Best homemade backstops....

[Grendel-Gene]

This is not a "Grendel specific topic" but rather a general gun range issue...

I am wondering what the best and easiest ( and most cost effective ) way of building a backstop for a home shooting range would be. The soil where i live is hard... but even if i brought in dirt and made a mound, this would surely erode down soon... So in order to get the height i desire behind the target, i feel that i am going to have to make some kind of box or enclosure and have that filled with dirt or rocks....

any ideas?

i thought of getting some wire fencing and loop it in a cylinder shape and fill it with rock.... several cylinders full of rocks might do the job... or 55 gallon drums stacked just right full of gravel... maybe cement...

help!!

Thanks,

Gene

[bwaites]

I've thought about this quite a bit. A double/triple thickness depth of stacked, used up car/truck tires, filled with gravel or sand should work great. The tires wont shatter like wood, just absorb and then go back to natural shape. They are cheap in most places, too. Easy to make up and define the area you want to use, stack neatly without falling down, etc.

[rasp65]

Gene About 20 years ago my cousin built a nice range. He used a tractor with a front bucket and scraped and dumped the dirt intoa 15 ft berm about 10 ft high. Eventually grass grew over it and negated the effects of erosion. We will eventually be improving our 200 yd berm and will use the method outlined by Bill above. We are planning 3 layers of tires filled with sand about 6 ft high. Another option is to have a load of dirt dropped in 1 pile and you have instant backstop. Erosion will be a problem until something grows on it but you probably won't loose too much by then. Be careful about having too much rock on the outside as it could cause ricochets.

[terrywick4]

I've thought about this quite a bit. A double/triple thickness depth of stacked, used up car/truck tires, filled with gravel or sand should work great. The tires wont shatter like wood, just absorb and then go back to natural shape. They are cheap in most places, too. Easy to make up and define the area you want to use, stack neatly without falling down, etc.

My brother is three deep without anything inside the tires (used mainly for pistol with steel plate rack in front). I helped him move it so he could put a berm behind. Most of the bullets didn't make it to the third row of tires and very very few made it thru the last set (I suspect the 300 WSW and the 338).

[Grendel-Gene]

i have a bunch of old tires... maybe three sixteen foot flat bed trailers full!!! i got them from the local mechanic. but the bullets do go through them and the neighbor is complaining. I am wondering if a wood chipper would shred them and i could use the tire chips in some kind of a box... also the tires do hold rain water and breed mosquitoes... Of course i could bury them in the berm... still looking at all my options.

[JASmith]

Stack the tires in a double row with the centers shifted as you go up. Fill each layer with dirt. Then the bullets won't go through and the dirt won't go away.

I've seen them used like that in a Sheriff's training range in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

[jwilson1985]

idk if the steel belts in the tires will effect the chipper any but something to think about. If you could find some semi tires that would be good. railroad ties are good also

[Variable]

I've thought about this quite a bit. A double/triple thickness depth of stacked, used up car/truck tires, filled with gravel or sand should work great. The tires wont shatter like wood, just absorb and then go back to natural shape. They are cheap in most places, too. Easy to make up and define the area you want to use, stack neatly without falling down, etc.

Yep, fill with dirt or sand and call it a day.

[LRRPF52]

If you want to construct some affordable, but durable structures for this, I suggest looking into SuperAdobe. You use tubular sand bags like long lego blocks, filled with sand-based cement. Very cheap, and stronger than most structures out there. They broke all the engineering test equipment for San Bernadino County for CA earthquake code.

http://calearth.org/shop/index.php

[Grendel-Gene]

hmmmm But the bags... Wouldn't they get punctured and leak eventually? But in general I do like the idea... maybe with lots of walmart plastic bags....

[txgunner00]

Stack the tires in a double row with the centers shifted as you go up. Fill each layer with dirt Then the bullets won't go through and the dirt won't go away.

I've seen them used like that in a Sheriff's training range in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

This. Double row of tires laid up like brick. Dry sand is the best material for stopping bullets. Whatever on site soil mixture you have is usually most practical and works nearly well as long as its not too rocky. Gravel and rocks tend to send bullet and rock fragments flying. However, it usually won't matter being contained in tires. Sand bags are a different story though.

[JASmith]

That's a better description than I made. I also think bwaites' comment about making a triple row makes sense. A lot will depend on how high you want the berm to go and how many tires you can get.

[LRRPF52]

With SuperAdobe, you can make curved semi-domes with multiple layers, using shredded tires mixed with the sand. That shape would provide the best control of ricochets, which can't be accounted for once they hit the ground unless a large backstop is in-place. The sandbags are tubular on a cable spool, and used like long bricks, not small bricks. You use barbed wire between them to act as a mortar, since tons of weight compresses them down on each other, locking them together to a point where they are stronger than standard reenforced concrete with rebar of the same thickness, and you only need 10% cement mixed with 85% sand, with 5% water or a water-acrylic blend if you prefer the modern synthetic bonding agents for more durable cement.

You do have to cover the bags to prevent UV deterioration though.

[txgunner00]

If you increase you cement content you could create a CMU like material. At that point it wouldn't matter if the bags deteriorate. I don't know if I would use it as a backstop due to bullet damage though.

[wrsteve]

I know the military uses this in afganistan to build ranges. They put a poll in the middle to stack the tires on and then full the tires with cement.