Wed, 29 Mar 2006

We destroyed my handcrafted steel pistol target last weekend.
I had previously chronicled making the target here, but I never got around to posting what happened when we shot at it.

Here's a shot of the target in my back yard. We painted the plates white, so we could see the impacts better. Once it dried we loaded everything up and headed out to try the target. On the way I called Chris, because I knew he had just gotten a Beretta 92 with laser sight, that he had not had a chance to shoot yet. He was all for it, so we stopped by his place. Once we got to the location, Rob slapped on a couple of stick-on targets. In the third photo you can see the target with two black circles on it, to the left of the washing machine. Chris got the Model 92 ready.

So the first thing that happened was that the stick-on targets blew right off the steel plates. I guess they're meant to be stuck on paper targets where the rounds pass right through, but in this case the fragmenting bullets just blew the targets right off. The second thing that happened was that Rob began blowing the heck out of the targes with his .44 magnum. And also the .357. The 9 mm's that me and Chris were shooting didn't have too much effect on the 0.25 plate, but the .44's really put some divots in it.

Rob continued to punish the target with the .44. And me and Chris took a few shots also. You can see the plates getting more and more warped in the next three photos. I stopped taking photos, but eventually Rob shot the target to pieces. First the welds holding the plates to the 1" schedule pipe arms failed, and then welds holding the arms to the pivot tube were shot away. I have to say that the penetration on the welds wasn't the greatest, and if I had spent more time prepping and fitting them they would probably have lasted much longer. The fourth photo is a close-up of one of the steel pipes. This was a piece of high-pressure hydraulic line in its former life. It's approximately 1" in diameter, with a very thick wall (3/16"?). It had lots of dents, but only one penetration.

Then we turned our attention to the washing machine. Those stick-on targets worked just great on it. I think the sheet metal must flex enough, and not provide much resistance to the bullets. These were the fancy targets that turn green when you shoot them. You can see on the lower right target a nice grouping of green dots. Anyway, a good time was had by all. I'll try to get motivated enough to weld up some more targets for next time. What would be really cool would be a pair of target frames, each with two or three hanging targets. Then we could have an informal competition to see who could hit three targets first.

posted at: 07:12 | permalink |