Firing Range

As I said, we did "Dynamic" Entries.

"Hammer" Man would hit the door (on the door knob) with a ram. The door would Pop & fly open. #1 Man had the Entry Shotgun, followed by 7 more Cops all wearing black and Body Armor at a full run, very loudly yelling "Police Officers, Search Warrant".

Reason for this tactic was that it would "stun" the occupants, and they would often not have time to arm themselves, and definitely not have time to make a plan to resist.

We went into a kitchen door of a house like that one time, and there was a Full-Grown Doberman by the kitchen table. His legs started wobbling, he peed all over the kitchen floor, and then he ran down into the basement. I thought, "I believe that we just overwhelmed his Panic Threshold".

Haha.

There's a gentleman in my church that used to train dogs for both police and military that told me most all dogs will run away when you charge them unless they've been trained. He did some some training with my dog where he would show up in my yard at night and when Dyson would growl and bark he would run away. He would progressively get more threatening (over time) and each time Dyson stood his ground he'd turn and run. It started teaching the dog to stand his ground no matter what. We wanted him to get to the point of standing his ground and show teeth which he'll do. He's not an "attack" dog. We just wanted a better "guard" dog. He's a Labrador, so his nature is very loyal and easy going with the kids and we didn't want to mess with that.

Anyway, back to the Range.....

I have a berm backstop, with a hill behind it.

Up against the berm, I have tires with sand in them (so that mosquitoes don't have little breeding pools) spanning about 15 feet wide and about 10 feet high, and covered with pine logs - to keep low velocity/black powder projectiles from bouncing back off the tires.

So far, so good. Only maintenance is occasionally replacing the pine logs which get chewed up by large caliber projectiles.

And I have so many pine trees that I can keep fresh logs supplied just from dead-fall that I have to clean up.

I recently sent out an all-church e-mail, announcing a small group I intend to lead this Fall. Titled "Home Improvement" (but without the Tim Allen bandages), it's about the 12 things that all guys should know how to do. I included a list of 40 skills, including being able to shoot a firearm. We'll see what kind of response I get, so I can cover those topics they're most interested in.

Can I join??? Woohoo. What firearms can I bring? We should cover the basics semiauto pistol, revolver, AR-15, shotgun, open sights, and scoped. Anyone who knows basic unarmed self-defense?

joecool wrote:I recently sent out an all-church e-mail, announcing a small group I intend to lead this Fall. Titled "Home Improvement" (but without the Tim Allen bandages), it's about the 12 things that all guys should know how to do. I included a list of 40 skills, including being able to shoot a firearm. We'll see what kind of response I get, so I can cover those topics they're most interested in.

Well, where you live, most of the Participants can probably "test-out" from the "firearms" part.  In fact, half of them may have reloading presses.

On a sad note.  I loaded up 5 test rounds for my .35 Whelen using IMR-5010, took them to the range, and shot them over the chronograph.  I was very pleased with the results, went to the house, and wiped the bore out with Windex.

A couple of hours later, I came back to finish cleaning the rifle, and found a very slight brown color on the white cleaning patch.  I knew that the powder was going sour, but this showed that it was bad enough (turning acid) to corrode the barrel, if left untreated.

So I'm going to have to dispose of an 8-pound jug that still has 5 or 6 pounds of powder (current cost for store-bought powder is about $30.00 per pound).  I think that I will take some "fresh" powder and some "sour" powder to Rangers, let the kids smell the difference, then go outside and give each of them a few ounces of the bad stuff to pour out on the grass and make a Sparkler.

That's unfortunate. Is there anything that can keep powder from going sour? Is it the oxygen?

Like any Chemical Process: keep it cool & dry.

Military IMR-5010 Powder has a reputation for going bad (maybe the Nitric Acid in the Process wasn't completely neutralized). It spent 4 years here in the back room of our Mississippi temporary, humid, non-air-conditioned house. I'm pretty sure that it may have hastened the process along.

I did purchase that powder in the 1980's, and it was surplus powder then. The only thing is that, now I finally have time to monkey with it & develop good loading data, and it went bad.

Any ideas for an inexpensive back drop that would facilitate periodic, (relatively) easy lead retrieval?

I wonder how much abuse hanging chains could take. Several rows of course that would move around as a bullet impacted them. Then hopefully it would just fall down into a catch basin. Probably be expensive though with initial cost, plus replacing destroyed chains...

Just trying to think of a material that would slow a bullet down, be loose enough to allow it to drop once it came to a stop, be easily attained, and be relatively inexpensive. So what's the magic material???

What angle do you think concrete would have to be at to minimize the dig in effect of bullets? 45°?

45° is nowhere near enough. Apparently angles in the 20's is more what they use for bullet catchers. Sand sounds like more of my speed as I look into it. Maybe I'll build a big sifter that I can dump bucket loads of dirt into to reclaim the lead instead of an elaborate catcher.

Right now, a private range will virtually not yield enough lead to make retrieval worth the time & effort.

However;

Your sand idea is good, but you are going to have a serious erosion problem.  Also, if you figure that you would pay $200.00 for a truckload of sand, and if you took that $200 and purchased bulk lead, you would probably be waaaay ahead with Option #2.

Insofar as erosion:

What I did on my range was to cover the surface of the berm with old tires.  Filling them with sand keeps them from being mosquito nurseries and lets water wick out through the holes that you will undoubtedly put in them.  The only problem with this is that if you are shooting VERY low velocity bullets (.45 ACP, or Black Powder, or I've even had it happen with .380's), there is a possibility of projectiles bouncing back.

