Pistol range in home basement

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In the late 50's I shot my marlin 39A in our basement a lot. I had a good back stop and fired away. We didn't worry about proper ventilation or all the silly stuff the goverement shoves down our throats to day.
I the 80's I had a house with about a 3 1/2 ' high craw space. Again made up a indoor range had a track to run target back and forth and shot mainly prone
Was a nice subdivision and no body ever said a word . Again never worried about proper ventilation. .
Now I live in country and shoot out side and shoot bigger calibers than just 22's Should I now worry about proper ventilation . I might be causing dirty air in china by shooting in good old Ky. :D
 
This is a childhood memory so distant and faded that it's barely there. I was about 12, so we're talking almost 2 decades ago.

My dad used to be a professional cleaner. He would cover things like smoke damage after a fire, clean up after crimes, or clean out someone's house after they passed away. When I was about 12 I helped him with one of the latter; an elderly veteran died and after picking out what they wanted his relatives hired dad to clean out his house before putting it on the market. We spent a weekend hauling things out. As a kid I remember it being a very profound thing to go through an entire house and see an entire lifetime of memories and memento get hauled off. It was a ranch house with a basement that looked very small from the outside. The upstairs only took half a day to clean out, but the basement was a project. It was one long continuous room piled with stuff. When we finally got toward the end of it we found a back stop. I can't remember what it looked like, how big it was, or what it was made of. I just remember being excited about the idea, and my dad shrugging it off as being no big deal (probably to dull any thoughts of doing something similar in our own house).

I also remember the neighborhood, so if I ever want to move back to North Dakota, and to that town in particular, and a certain house is available...
 
When I first started reloading I shot a few rounds in my basement. First were .38 special. I just wanted to see if I really did make ammo that worked. Later I shot a few .30-30. My wife said that was really loud.

I told her..." its a test, only a test" :D


I did shoot a few .22s to boot. Maybe total was thirty rounds.

I still shoot air pistol down there.

Mark
 
Lead free ammo is readily available, if more expensive (so goes the price of convenience).
 
a local business here has a 100 yard underground shooting range... he has a business where he fine tunes rifles... that's the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. I agree about the lead exposure...not good... I wouldn't worry much about the sound.
 
I used to go shooting in the basement of the house I used to live-in the center of a town in NJ. Nobody ever bothered me, I limited myself to 22s, used to use a lot of CB caps. Had a backstop-a box filled with newspapers.
One time I fired a few magazines of 45ACPs, another time 9MMs. For ventilation, open the windows and the cellar door, once of twice put a fan in the window.
It would be a good idea to have a shooting partner listen outside while you pop a few, see what they sound like. Also play the radio or TV.
 
I have wanted to do this for a long time. I have a whole plan in place weather I have a basement or not, it should be easily doable and fairly inexpensive.

Dig a trench 4-5 feet deep 4 feet wide to your desired range length.
dig a small corner at the end of it. and a wider larger end for you to shoot from.
Pour concrete along the base and sides and top.
at the corner end, is where the ventilation will be.get some old mufflers from a junk yard or something and pipe them out to the side set at such an angle so ricochets of the back so wont reach it.
Instal a ventilation fan so the air is always being moved down range.
I am going to get AR500 steel plates and angle it downward in a trap so I can reclaim my lead bullets since I cast my own.
Run a cable and pulleys across the top so you don't have to crawl back an forth each time you want a new target up.
I will probably also recess some lights in the end to light up the target.
I plan on making a small addition to the side of my house leading down to it and having my reloading room down there too, but that is not important .
you can get fancy and put sound deadening stuff in and the like but it would only be for your own enjoyment.
Those are the basics for my plan anyway.
 
