TargetTalk

I see a few pellet traps made by people over the web. In America I see they use Duct Seal in the back and Plumbers Mait in U.K.
Does anyone know what is common in Australia for catching the pellets. One suggestion was Playdough, but that will dry out quickly, any Suggestions appreciated.

I purchased the Crossman trap that sells at Walmart. You can even purchase a replacement curtain when yours gets torn up. It works beautiful!!!

I don't think there are any Walmart stores in Australia.
Greg, do a search on here for traps and I think you will find several ideas. I just use a .22 trap as I also shoot FP on the same range.
Ben

this may help:
http://www.targettalk.org/viewtopic.php ... light=trap
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Much ado about nothing.

Shoot into a cardboard box of rags (not paper); one foot deep will do. The more you shoot into it, the better it works as a ball of pellets builds up. I guarantee you won't shoot through it. This is a fine opportunity to put those old polyester disco pants to good use.

I like to put the box into a larger box with part of the face cut away to trap lint and target scraps. Use a clip to hold the target.

When you've shot a few sleeves of pellets into it, just throw it away.

If you want a ready-made trap using ductseal, you can buy one from
archerairguns.com. They will probably ship to Austalia. Stephen is an Englishman.
Alternatively, you can buy an electrician's metal circuit breaker box at any home store, fill it will duct seal and attach a target.
They have duct seal in Australia, they just call it something else. As long as you folks have air ducts for heating and/or cooling, there will be something used to seal the ducts. Ask any handyman what is used to seal ductwork and buy some.
The benefit of the trap is that you don't have to replace the ductseal ever. Every 1000 shots or so, dig out the lead mass and smooth out the ductseal.
The ductseal trap is also very quiet. The metal traps from Crsoman sold at Walmart make a metallic ring and there is a loud "thwap" even when you shoot into cardboard.

I think the host of this forum sells a trap made by Gehmann and it's only $45. Not sure what shipping would be to Australia. There has got to be a supplier or distributor of Gehmann in Australia, though. Good luck.

I've recently made a new trap for practice at home with my 46m, using a sloping steel plate for a backstop. It was very loudly ringing on impact, kind of disturbing to neighbours, so I packed about an inch of duct seal onto the back of the plate. The bottom plywood bounced the squashed pellets up again, often out of the trap as they pushed past the paper, so I put about 1/2" of duct seal there. Now they just bounce slightly off that as their velocity isn't high enough after hitting the damped steel to go very far. I have to re-shape the putty in one area every couple of hundred shots, but hardly any pellets stick to it so they just shake out of the trap. A very quiet solution. Any soft petroleum-based or similar putty should work, such as Plasticine, though that gets a bit hard in colder weather, or Plastelene which tends to stay a bit softer. The key I think is finding something which sticks well to the steel and stays soft enough to kill vibration.

When you've shot a few sleeves of pellets into it, just throw it away.

I'm sure your local waste authority is thrilled with a bunch of perfectly recyclable lead going up their incinerator smokestack.

That's why for my first indoor trap I used duct seal and carefully picked out all my pellets. They live in a bucket in my workshop. Actually quite a convenient weight for some kinds of gluing/clamping operations. Some day I'll take the full bucket for recycling and start over. Now that my pellets are smashing flatter on direct steel impact they'll store more compactly, making it take longer to fill the bucket. Yeah, definitely not a good idea taking lead or other toxic materials to landfills.

I normally use a cast iron pot.
Fill about 2" of sand in the bottom, cut some polyethylene foam (e.g. Ethafoam) to seal it off. Finish off with duct tape around the edges.
Wjen the foam gets worn, cut a whole in the middle and make a plug of foam that fits tighlty in the hole.

Foam is nice for nailing targets to the surface.

Shopping bags are the same material:
I've made some quick and dirty targets by wrapping a thick piece of steel plate in numerous layers of these.

Lead in pellet form is not a "toxic material". It is about inert as you can get. Just don't eat it.

If it makes you feel all "green" and warm and fuzzy, recycle it.

Lead doesn't stay 'in pellet form' when in the elements, it reacts with various chemicals, even relatively weak acid rain. The resulting salts are toxic to just about all forms of life. Hand sweat is sufficiently acidic to cause these compounds to form rapidly, hence the need to wash hands after handling pellets and before eating. Placing pellets in the mouth for quick use while hunting or plinking is a bad idea for similar reasons; saliva can oxidize lead quite quickly. Remember Roman history at all? Madness and early death among the wealthy class due to lead pipes for their water, lead glazes on their pottery, and other popular uses of the metal were fairly common.

Sure, there are worse elements to put into a landfill, like Nickel-Cadmium and Lithium Ion batteries or compact florescent light bulbs containing mercury, but why add to the down-stream toxin load when it's not necessary? And feeling 'green and fuzzy' has nothing to do with it. We share the waterways with other people and wildlife. We eat from the sea. Let's not get sarcastic about basic environmental health, eh? I don't think it's at all appropriate.

Funny that this would pop up now:

http://www.targettalk.org/viewtopic.php?t=30934

I now cringe when someone uses the trendy word "appropriate" when expressing a moral belief. If we wanted more of that we would join a Country Club rather than the local gun club!

Let's focus on the sticky issue of ways of trapping pellets. Personally, I hadn't thought of cutting up my old disco trousers for use as a trap. Hmmm.

Popeye

On that positive note, I would suggest using cotton or linen in the "box trap", which does work extraordinarily well. The lint and trapped fiber works as a flux when smelting for casting.

Polyester disco pants are only cool when not wearing underwear while dancing to ABBA. (for you Dancing Queens)

Also, I found it difficult to find a really good beer in NZ.

Greg
Right back to the start. Get one of those large core flute boxes used by Australia Post for bulk mailing. Lean a piece of steel plate in it at a 45 degree angle, clip the target to the front with a bulldog clip or similar and shoot.

The pellets flatten nicely and 99% of them are trapped in the box.
After the initial period when your pellets cut a hole through the core flute there are bits of plastic mixed with the lead. It is easy to sort out and then I just pop the flattened pellets into an old paint tin.

Even you Queenslanders should be able to make one of these ;-)

Thinking it through further, there is no reason why a carboard archive box with lid on wouldn't work as well. Can't see any reason to go into cost of plastecene, putty or foam.

Main reason for the putty etc is for the noise, not to get that thwack, or ting sound for the neigbours to get upset.

Careful now Greg R, you might risk being called a sissy for not wanting to show off your manly lead-whacking sounds to the neighbours. And a thorough ridiculing awaits you if you add in any idle thoughts about environmental concerns.

For what it's worth, duct seal goes for less than $3/pound. You can get more than enough to damp any significant noise for less than the cost of a decent tin of pellets. Hardly an extreme expenditure.

My FIRST box (decades ago) was a couple layers of blue insulating foam up front, and old phone books in the back of a plywood box. My dad made it and I put lots of happy rounds into it.

One the cheap, I filled a box with shredded paper, shot through it and then added a 2nd box inside the first, also stuffed with shredded paper. The paper breaks down and settles, so I was adding more from time to time ~ but it was all free from work.

Next I tried making a box and filling it with carpet, that worked the worst of everything. 6 layers of old carpet don't do anything but shed fibers all over the place. Then I replaced the carpet with Duct-Seal and ~20,000 pellets later, I'm still with it. I do have a piece of cardboard on top that acts as the target backing, and keeps the little splash-back typically in the box.