Simple bullet trap

[Canute Rex]

Maybe this is old hat to many of you, but I thought I'd share a photo or so of a bullet trap I built. I don't like the idea of spreading lead all over the woods and I'd like to recover my lead and recast it. I found a simple design on a shooting website and it works beautifully.



It's just a P.T. plywood box with a hinged top, mounted on garden cart wheels. It is 14" W x 14" H x 24" D. I filled it with three bags of rubber playground/landscaping mulch from the local Home Depot.

Here are some bullets I recovered from it.



They are hemispherical, but seem to have retained almost all their mass. I am going to weigh some of them and compare them to new ones. Most of them penetrated between 8" and 14" into the rubber mulch. I didn't find any past 16". I put a steel plate in the back, just in case, but it seems that it wasn't necessary. The guy who originally posted about it said that he was shooting high powered modern weapons into a 24" deep trap with no problems.

At first I was searching around, but then the light came on and I dug in the areas with a lot of sawdust mixed in. The method that worked best was scooping the mulch out and sprinkling it into a 5-gallon bucket. The gray lead contrasts well with the reddish-brown mulch.

When the front got shot out in the middle I just screwed a square of 1/4" plywood over it.

Earlier this winter the snow built up around it. One day I shot about 6 balls into it and then went up to look. There was a small tunnel out from under it and a tiny set of paw prints leading off into the underbrush. Somebody got a rude awakening. "It looked like such a nice neighborhood!"

Enjoy.

Canute

[doug]

      If you cover the inside of the front with inner tube, the front can get shot up more without leaking.  I have dry sand in my trap; might be easier to filter through for the bullets.

cheers Doug

[T*O*F]

When the front got shot out in the middle I just screwed a square of 1/4" plywood over it.

If you put L brackets on either side, you could just tip it up, slide out the worn piece, and slide in new piece.

[ehoff]

Really nice looking bullet trap, it has to be one of the simplest I've ever seen.

[hanshi]

So simple, in fact, I might be able to build one.  great way to conserve precious lead.

[Ken G]

Canute,
Great idea.  Thanks for sharing the pics and idea.  Simple and self contained.  I like it.  I think TOF had a great idea with the brackets for a slide in /slide out target board. 
Ken

[Scott Bumpus]

This is a great idea.  melt and re-use the lead,  daryl said he can wash and re-use the denim patches he uses,  now how to reuse the powder...........

[Daryl]

This is a great idea.  melt and re-use the lead,  daryl said he can wash and re-use the denim patches he uses,  now how to reuse the powder...........

Wash used patches - me? Wash? - just put them in your mouth and get 'em soppy wet for the next shot.

Good bullet trap!  Sand is good, but leaks easily from small holes.  I like the idea of rubber chunks or maybe something else- any ideas?

 The "L" brackets or "U" channel on the front is a good idea for replacing fronts.  Tire rubber is also good - maybe 2 or more sets of brackets for different materials?

[BrownBear]

That rubber mulch is a great idea.  I've been using sand in a 5 gallon bucket.  While it works great with no overpenetration, it's heavy as the dickens to pack sand around, so I only use it in places with sand handy.  Problem is, that's only a solution in summer when sand is readily available.

The advantage of sand is that I can use a garden screen with 1/4" hardware cloth mesh to sift for the lead.  You've got my mind working on how to sort balls from the coarser rubber material rather than hand-sorting, but nothing comes immediately to mind.  Hand-sorting is better than losing all that lead in winter when I have to quit the lead, though.

Thanks for all the great ideas!

[Daryl]

Brownbear- a fairly large deep tub or even a 5 gallon can - dump in about 20 or 30 pounds of shot fill and shake and jostle it around. The balls will make their way to the bottom, with the lighter rubber 'floating to the top. Remove the rubber and salvage the balls.  It wouldn't take long.

If the bullet box had 1/2" or 3/8" ply spacers at, say 8", 12", 16" with individual lids that could be locked down, the individual 'bins' could easily be emptied for lead removal.  One must make the box big enough for the largest or deepest penetrating projectiles, but if shooting something that doesn't penetrate that far, why sort fill that doesn't have any balls in it. Without spacers or sections or segments, that would happen.  If shooting something that penetrates 20", why sort the first 18"?

[doug]

Good bullet trap!  Sand is good, but leaks easily from small holes.  I like the idea of rubber chunks or maybe something else- any ideas?

     That is why I line the inside of the front with a sheet of rubber from an old inner tube.

cheers Doug

[BrownBear]

Brownbear- a fairly large deep tub or even a 5 gallon can - dump in about 20 or 30 pounds of shot fill and shake and jostle it around. The balls will make their way to the bottom, with the lighter rubber 'floating to the top. Remove the rubber and salvage the balls.  It wouldn't take long.

Come to think of it, we've got some rubber feed bins for horses laying around.  They're kind of like a deepish gold pan and hold somewhere around 15 or 20 gallons. They'd probably hold all the rubber mulch from a shooting box, and "pan" just like a gold pan.  For that matter, one of the galvanized tubs we've got laying around would hold all the mulch for sure.

Panning for lead.  I love it!

[Roger Fisher]

May as well start making them one and all, since that is only one of the ways 'they' will be coming after us!