Dig a trench 4-5 feet deep 4 feet wide to your desired range length.
Click to expand...
I recall reading an article in the early 1960's (probably in Popular Mechanics) that had a cool design for a basement shooting range. They did just that; dug a trench.
A trench was dug from the basement wall out into the back yard.
At the end of the trench, they built a small cement block well the same depth as the trench. The well had a removable cover for access.
They laid 2-foot diameter drainage tile from the basement to the block 'well', then covered the tile over with dirt and sod.
The tile extended into the basement wall as a shooting station.
Then a 'clothesline' was run from the basement to a pulley system in the block 'well'.
A target were hung on the line and run out to the block well.
It kind of functioned like a giant suppressor....the muzzle being inside the end of the drainage tile.

I still have a different late-1950's Popular Mechanics article in PDF form. It's for building a classic 'shooting gallery' for airguns. One of these days I will set aside enough time to build one.

.
 
This is where a good match-grade air rifle or air pistol comes in handy. Combine it with a good pellet trap, and you can shoot in your house with minimal fuss.
 
captain awesome said:
(and with a nod to Pockets, too)I have wanted to do this for a long time. I have a whole plan in place weather I have a basement or not, it should be easily doable and fairly inexpensive.

Dig a trench 4-5 feet deep 4 feet wide to your desired range length.
dig a small corner at the end of it. and a wider larger end for you to shoot from.
Pour concrete along the base and sides and top.
at the corner end, is where the ventilation will be.get some old mufflers from a junk yard or something and pipe them out to the side set at such an angle so ricochets of the back so wont reach it.
Instal a ventilation fan so the air is always being moved down range.
I am going to get AR500 steel plates and angle it downward in a trap so I can reclaim my lead bullets since I cast my own.
Run a cable and pulleys across the top so you don't have to crawl back an forth each time you want a new target up.
I will probably also recess some lights in the end to light up the target.
I plan on making a small addition to the side of my house leading down to it and having my reloading room down there too, but that is not important .
you can get fancy and put sound deadening stuff in and the like but it would only be for your own enjoyment.
Those are the basics for my plan anyway.
Click to expand...
I was with a team that built a machine gun range at Seymour Johnson Air Base. In order to keep the bullets within a limited downrange impact zone, we installed concrete culverts 5' diameter if I remember correctly. With the guns mounted on tripods, it was easy to be sure they could not send a bullet over the top of the berm downrange or to either side.

There are also a variety of bullet traps designed for indoor ranges of all sizes. Just google the phrase.

The mufflers and fans at the exit end is a good idea, providing air flow one way downrange.

It is possible (in extreme climates) to arrange for incoming air from the outside to come up a parallel duct which would allow some heat transfer from the warm air to the cool air.

I would hate to try to retrofit a house, but if you are building a new home or extending a foundation for an addition it might be worthwhile.

Lost Sheep
 
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My uncle who passed 5 years ago, did it for 30 years with no problems, and he was on the same block as the chief of police. They were buddies, both collectors and built many guns together.
 
The sound of a gunshot after it passes through an exterior wall loses the familiar CRACK it would have in open air. Case in point: I was once visiting next door to an apartment where a neighbor had a gun accident. He had a ND in his living room with a .38 Special revolver and came over to see if we were all right. Now I was a competitive shooter at the time and had literally fired thousands of rounds. Even though I was standing probably no more than 10 or 12 feet away when the gun fired but I did not recognize the sound. I heard it all right, but it sounded just like a kid had bounced a basketball of the wall or something as it made a muffled WHUMP. I never would have thought twice about it had the wide eyed neighbor not come pounding on the door in a near panic thinking the bullet might have passed through the wall and hit somebody. We helped him search and never did find a bullet hole. We guessed that it might have been stopped by his Couch. We never thought to involve the police.
 
Regardless of the logistics involved in such a build, it would be nice to just go down to the basement to shoot.
 
If you could afford an underground shooting tunnel made from 3' drainage pipe it would be very easy to ventilate simply by putting a fan at the other end. It would strictly be a bench rest set-up though. One of the big ammo companies has a 100 yard long underground testing tunnel like this. It might be Speer.
 
If you have a basement, "not like Fl",like in the North East. and a solid brick house, on a good half acre or more. It's almost impossible if you put sound absorbing "egg containers" or carpet, on the walls.We would go downstairs on Christmass and Thanksgiving, and shoot while my 6 aunts were yapping upstairs and no one ever heard a thing even in the house. It was a good 20 ft below the ground floor. We stuck to 38's and lower caliber rounds wadcutters that my uncle would reload just for the house.
 
