Thread: Shooting ranges

Thanks heaps for all that!

Some bloody great ideas that we hadnt thought of.

Would be really keen on the offer on coming and having a look. I come to wellington a bit, so might hit you up.
I'll send a pm with my contact details..

Originally Posted by 308

Re indoor building vs fumes - if you want a building with common access to 100 and 200 ranges I would recommend on building with two doors to the outside which holds two ranges
Exterior style shooting area stops fume extraction problems. Inside your nice warm social area (that you build later) you have soundproof doors to both ranges. Range officer can lock the doors from the range side so no-one can go into the bays when shooters are forward. Social people can do social things without gunfire noise.
This is how we do it at Wgtn Pistol Club so pm me if you wanna come take a look if you are up this way or I can send some pics through
The range shooting bays are covered from rain and the back wall is the clubhouse - you could do the same with a short corridor to the clubhouse later if you want.This would cut down noise even more and give two independently lockable doors if wanted - a bit fancy though
Also I worked on the Police range at Training College in Porirua which is fully enclosed and they designed it so that the airflow moved from the shooter's end of the building to the target end in a "plug flow"* fashion so as to blow fumes downrange from the shooters and made all shooters use frangible rounds to avoid ricochets - not workable for civilians IMO

Re baffles the problem is getting heavy steel beams long enough, cheap enough.
Vertical steel posts or hardwood power poles holding up tanalised retaining wall T&G timber about 1500 high with 6mm plate steel tek-screwed to the back of each baffle. The expensive bit is steel beams running above each baffle with threaded rods through the guts to pick up the inevitable sag in the guts - balance the beams on top then weld some "keeper" legs down from each end to hold them onto the top of each pole
Poles need sacrificial 200x50s pref in double layers on their fronts so that their legs don't get shot out. If you need baffles to go really wide without spending $$$ on steel, perhaps your forward baffle could have a leg down for support say 10-15m forward of the shooting bays and have a wall out towards that support - our walls are open-topped wooden posts faced with timber and filled with peametal - pour more peametal in from time to time - they work ok
Presumably you guys are sourcing farm building barn rafters and whatnot secondhand?

A design note - once your overhead baffles are in place you can't move the point of shooting forward later without big $$

As for ground baffles we have two types that work well - 100x100 posts with facing boards each side and filled with peametal
and
sandbags with soil sprinkled over and ivy growing over and holding together

Both types are in a"finger" type array where they come out from each side at around knee high and overlap so that the shooter patching their target walks forward in a zigzag fashion if that makes sense

A note that may help - the wooden ground baffles can be just sitting on the ground with steel rods driven through to hold them up. This means that if you need to get a digger or something large through then you can lever the baffle up with a few people and crowbars, the peametal falls out so you can then drag it out of the way and get access then drag it back, hammer in new rods to prop it up and re-fill with peametal - just an idea
Ideally you'll have full access to the target ends but the portability factor can help when doing overhead baffle maintenance

Cheers


*fluid dynamics