Lets See Ideas For Quiet Big Bore Ammo Traps

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New rubber mulch trap

Finding myself with extra time on my hands I set out to "build a better mouse trap". I wanted the new trap to include 4 things: 1- metal spinners. 2- capture the lead from the spinners and any rubber that falls from the trap. 3- easy to change cardboard. 4- some protection of the cardboard...
www.airgunnation.com www.airgunnation.com
Link to a post about a rubber mulch trap I built. The build is a little "extra" but a rubber mulch trap would be perfect for you. Rubber mulch is quiet and will stop any airgun rounds you can shoot at it. Bonus is the more you shoot into it the better it gets at stopping rounds.
 
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I wanted to quiet the pellet strike on the target , just tried it today . what i did was buy a 24x24 16 gage Lowes finest steel ( not anywhere near thick enough to stop a pellet) so i screwed through the steel and made a 1x3 wood frame, filled it with fast setting cement (yes it is heavy ) but pellets or slugs do not dent it and it just sounds a quiet thump . 40 LBS cement and 8 pounds of steel , tried cement by it self and it chipped badly . So mount this backstop @ 45 degrees and pellets will deflect down into rubber mulch or sand
 
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My indoor pellet trap is a 24 tall x16 wide x16 inch deep heavy wall cardboard box like what they ship gunpowder in. I got the idea from Aaron Cantrell's post on Youtube and added the a 1/4" scrap aluminum plate that I put in the bottom of the box, then filled it with old shirts and pants to the point that I could barely tape it shut, thus compressing the fabric. I wasn't planning on shooting it with this Gauntlet 30 pushing 114 fpe with 68 grain NOE bullet shaped boat tails and 55 grain NOE slug shaped hollow points at 100 fpe. The farthest any 30 cals have penetrated is 10" into the fabric from a tight 14 shot group, checking the depth with a tig welding rod. The 22 cal slugs usually go in about 5-6 inches.

If it was going to be a dedicated 25 or 30 cal slug stopper with daily use, I would probably go 24" deep with a metal plate at the back just in case. Reclaiming the lead out of the fabric is probably the easiest there is short of a bullet trap that collects the lead at the bottom. It is very quiet, even less noise than an empty cardboard box of equal wall thickness. I have one in the basement and one outside. The outside one is covered with a trash bag when done to protect it from the rain.
 
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I use a rubber maid totes that holds 2 bags of big piece rubber mulch for 9mm ,38 ,22lr powder burners. Very quiet. Gun is louder . Use old for sale colorplast signs for front and duct tape them when the mulch falls out . Move the target around to keep big holes to a minimum. The only bullet that escaped was when I shot the same spot alot. Ricochet off lead build up I guess. Dump the mulch in a 5 gallon bucket and use water to float rubber mulch off ,dry lead pieces and recast slugs. Big long tote should stop most big bores.
 
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I use this beefy bullet trap (sold on eBay) and quieted it down by gluing 3/4" horse stall rubber floor matting to all sides and the collector (mats from Tractor Supply). Heavy big bore slugs hit with a dull but metallic thump now and a quiet air rifle is louder than pellets are. I tried collecting lead in rubber but the rubber bits in the lead makes a smoky stinking mess when melted down into ingots.


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cosmic said:
Float the rubber much away from the lead..
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Lead recovery is a whole thread in itself. My original trap was the same style, but in a 5 gallon bucket. After a few years it weighed well over 100#, most of which originated from JSB tins. If you are planning to recover lead for casting, I recommend doing it more frequently. Over time pellets and slugs slamming into each other create more smaller pieces, more pieces embedded with rubber. This makes both initial recovery and initial melting more of a PITA....

Regardless, the first melting is best done into ingots vs attempting to mold. It will be messy and should be done with robust ventilation, but the end result is you have nice clean lead.

Some of this may seem obvious, but I am willing to bet I am not the only one that chose to learn these details the hard way.
 
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davidsng said:
Old tires cut into flat strips then duct taped loosely together into a 6-8" brick. Did it once for a .357 at 200fpe and worked
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@davidsng Do you have photos of when you did this? Do you recall if you dealt with any richochets?

Airgun-hobbyist said:
I use this beefy bullet trap (sold on eBay) and quieted it down by gluing 3/4" horse stall rubber floor matting to all sides and the collector (mats from Tractor Supply). Heavy big bore slugs hit with a dull but metallic thump now and a quiet air rifle is louder than pellets are. I tried collecting lead in rubber but the rubber bits in the lead makes a smoky stinking mess when melted down into ingots.


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@Airgun-hobbyist Thanks for the link. I looked for one of these recently and didn’t find it. What I wanted to ask you is, do you experiencing any shattered fragments that rebound of the top, bottom, or anides of the trap and fly back through the target?
 
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Ezana4CE said:
@davidsng Do you have photos of when you did this? Do you recall if you dealt with any richochets?


@Airgun-hobbyist Thanks for the link. I looked for one of these recently and didn’t find it. What I wanted to ask you is, do you experiencing any shattered fragments that rebound of the top, bottom, or anides of the trap and fly back through the target?
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@Ezana4CE With solid steel ricochet inducing bullet traps, even at extreme angles, you are going to get lead ricochet splatter backwards to some degree.

 
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@Airgun-hobbyist That’s very interesting footage and it explains plenty concerning the the shapes of fragments that I have recovered. What I’m still wondering is, what can be affixed to the front of a steel trap to minimize fragments from bouncing back and ripping through the target paper and out of the trap? I’m wondering how I might use a horse stall mat or maybe a piece of linoleum or something that can impede fragments with that sort of energy.
 
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I use a 24" x 24" x 18" deep wood framed box with a couple of .063" thick steel sheets in the back and then filled with rubber mulch. I have a large oval hole cut in top to replenish the rubber mulch as it breaks down from impacts and settles.

I think one advantage of the rubber mulch is it pretty much "self-heals" with impacts and repeated impacts do not bore a hole through like some other materials. The rubber absorbs the energy and does not have material blasting back out of it.

It is also a pretty cheap material to use.

Sand will pack and you can bore a hole through it with repeated hits.
 
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Ezana4CE said:
@Airgun-hobbyist That’s very interesting footage and it explains plenty concerning the the shapes of fragments that I have recovered. What I’m still wondering is, what can be affixed to the front of a steel trap to minimize fragments from bouncing back and ripping through the target paper and out of the trap? I’m wondering how I might use a horse stall mat or maybe a piece of linoleum or something that can impede fragments with that sort of energy.
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@Ezana4CE I use cardboard box material for the face of my target box and do get splatter, but don't have splatter going through the thickness/weight of the cardboard. I think that you are on the right track as far as containing the ricochet splatter by using the rubber horse stall mat material on the face of the target. That material would also give you something to staple the paper targets to.
 
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