I once knew a guy who had a small shooting range for .22 lr in his basement... in Washington DC. In my little town here in Idaho, there is a house in the older area of town that once housed a range in its basement as well. Although that may have been in the early 1900's. Ventilate and don't make noise the neighbors can hear.
 
A friend, when building his huge home, built an underground range that is 50 yards long and made from 6' diameter galvanized corrugated pipe; concrete walkway to the end, fan, etc. shooting end is also the reloading room - when he shoots you can clearly hear the gunshots above ground (and he is on 10 acres) as that pipe magnifies the sound tremendously. There are lights all the way down, motorized target retrieval system, etc.

It was on the house plans as a storm shelter and wine cellar
 
I believe that a huge "silencer unit" could be built from a 55 gal drum, with baffles & baffling material, with constricted holes fore and aft, that would greatly reduce the weapon firing through it. This would not be attached to the gun, but mounted just ahead of the shooting position, with the muzzle of the gun sighted through it. Along with some external soundproofing, this would eliminate the high noise associated above with a steel culvert or pipe. Also, a fan/exhaust could be added to the drum to immediately suck the smoke from the shot fired, and channel it outside the house with dryer vent type hose or pipe, preferably out the roof, where any sound will be dissipated.
 
SharpsDressedMan said:
I believe that a huge "silencer unit" could be built from a 55 gal drum, with baffles & baffling material, with constricted holes fore and aft, that would greatly reduce the weapon firing through it. This would not be attached to the gun, but mounted just ahead of the shooting position, with the muzzle of the gun sighted through it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I saw a picture of a muffler made of a half-dozen tires arranged in a row. Stick the rifle muzzle into the center of the row and fire away.This was for an above-ground range, but would work as well underground.

Lost Sheep
 
I must admit to having a 'silent pellet trap' in my basement.
https://www.google.com/search?q=silent+pellet+trap&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=V7fxT4D_A-bC2wXhm_ylAg&ved=0CGMQsAQ&biw=1272&bih=212
Built it like 14 years ago from an online plan. It catches pellets/bullets in 'duct seal' putty (heavy clay-based putty for sealing outdoor conduit entry). Since I built my trap for use with PCP air rifles, it will easily and quietly stop things up to 50-60 foot pounds. Does very well with low-power .22 CB (30fpe), .22 Colibri (3fpe), and .22 Super Colibri (5fpe) powder-less cartridges. A Colibri is silent from pistol barrels 6" or longer and Super Colibri is silent in rifle barrels. Just keep the bore clean if it's tight or over 22" long...sometimes one will get stuck in tight or dirty bores.
It is fun to be able to shoot most of my .22's that way.
I also load a primed empty .25acp cartridge with .25 caliber airgun pellets for playing with some of my .25acp pocket pistols...sort of a '.25acp Colibri'.
 
There was a shop local to me called Cougar & Hunter that had a 100 yard underground
tunnel range. I spent many hours in it, I'd sight rifles for them in exchange they would
let me work on my own loading projects. It had a small room about 8ft square with
room for the shooting bench and not much else. Had about a 18in square opening
into a 30-36 in tunnel. Far end was lit and had target paper on a big roll with a motor
drive controlled at the shooting bench.
You could hear each shot echo down the pipe several times. As long as the muzzle
was in the hole it was pretty quiet in the shop.
I had a Contender in 30-30 and 35 Remington that due to bench design would have
to be fired without the muzzle in the tunnel.....it was real load it the room!
Dave
 
My neighbor had a 50' one in his basement.It was like a tornado in there when the venting was on. It sounded like a car with a sub upstairs. In the basement itself, it was VERY loud, and he always wore plugs and muffs both. I shot there a lot just before he died and I had the doctor check my lead level and it was ok. When the new owner bought the house, he totally remodeled the basement, putting in a home theatre where the shooting range was.
 
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