reusing bbs

[stonebuster]

I hung a cowhide as a backstop behind my paper targets. Under the cowhide I put a towel to catch the bbs after they hit the cowhide. The bbs look totally undamaged under magnifying glass. I know I can buy thousands of them for a few bucks but why throw them away if they can be reused without issue. Is there any reason not to reuse them?

 

[Kookla]

I've heard things for and against it. As you've said, you can get thousands of bb's for next to nothing.

 

[cobalt327]

Steel BBs aren't going to be harmed by hitting leather. Be sure they're clean before reloading your gun w/them.

 

[Spats McGee]

I see no reason not to clean and reuse them.

 

[a_canadian]

As a kid in the 1960's I knew a lot of kids with BB rifles like me. Most had a wool blanket for both backstop and BB catcher, behind and under our targets. The low powered BB rifles we shot usually wouldn't go through an 'army' blanket. I recall Crossman actually spelling something like this out in their literature. So long as the BB's were clean, we just used them over and over. A smooth bore BB gun doesn't have much in the way of inherent accuracy anyway, so the odd bit of muck in the barrel probably doesn't do any real harm.

 

[Sinner1111]

I do it...I don't even clean them lol..I have reused bbs hundreds of times , in cheep guns like the 760 and red rider

 

[kBob]

As a kid nothing is what I had a lot of. So next to nothing was something. I reshot a LOT of BBs. At one point a buddy and I even dragged a magnet through some building sand we were using as a back stop to recover some of the BBs. Once a buddy went so far as to strip bark from a big pine we had been shooting against and break up the bark to recover BBs. I thought that a bit much and did not insist he share what had been mine.

I noticed that in the mid 1960s at a carnival my High School Band sponsored for fund raising that the professional carny that ran the BB Machine gun booth (remember the red star on an index card you were supposed to shoot out?) recovered his shot and reused it.....apparently forever. Would loved to have had one of those things!

-kBob

 

[Speedo66]

Always reused them. Although they were cheap, they were not available in NYC, same for the guns, so it required trying to get the parents to make a separate trip outside of the city to buy some. Easier to try and recover them from the box of newspapers and old phone books I was using as a backstop in our apt.

Shooting a proper distance, 30', required shooting from a bedroom, down a hallway, and into the living room. Best done when they weren't home. Just getting them to buy me a Daisy Model 25 pump BB rifle, illegal in NYC, was a feat in itself.