Stealthshooter wrote:I've been thinking about building a bullet trap so I can just recover my bullets and melt them back down. My thought was to build a 2' cube and fill it with news papers to stop the bullets. Then I can just take it to the range with me and use it for my target. You guys have any thoughts or better ideas?
It's going to chew up pretty fast and if your a good shot, putting one shot close to the other, it'll follow the channel from the first and go out the back of the box. Clean, dry sand is good at filling in a channel, but the age old challenge is keeping the sand in the box with the front open or shot open quickly. Hit the scrounge
trap line and look for some rubber sheet, thick enough to be stiff enough so as to hold back the weight of the sand and keep it in the box. The rubber will pass the shots and close back off somewhat. Of course, it will eventually wear open in the center and the sand will slowly migrate out, so get as much rubber sheet as you can find. I have seen folks cut up a tire into equal length rubber arcs and screw them on side by side across the front of the box. You can always find discarded tires. if they have woven steel belts in them and actually, even if they don't, they start the bullets expanding, sometimes by quite a large amount, before they ever get to the sand. That allows the sand to slow them down even faster than if you only have sand and say a piece of cardboard in front of it.
Bottom line is let your imagination earn it's keep and you can come up with many ideas. Some of them will even be good ones.
Hoot