I like the wheels where it could be moved in and out of whatever space you are using. I would like to have one myself. However, for the budget conscious, a cardboard box filled with old clothes or newspapers is pretty hard to beat. A piece of plywood behind it would work fine for a backstop if needed. I probably need to put a backstop behind my electronic target since it is 5 inches from a window. I trust my shots but all of us have had one go when it wasn't suppose to. Normally hitting the floor or somewhere else on the target providing your raise is up and down. Recently replaced a window for a different reason and it's not cheap. Sounds like you have lots of good ideas. The next idea you may want to incorporate since elec target systems are so expensive is using a camera pointed at the target with a cable ran to a monitor to see the shot. Works much better than getting out of position everytime to look through a scope

[Gort]

I also have an indoor range. It is ISSF compliant. Firing line has a bench with a rubber mat and a 20x spotting scope suspended from the ceiling, I only move my head a couple of inches to use. The target is in a Gehmann trap. Targets are illuminated by a 500w quartz lamp. There is also a chronograph that swings down from the ceiling.
Gort

[TexasShooter]

Gort,

Very nice setup! I like your ceiling mounted chrony and spotting scope!

[Bestshooter]

Now that is sweet !!! I wanna come to your place

[TerryKuz]

I use a 9x12 inch electrical box stuffed with duct seal. I mount the targets on a cardboard facing with a velcro band that goes across the target. No mess, silent, and easy to mount. I used a box filled with rags and magazines for years, but it was a bit thick. The electric box is much thinner.

[DLS]

I took a dollar store clipboard, trimmed it to 8.5 inches wide and cut out the interior leaving a 3/4 inch "ring" of clipboard material.

I then built a box out of scrap shelving (plywood works perfectly as well) that's about 9.5 inches wide, a foot tall and 12 inches deep.

On the open (face) side of the box I cut grooves in the wood so that the clipboard (and attached target, slides in from the top. About 5 pounds of electrical duct seal is spread on the back.

Since I print my targets on scrap letter sized paper I simply clip the target to the "clipboard ring" (along with a thin cardboard backer for better holes) and slide the target into the box. No staples, tape, nothing, just slide it in.

A cheap handle on the balance point of the boxes top makes this less than 10 pound trap very portable. I just place a sheet of plywood or dry wall behind it when I need a safety backstop. It moves from my front room to the covered porch or the garage ... depending on temperature and wind issues at the time I want to shoot. It's tucked away on a shelf when not in use.

The duct seal makes the trap silent ... you can hear the pellet hitting the paper. About every ten tins I spend about ten or 15 minutes picking out the pellets (that have made themselves into nice pellet nuggets cradled in the duct seal) and then smooth out the duct seal once again.

I then toss the pellets into my scrap lead pile to become bullets, sinkers or whatever I need in the future.

You could make the face any size to accommodate any target dimensions ... I just stuck with the 8.5 x 11 standard letter size since I'm cheap AND broke, and have been using Ian Pellant's target software for a long time.

If anyone wants pics let me know. Mine is ugly as sin, I threw it together in about 10 minutes just grabbing wood from the scrap pile. I always intended to make a really nice one with dovetail corners and a nice finish, but have never got around to doing it, and my ugly once does just fine.

[Brian Lafferty]

I use an electrical connection box lined with electrical duct putty. The putty is cheap, stops and holds the pellets and is easy to replace when saturated. The electrical box is heavy enough steel that no pellet is going to pass trough it. I use a magnet on top to hold any target by making a small fold across the top of the target sheet. Total cost to set up is under $30 from Home Despot.
Good shooting.
Brian

[GaryN]

I have a cinder block wall behind my trap to stop my "misses."
But if I were indoors, I would use a sheet of 3/4" or minimally 1/2" plywood or 3/4" pressboard with a layer of carpet on top of it.
The idea is to stop the "occasional" flyer, so one hopes that it won't get eaten up by repeated hits to the same spot. And we are talking about LOW power target guns, nothing high powered, so the wood should be fine.

It is all the more important to consider what is on the other side of the wall, and construct the backstop accordingly.

In front of the backstop a trap made of either
- electrical box with a layer of duct seal (what I use)
- cardboard box filled with layers of newspaper (what I used to use) or rags

Tip for the newspaper filled box. Make the first few inches, wadded up sheets of news paper or rags. I had a few pellets bounce back at me when they hit a magazine that I had put into the trap. The high density magazine paper did not absorb the pellet impact like newspaper. The wadded up paper traps the "bounce backs."

[v76]

When building my first trap I used plywood, 14cu-in, and lined it with duct seal. I quickly realized that it didn't really work out as expected, as the pellets would eventually bounce all over the floor from the thick layer of "welded" pellets in the 9-10 rings. Complete mess to remove the spent pellets since I didn't want to simply remove the duct seal/pellets and throw them in the garbage...

Since then I bought the 20$ spring-loaded Gehmann trap and couldn't be happier. Much, much easier to clean. I only added some silicon grease to the steel plate so the pellets wouldn't stick to it.

[DLS]

...thick layer of "welded" pellets in the 9-10 rings. ...

I get the same "nuggets" building up. Simply pop them out with a screwdriver, press the duct seal flat with your fingers, it takes more time to type this ... and you don't have to do it often. If you don't reclaim the lead yourself, drop the "nugget" into a baggie ... and give it to someone who does.

The attached duct seal actually works a bit like a fluxing agent during the initial melt!

It's just me, but I hate the "clang" sound the metal traps make.