My own indoor range?

[PennsyPlinker]

Greetings all

We life in a rural part of PA, although it is not as rural as it used to be. Before the farmland behind me was turned into suburbia, we had a shooting range in our backyard where we used to teach our children gun control. We killed many a plastic bottle filled with water back then. But now there are houses sitting on the top of my backstop, and the residents take a dim view of bullets headed their way, regardless of how well they are aimed.

I also have an old dairy barn on my property, and I have thought from time to time of turning the lower level into a pistol range. Besides the obstacles of time and money, which I hope to eventually surmount, I have a few others. Design is a big one, and barn swallows living in the barn are another. While I am no animal rights whacko, I have a great respect for other living things. In addition, these swallows perform the very valuable function of keeping the rest of the property almost bug free, allowing us to spend lots of time outside without having to slather on sprays or creams, or burn all sorts of incense, etc.

I am looking for some input here on designing a range indoors for anything up to .44 magnum, although currently the biggest thing I have to shoot from my gun of the hand is .357 mag. Also, if anyone has any experience or can point me to info on how to move the birds outside without moving them too far away (like to the next farm down the road) I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

 

[Magnum Wheel Man]

Barn Swallows are pretty resilient creatures... we had a pair nest & raise young on our back porch, on top of the outside light, under the porch roof, just in front of our back door... ( was kida humourous watching new visitors cringe when they came to the door, under attack from momma & poppa Swallow )...

IMO, if you allow them nesting area in the hay loft, & or any overhangs, you'll keep them, unless you are shooting night & day, everyday...

as far as the range... you'll likely need either a back stop of really good making, or a bullet trap or both, if you have human infringement towards the back side of where you are planning, you may be able to turn your range in the building, to offer the least amount of liability down range...

my outdoor pistol range uses 55 gallon drums filled with dirt, & stacked up on top of each other ... I'd suspect that would be an acceptable stop, but you really need to oversize your back stop, & yet use materials that will not richochet bullets all over the inside of your building...

 

[Sunray]

You'd have to check your local laws to see if a range is allowed in a residential area and spend an enormous pile of money for a proper back stop and a ventilation system.

 

[1 old 0311]

Ck. the NRA site. They have a publication on home ranges.

 

[Zundfolge]

If you're not in the city limits, I'd just build the darn thing and not worry about it.

As soon as you go asking the bureaucrats for permission to use your own property they will tell you "NO SERF!" and as soon as your homeowners' insurance company finds out you have an indoor range on your property they'll either drop you or double your rates.


Just build it ... enjoy it and keep your mouth shut about it. That's part of the reason to live in rural, unincorporated areas ... you still get you treat your own property like its yours.

 

[PennsyPlinker]

Thanks for the replies so far. We are fortunate enough to be in a township where the laws are not too restrictive yet, and there is no one behind the barn at present. The barn itself dates to the mid to late 1800s, and is a bank barn, so much of the first level is under the ground level. The walls are around 24" thick stone. I will just go ahead and build it, and who is to say how long it was there, as long as it was there before anyone develops the fields behind it. There is no one going to be disturbed by noise. The only neighbor closer than a couple of hundred yards is on the uphill side of the bank with a few more buildings, etc in the way, and I will probably do some insulating.

I am interested more in the mechanics of things than in any legalities - angles for deflector plates, thickness of those plates, ventilation options, etc. This is not going to be a public use range, just for me and my friends on occasion. I like the idea of 55 gal drums filled with dirt. I have plenty of dirt and drums are easy to come by.

 

[Ohen Cepel]

I think I would do the drums and dirt option. Welding steel plates will work, but why bother.

I would also put some hay bails in the area to keep the noise down (as much for you as others).

For ventilation, without seeing the place it's hard to tell. If it's large and somewhat open the best option might just be a large fan to blow the smoke/combustion by-products away from the shooter and outside if possible. Lead isn't good for adults, but can really be bad for kids so keep a good eye on them.

Hope it works out for you! Enjoy!

 

[Magnum Wheel Man]

for my outdoor pistol range, I used lag bolts to bolt a string of barrels to treated 6 X 6's 2 barrels high... pulling the treated 6 x 6 into the wedge that is created by 2 barrels side by side... a few short bolt hold the barrels tightly together, then I filled the bottom barrels tightly full of dirt, & set a second row on top, doing the same thing...

... mine are only 3 barrels wide, being an outdoor back stop... I would do a minimum of 2 barrels on each side, wider than your intended target area ( if you wanted to put 2 targets side by side, one on each barrel ), this would make the backstop 6 barrels wide... I would use normal top soil, rather than gravel, or anything with large rocks in it... I shoot at 50ft with mine, & 22 caliber pistol bullets flatten out, & bounce off most of the time, & anything larger, typically goes through the barrels, so if you shot alot, you could in theory have to replace the barrels, after so manny rounds... the rounded shape of the barrels has a tendancy to keep lead & copper jackets from flying straight back at you...( I just range qualified for my CCL a few weekends ago, on an indoor range, with a fish gill bullet trap, & several of us were hit by flying lead, & copper jackets off the 357 mags we were all shooting ), so I'm as happy with my barrel set up as anything, short of a snail bullet trap, which would be much harder to build, or expensive to buy... the weakest link on the back stop is where the barrels come together, & the 6 X 6 is bolted into place... but I've never had a bullet come through that area of my back stop in 4 years that I've been using it... I have had one bullet go through, but that was a full power reload of 45-70, out of my TC Contender, & it went through the top barrel only a few inches from the top, where the dirt was not packed so densely...

as far as ventilation... I was assuming it was an old barn ( citing the barn swallows )... so depending on the "air tightness" of the barn, would determine how much ventilation you would need... it doesn't take much more than 40 - 50 rounds to lay a pretty thick smoke cover inside a building... you could likely get by with an old squirrel cage blower mounted over your shooting area, on just an on/ off switch, to exhaust air from over the shooting area... ventilation could be as simple as 2 open windows & a big box fan, to as complex as a filtering & make up air system...