I have so many pine trees on my property that I consider them as trash trees.  I just take fallen pine trees, cut them into 8 foot lengths and place them over the tires.  The bullets penetrate the pine logs, go into the tires, and the pine logs prevent bounce-back from low velocity slugs.

By the way. Local garages and tire shops have to pay an average fee of $2.50 to $4.00 for each tire they have disposed of. If you pull up with a trailer, they will probably give you all that you want to take.

Yes, the sand erosion was definitely a thought. Considered erecting a metal roof that would rest on the top of the wall behind the sand (railroad ties, block, whatever...), and extend up and out over the pile to the leading edge. I'm sure storms might blow in on it, but straight rain would be kept off. I know, additional cost...

My only thoughts on the benefit of such a structure are these:

First, I won't be a lone shooter. I'll have my whole family of six shooting at varying amounts, plus I have several extended family and friends that would LOVE a place to come shoot. Now I just multiplied my lead retrieval by a large margin.

Secondly, a much more importantly, we're looking at a cost vs benefit analysis through the lens of lead availability that we've known throughout the history of this country, but what if that continues to change in the wrong direction? Here's a little research assignment. How many lead smelting facilities are left in the US? The C vs B analysis results may alter rapidly in the future...

I'm aware of the Smelter answer: 0, thanks to Obama's EPA.

If you want to go to that much work, your plan would be great.

The optimum design in that level would be a "shooting box" with timbers on the sides and back with sand piled inside the box.

You will need treated timbers, if you want it to not rot out. You may be able to still get free used treated poles from the Power Company.

Something like that is the plan. A large three sided box that I can come in with the loader to take to the sifter. Somewhat of a lead mining operation! I've got a friend who not only reloads, but has a nice casting system set up. All automated so it's churning out bullets as he reloads already finished (sized, etc) bullets.

Good friend to have.

Treat him better than you do to your friends here.

Who, me???

Actually started working on building the range Friday afternoon and continued all day Saturday. The back of my property slopes down towards a low lying area, so the ground gets mushy before I reach a full 100 yds. I cut another lane at a different angle from the bottom back up the hill to where I eventually want to build a root cellar under the eventual barn site at the crest. The slope is probably a 15-20% grade. I took the pine trees that are too small to mill and pushed them long ways into the low area to give somewhat of a foundation for me to pile the dirt on from the cellar site and extend my range. I know the pine logs will eventually rot in the ground, but I figured it would give the tractor a better base to drive on since the ground is so soft.

I got the tractor bogged to the undercarriage down in the low area while trying to remove a good firewood tree and almost didn't get out. The biggest problem was that when I bogged, the loader was at the point of the root ball, so I couldn't use the edge of the shovel to leverage myself back because the top of the bucket would catch on the top of the root ball when I rotated the bucket down. It was close, so I had to do some rocking to finally get the edge to catch the ground and give myself a push back. Another reason I'm glad I went with a hydrostatic model!

Then towards evening I broke out the chainsaw and went to cutting cord wood out of the good burning trees. I had promised little Judah a ride on the tractor all day, so after cutting a decent amount of wood, he and I got on the tractor while the olders loaded the bucket with firewood and we would run them up the hill to dump it by where we keep it stacked. All in all a good productive day in the woods.

Tried to continue working on the rifle range today, but ended up having tractor trouble. I'm in the process of hauling dirt from a hole I'm digging down to the bottom where it's very wet and muddy. While digging today I noticed the ground to my right (as I was down in the hole) was dripping wet. It hadn't rained, so it took me a moment to figure out that it was hydraulic fluid spraying from the tractor. Turns out the hose connector for the bucket lift function had loosened and was spraying a stream every time I tried to lift the bucket. I tightened it immediately and started adding fluid, but apparently I had lost more than I had on hand to refill it... I'll buy more tomorrow and get back to work if I have enough time after work.

Obviously clearing land is hard on equipment. I found that I've bent the right side tie rod at some point. I'll have to get another one of those and change it out too. Otherwise the machine is running fine. I've got over 150 hrs on it now in a little over a year's time.

Phillip Gross wrote: Obviously clearing land is hard on equipment.

Can you imagine clearing land with a single horse, if you could afford one? Our forefathers were tough.

Our forefathers as in many founders also had "free labor"...  I saw a documentary on Monticello how much effort it took to get water uphill to it and do all the projects he did was a lot of labor for his "workers".

Not many people actually owned slaves compared to the image that people paint today that everyone had them.

Now what they did usually have was a large family, so they had more hands to work than the 2.5 children that the modern family has. Beyond the children, a man would many times have the help of his 11 other brothers and their kids to help with a project too. Beyond blood kin, they also had neighbors who would jump in to raise a barn.

While they didn't have near the equipment that we have, they had strong community to take it's place. Community is something that I believe is key. Can you imagine what could be achieved if we could get community to come together along with the equipment we have available today?

Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not talking about some government designed and forced community action, but rather the way it is supposed to be which originates from our hearts being with the Lord the way the early church and early America came together.

Speaking of hand clearing vs having heavy equipment, I decided to order a front loader grapple today. It will definitely make moving stumps, fallen trees, and brush around a lot faster. No more getting off and on the tractor to hook and unhook chains...

It will make it better when cutting trees into firewood. Just grab it and lift it up to a comfortable working height, then start cutting away with the chainsaw. Should also help the chain because invariably I'll hit dirt every now and then when cutting up a tree, not to mention the sore back after hunching over for a couple gas tanks worth.

How much did that run?

It looks like one to fit my John Deere 3020 would run $4,500.00.

I can fill my L.P. tank a lot of times for that.