BTW... I would be conserned about any exposed rock foundation anywhere close to your target area... you certainly want to keep any richochet action to a minimum on an indoor range... maybe something as simple as 2" thick boards covering the foundation 5-10 ft on each side of the back stop, & likely on the ceiling as well as maybe even the floor if concrete in front around & above the back stop area...

the task sound daunting, but could really be done pretty reasonably, if you have access to used or scrap lumber, some olf squirrel cage fans, some 55 gallon drums, & some dirt...

& don't forget lighting while you are at it...

 

[hso]

Please provide some dimensions for the barn.

If you simply put a 15 ft high sand or dirt pile in place inside the barn you will have sufficient material to act as a bullet stop.

I agree that hay bales around the shooting station would absorb much of the sound. If you hang a double layer of heavy canvas tarp with a 4 inch seperation between the layers it will absorb much of the sound as well.

You will not be able to effectively ventilate a space like the barn because of the volume, but you may not have to unless you are spending a lot of time shooting (hours per day).

 

[david_the_greek]

Looking into the same kind of deal as this guy for a freinds barn and I came across http://www.letargets.com/html/traps.html scroll down the page and find the rubber range blocks. Those should help with richochet, not 100% on stopping a 44mag though. (the large blocks might, especially if you put the double). good luck with your quest.

 

[ACP230]

I'd be a bit leery of having hay bales around a range.
There has been a buildup of unburned powder on every indoor range I've seen. Unburned powder on hay bales sounds like a fire hazard to me.

Otherwise it sounds like a neat idea.

 

[PennsyPlinker]

Great discussion so far - thanks! The barn is approximately 79 feet long and 39 feet wide, outside dimensions. That translates into 75' x 35' inside. The ceiling is sort of low, at about 8'. Or maybe it just seems low since the upper level the roof is over 20' high at the peak. If I stuck with just self defense shooting at short distance, I could get by with very little in the way of backstop, since the barn, like most in PA, is built into the side of the hill. I would only need something to keep the bullets from shattering rocks and sending the fragments flying (not to mention destroying the foundation). It might be easier to live with the swallows that way too, since they leave about now, and will not return until late spring. I really do not want to lose my natural bug protection. We have bats too, but I think that like bullets, one cannot have too many bug eating animals on one's own side.

The biggest problem with the swallows though, is not so much their actual presence. I can work around that by shooting at the gun club while they are in residence. No, the problem is swallow residue, which has been accumulating for many years, long before we ever bought this barn. It would be easier now that I think about it to make a short lane and just keep it clean. The last thing we need is exploding piles of poop if someone misses a shot.

I should also add, since someone reading this is bound to wonder, why the barn is so neglected. It isn't actually. We use the top half for tractors and other machinery, and I have a wealth, a surfeit, of other outbuildings. We have not even begun to come close to utilizing all the space. Since we have so much storage space, we have been content to let the birds live in peace, and that makes our summertime outside activity that much more pleasant in a number of ways. I told my children they will be very sad the day we are both dead, not because we are gone, but because they will have to clean the place out!

 

[rockstar.esq]

One thing you might consider whilst filling barrels and what not with dirt is to add something called fly ash. This is a soil stabilizing product that is created during the concrete manufacturing process. Once added to soil with a prudent amount of water, fly ash binds the soil together allowing it to be compacted more effectively. In application with the barrel idea, this might allow less dirt to escape out of the bullet holes thus preventing maintenance. Please don't get the wrong idea about this stuff it is not cement and I believe that it would respond similarly to the "crust" that forms on berms without vegetation. Another option is to simply have a pile of gravel delivered . If you set up a closeline arrangement to hold your targets, you wouldn't need to go downrange and slide around on the pile. Every handgun shot I've ever fired into the dirt penetrated less than a foot in compacted soil and less than 1.5ft in loose soil. It's too bad you live so far from CO because there is a movie theater here thats getting gutted and they have 18" thick foam boards piled up alonside the dumpster...

 

[poppy]

rockstar

One thing you might consider whilst filling barrels and what not with dirt is to add something called fly ash. This is a soil stabilizing product that is created during the concrete manufacturing process

Not to be picky, but fly ash is not a by-product of concrete manufacturing. There are solid wastes created when manufacturing cement, which is one component of concrete. Fly ash is one by-product of coal fired power plants and is sometimes used as a substitute or additive in cement.

I'm not sure if the solid waste created in the manufacturing of cement is called fly ash. I would agree that fly ash from a coal fired power plant could be used as rockstar describes.

 

[rudolf]

Use sand as a backstop, it's the most cheap and effeciant way. Use stacked tires on the sides to catch stray bullets. This is the setup I've seen most often at ranges that were built on low budget.

 

[PennsyPlinker]

Thanks again everyone for the replies! Lots of good ideas and directions to check. It probably won't happen next week, but it is on the list of things to do.